Title: Most ELCA Ordained Ministry Candidates Study At ELCA Seminaries ELCA NEWS SERVICE
June 21, 2006
Most ELCA Ordained Ministry Candidates Study At ELCA Seminaries 06-086-FI
CHICAGO (ELCA) -- Recent improvements in gathering data about people preparing for ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) allows church leaders to examine data from two sources -- the ELCA's eight seminaries and the candidacy committees of the ELCA's 65 synods.
"In the early 2000s, as we improved our capacity to track data from candidacy committees," it seemed that the number of candidates for ordained ministry in the ELCA who were going outside the ELCA for theological education had nearly doubled, said the Rev. Mark N. Wilhelm, associate executive director for educational partnerships and institutions, ELCA Vocation and Education.
Candidacy is the ELCA process of preparation and formation for a candidate to become "rostered" as an ordained minister or a professional lay minister -- associate in ministry, deaconess or diaconal minister. The process begins before a candidate seeks theological education and involves a time of discernment, in which the candidate enters into conversations with his or her pastor, congregation members and synod candidacy committee. The candidacy committee works with the candidate throughout the process.
"Although ELCA candidates are normally encouraged to attend ELCA seminaries, circumstances sometimes lead a candidate to enroll at a non-ELCA theological school," Wilhelm said. "Small numbers of our candidates doing so can even be helpful to the ELCA, because it gives this church a group of leaders with ecumenical experience and connections to the larger Protestant community in the United States."
When the ELCA began to examine data from synod candidacy committees, "we noticed what appeared to be a jump from the perception" of 10 percent and "started pushing toward 20 percent" of the candidates preparing for ordained ministry in the ELCA not at ELCA schools, Wilhelm said.
Wilhelm found a closer look at the data to be more reassuring. The candidacy records of 316 people in the process to become ELCA pastors showed they are not attending ELCA schools, Wilhelm said, but 56 records listed the candidate as "undecided or unknown" regarding seminary enrollment. That could mean the candidate hasn't enrolled in a seminary yet, he said.
Another 25 of the 316 records contained "bad data" regarding seminary enrollment, Wilhelm said. Another 83 records were for candidates seeking reinstatement, entering the ELCA from other churches or participating in the ELCA's Theological Education for Emerging Ministries (TEEM) program, which would not involve seminary enrollment, he said.
That meant that 164 of the 316 candidacy records could not be linked to non-ELCA schools, Wilhelm said, and only the remaining 152, or 7.4 percent of ordained ministry candidates, were confirmed as studying at non-ELCA schools, which was more typical.
Wilhelm said candidacy records confirmed that ELCA candidates for ordained ministry are studying at 65 theological schools outside the ELCA; and 15 of those schools have four or more candidates. He said the greatest numbers of those candidates attend historic east coast seminaries, such as Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass.; Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, N.J.; Union Theological Seminary, New York; and Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Conn. Most of the remaining candidates attend seminaries in regions not served by ELCA seminaries, including other countries, he said.
The number of ELCA candidates for ordained ministry studying at ELCA seminaries dropped from 1,211 in the 2001-2002 academic year to 1,196 in 2002-2003, Wilhelm said, but has shown a healthy increase in recent years -- 1,201 in 2003-2004; 1,252 in 2004- 2005; and 1,284 in 2005-2006.
Candidacy figures indicated that in March 2006 there were 316 people in the process to become associates in ministry, 11 to be deaconesses and 183 to be diaconal ministers in the ELCA.
"I began to follow our data about ELCA candidates attending non-ELCA seminaries because I was concerned that perhaps we were losing our culture, in which nearly all candidates attend ELCA seminaries, with an increasingly larger percentage of ELCA candidates for rostered leadership enrolling at non-ELCA schools," Wilhelm said. "That clearly is not the case. It's not happening."
The ELCA needs to pay attention to this data in the future, as the church develops its theological education network, Wilhelm said. The ELCA must "think more strategically and intentionally about the place of non-ELCA theological education resources in a theological education network for our community," he said.
Theological Education for Emerging Ministries
A master of divinity (M.Div.) is the minimum degree required of ELCA clergy. Earning the degree usually requires a bachelor's degree and four years of seminary education, including a parish internship during the third year.
TEEM provides an alternative program of preparation for ordination in the ELCA for certain people identified for ministry in a specific context.
The number of people in the TEEM program, who enrolled in specially designed TEEM certificate programs at ELCA seminaries, grew from 72 in the 2004-2005 academic year to 94 in 2005-2006, with 49 of that 94 engaged in a "program of study" through Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, Berkeley, Calif. Other seminaries are developing similar certificate programs of mentoring combined with online and "intensive" on-campus courses, Wilhelm said.
Age and Gender of Seminarians
ELCA seminaries reported in 2005-2006 that 523, or about 40 percent, of Lutherans in their M.Div. programs were age 30 and younger. That number compares to 479 in 2004-2005 and 502 in 2003-2004.
Enrollment in M.Div. programs at ELCA seminaries has been equally divided between women and men in recent years. Lutheran churches that formed the ELCA began ordaining women in 1970, and for three decades there was a steady move toward "parity" between the genders among those enrolled at ELCA seminaries, Wilhelm said. Enrollment reached parity "five or six years ago and has maintained parity since," he said.
Ministry Needs and Resources in the ELCA
The number of pastors in the ELCA and the number of "ministry needs" in the church are almost the same, Wilhelm said. "For existing congregational service, we have roughly the numbers of persons we need," he said.
ELCA Research and Evaluation conducted a study of "the need for and supply of ordained ministers in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America" and issued a report in 2000. "It has shown that, despite the public perception of there being a great crisis in numbers of rostered leaders available for service in the church, we are about where we need to be in terms of absolute numbers," Wilhelm said.
"We have a problem, however, with overall distribution or 'deployment,'" he said. The difficulty comes when matching the skills, capacity and mobility of ministers to the ministry needs of particular urban, rural and small congregations, he said.
"All of those factors around opportunities and resources are highly complex," Wilhelm said. Sometimes a congregation needs a bilingual pastor, or the pastor may need a congregation near his or her spouse's work, he said. -- -- --
The home page of ELCA Vocation and Education is at http://www.ELCA.org/vocationeducation/ and includes links to information on the ELCA's eight seminaries. The 2000 report of ELCA Research and Evaluation is in a PDF file at http://www.ELCA.org/research/reports/dm/minstudy.pdf on the ELCA Web site.
For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or news@elca.org http://www.elca.org/news ELCA News Blog: http://www.elca.org/news/blog