It’s no secret anymore that evangelicals—and really all Christians—are in the middle of a cultural and membership decline. That decline has now lasted at least 15 years, and it shows zero signs of stopping any time soon.
A couple of years ago, I noticed that Boomer-age pastors and evangelical leaders are thinking of maybe passing a few of their lesser, less-powerful batons to Millennial evangelicals in their churches. That is not a typo. They still want to reach Millennials, whose oldest members are now pushing 40, for those lesser batons.
However, a recent sign-of-the-times indicates that evangelical pastors are having a lot of trouble finding replacements.
Amid ongoing decline, a wild ‘pastoral succession crisis’ appears
Barna Group is a for-profit marketing business that conducts religious research, analyzes it, and then sells the results—along with various products to fix the problems they’ve identified—to worried evangelical leaders. They’re also one of the few groups that study evangelicals at all.
(Related: George Barna’s world domination plan; Barna Group sure hopes Zoomers can save evangelicalism; Why we are right to distrust evangelical research.)
All that said and taken into account, one of their more recent analyses probably sounds quite sobering to their target audience.
Most Protestant pastors are aging in place, with only 16% of them under age 40. The average age of Protestant pastors is apparently about 52. Worse still (from Christians’ perspective), very few churches have a plan in place to find a replacement for their pastors once they retire. Barna reports that a solid majority of today’s pastors don’t feel optimistic about the next generation of pastors:
Three-quarters of pastors surveyed say they at least somewhat agree with the statement “It is becoming harder to find mature young Christians who want to be pastors,” and 71 percent at least somewhat agree with the statement “I am concerned about the quality of future Christian leaders.”
“The Pastoral Succession Crisis Is Only Getting More Complicated,” Barna Group (archive)
So far, all of this information meshes well with what we already know about evangelical pastors. We know that pastors are getting more and more burned out every day. We know that job openings for pastors that used to be swamped and deluged with applications now see almost no applications coming in at all. And we know that since the pandemic especially, many fed-up-to-HERE pastors are walking away from their pulpits—with more still seriously considering it.
So it doesn’t surprise me at all to hear that there might be a pastoral succession crisis going on.
The 4-14 Window and Christianity’s decline
But this crisis isn’t new. Just as osteoporosis is sometimes called “a childhood disease with geriatric symptoms,” Protestants’ pastor crisis began many years ago.
The first prong of the pastoral succession crisis consists of there simply being fewer Christians in general. Every new generation sees a successive decline in Christian affiliation. Gen Z, the current crop of college-age Americans, is one of the least Christian generations in many decades. Gen Alpha, who are now children, seem to be even less Christian. With fewer and fewer Christian-affiliated young adults, that means fewer and fewer seeking ministry educations.
And that hunch bears fruit when we look at admissions to Christian universities. In the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) alone, their branded seminaries have seen a precipitous drop in full-time enrollment. Naturally, their rigidly-authoritarian traditionalist faction, which I’ve dubbed the Old Guard, blames this drop on the seminaries’ suspiciously-incorrect Jesusing.
(This accusation is meant to shame the incorrectly-Jesusing Christians to start Jesusing correctly, which will always and forever solve every single problem Real True Christians have or will ever have. Except it doesn’t, but nobody’s allowed to mention that.)
But these same enrollment declines are happening everywhere. Catholic leaders are fretting over exactly the same decline in seminary students. (In fact, they’ve had a drastic priest shortage for many years now.)
We also see the same decline in the very-right-wing Christian Bible colleges, which tend to be little more than simple indoctrination stations for the more wackadoodle flavors of evangelicalism. Whether it’s done correctly or incorrectly, Jesusing has nothing whatsoever to do with a Christian school’s enrollment, it seems.
In a very few short years, I predict that Christian schools are going to be fighting for their very existence. There simply aren’t enough college-age Christians around to keep them alive.
I bring this up because fewer enrollments at Christian schools means fewer pastoral candidates in the first place.
