wfn.org | Commentary: Itinerancy impediment to attracting pastors

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

July 2, 2001  News media contact: Thomas S.
McAnally·(615)742-5470·Nashville, Tenn.     10-71BP{300}

NOTE: A head-and-shoulders photo of the Rev. Paul Nixon is available. This
commentary can be used as a companion with UMNS #301.

A UMNS Commentary
By the Rev. Paul Nixon*

There is a lot of hand wringing these days over the clergy shortage now
hitting United Methodism across our connection. Many factors are certainly
to blame for this impending leadership crisis. However, I am convinced the
main impediment in our church is something we call itinerancy, the system
whereby bishops decide what is best for pastors and congregations.

God is calling men and women into pastoral ministry as powerfully and
certainly today as ever before in history. Thousands are hearing that call,
but most are not being called to itinerate.
Thus, the United Methodist Church is choosing not to deploy or to encourage
hundreds of pastoral candidates each year who are gifted to be effective
pastors.

We look past these people and they look past us because the ideal of
itinerancy has become more important than receiving the leadership of these
incredibly talented people God is calling in our midst.

I serve as a pastor in a church where, every few weeks it seems, another of
our members is sensing a call to ministry. In almost every case, they are
turned back by itinerancy, by our rule that says you can only serve as an
elder among us if you are available to be deployed anywhere in the annual
conference at any time, as long as you are in active ministry. This system
made very good sense in a time when spouses seldom had careers, pastors were
all male, and there was much less of a cultural Grand Canyon between urban
and rural life. It served United Methodism very well for decades.

I graduated from seminary at the age of 23. I had always lived in the city,
much of that time in the greater Los Angeles area. Effective ministry in a
very small Southern town was a stretch for me, but I pulled it off for a few
years by the grace of God. I was fortunate to have had rural grandparents
and other family experiences that enabled me to bridge the cultural gap.

The 23-year-olds in my church are every bit as mature as I was, highly
intelligent and devoted young people, but they are part of an entirely
different generation and a rapidly changing culture, worshiping God to rock
music with shirttails out.

God is calling some of these young people to ministry, and they are pursuing
the call, but not to go and dress and act like a 50-year-old ministering to
70-year-olds. There is a cultural chasm between many of our large, dynamic
churches, where so many of the young people are experiencing the call, and
the majority of the places where we would send these young people to serve.
The chasm is so wide that it would be akin to asking a Methodist young
person 40 years ago to go and serve churches of another denomination. 

This chasm is far more than simply a rural/urban chasm. It is a chasm
between vital churches -- rural and urban -- marked by a spirit of
extroverted innovation and tired conformist churches marked by a spirit of
introverted irrelevance. 

Furthermore, few of us would encourage our 23-year-old children to take on
$30,000 of student loan debt for a first job that pays $26,755. The standard
of living in this country has leaped forward, and yet we expect our new
pastors to live in near poverty. If that is hard for a 23-year-old, try the
financial equation on a 43-year-old who will have two children in college in
the next five years. 

The itinerancy, as it is practiced across the United States, almost
guarantees that every starting pastor can make no more than his minimum
salary. You have to "do your time" at minimum salary in most cases. The
numbers do not add up, even for those who are called.

I see gifted women and men who are in their 30s, 40s and 50s deeply called
to ministry. And, as is often the case with such gifted persons, they are
married to equally gifted persons who might be a physician with a practice
that has taken 20 years to build or a judge in the middle of a career that
is based in the community. Physicians and judges can't itinerate. Their
careers are not portable, in most cases. So when they have a spouse, gifted
and called to preach, seminary is either impossible or an ordeal. Our system
intimidates them and discourages them because of their inability to
itinerate. And, if we haven't discouraged them with the first two realities,
we assign them to places where they will be under-employed as punishment for
their refusing to itinerate and pay the dues we feel are necessary to
qualify them for leadership in our most vital churches. 

The big loser in this whole deal is the United Methodist Church. We are not
cultivating potentially great pastors for our most strategic pulpits.

This whole system is nuts in the year 2001 in this society.  General
Conference may change the system eventually, but trying to get intelligent,
constructive change passed by so diverse a group will take more years than
we can wait. I give them 40 years still before they cry "uncle" and finally
bless free agent pastors. We will, by then, have lost two more entire
generations of pastors.

Long before General Conference ever does anything about it, individual
annual conferences will have to act on their own to nurture the leaders God
is raising up among them. The cabinets and boards or ordained ministry will
need to loosen the emphasis on itinerancy and affirm some form of free
agency for pastors, allowing freedom for congregations to contract directly
with pastors, within certain bounds.

Giving pastors a part in choosing the congregations where they might serve
and where their families might be nurtured is essential. Allowing
congregations to choose their pastors from a cabinet-approved slate of
nominees (much like the Episcopal Church does in some places) would also be
very well received. Let these churches court the pastor they want. Let the
pastors negotiate for what they need in order to serve.

There will always be a leadership crisis for dying and dysfunctional
churches. If we stopped forcing our best and our brightest to simply fill
our spots, there would no longer be a vacuum in quality leadership in our
most strategic churches. It is not just the total number of pastors that is
important, but the numbers of pastors who are qualified to lead the churches
that make 99 percent of tomorrow's disciples.

# # #

*Nixon is pastor at the east campus of Gulf Breeze (Fla.) United Methodist
Church.

Commentaries provided by United Methodist News Service do not necessarily
represent the opinions or policies of UMNS or the United Methodist Church. 
  

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