The second prong: Doctrinal purity
In evangelicalism at least, a schism is looming between hardline right-wing traditionalists and the evangelicals who aren’t quite that dysfunctionally authoritarian. The SBC is a great example of this looming schism; their two factions have been at each other’s throats for about five years now, with the latter group slowly overcoming the former.
Younger evangelicals tend to belong to that latter group, as do the ministers catering to them. According to various surveys, these younger evangelicals’ priorities are wildly out of step with older, more traditionalist evangelicals:
- They’re nowhere near as concerned about supporting Israel as a nation
- They don’t approve much of unwanted evangelism pitches
- They’re generally okay with same-sex marriage
- They have complicated feelings about abortion, but they aren’t all completely against it
- And they generally support anti-racism measures, along with wanting big denominations to enact reforms to prevent racism and sex abuse
Evangelical-branded schools lean heavily Calvinist, but even graduating from one doesn’t guarantee that the graduate is doctrinally-pure enough to satisfy their potential new churches.
What retiring evangelical ministers in particular seem to want is a fresher, younger, newer mini-me to take up their baton. Every year that passes, fewer such candidates come along.
This isn’t actually complicated at all; it’s just part of decline
Barna Group titled their survey “The Pastoral Succession Crisis Is Only Getting More Complicated.”
But in truth, what’s happening to Christian churches in America isn’t really complicated at all. Christian leaders are seeing their cultural clout and relevance draining away every day, while younger adults leave church culture behind in greater and greater numbers. The demographics of disaffiliation all but guarantee that it’s going to be hard to find church leaders in the future.
Of the church leaders who remain, their work is getting harder and harder every year. They must do more with fewer resources all the time. That might be why Sam Rainer, Thom Rainer’s son and incompetent nepo baby, actually suggested that pastors should take advantage of their aging Baby Boomers by hiring them to work for their churches for part-time pay:
Hire them part-time. The transfer of wealth that is occurring from those born in the 1920s and 1930s to Baby Boomers is measured in the trillions of dollars. Obviously, not every Baby Boomer is wealthy. But most retired Boomers do not need full-time pay. Churches could benefit by hiring Boomers part-time to fill what were previously full-time positions.
“The Big Baby Boomer Opportunity for the Church,” Sam Rainer for Church Answers
Hopefully, he means for these senior citizens to work part-time as well, but this is an evangelical we’re talking about. Who even knows.
If churches are already having trouble finding replacements after their pastors retire or die, things will only get harder in the years to come.
30 Comments
ericc · 09/08/2023 at 2:09 PM
“…𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑂𝑙𝑑 𝐺𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑑, 𝑏𝑙𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑑𝑟𝑜𝑝 [𝑖𝑛 𝑆𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑒𝑛𝑟𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡] 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠’ 𝑠𝑢𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑙𝑦-𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔.”
Well, they are probably somewhat right in that. No doubt the younger generation of Christians does indeed see SBC Seminaries as teaching incorrect Jesusing…they just disagree with the OG about what’s incorrect about it. 😉
𝑆𝑎𝑚 𝑅𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑟, 𝑇ℎ𝑜𝑚 𝑅𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑟’𝑠 𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑛𝑒𝑝𝑜 𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑦, 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑠𝑢𝑔𝑔𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑠 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑡𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑎𝑑𝑣𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑎𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐵𝑎𝑏𝑦 𝐵𝑜𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑏𝑦 ℎ𝑖𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑡𝑜 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑐ℎ𝑢𝑟𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡-𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑦:
This has been going on (as a low level) for a long time. I work in science and engineering, and in the past decade I’ve had two co-workers retire to go work as priests (which they couldn’t do as a real full-time job, but they could do with their retirement income as a supplement). Good guys, very mainsteam. At the time I wasn’t worried about them but now I hope they landed with a congregation that didn’t kick them out for their mainstreaminess.
Rick O'Sheikh · 09/08/2023 at 10:14 PM
The next stage to come soon in this decline will be when no one is left to worry about no one being left.
Chris Peterson · 09/09/2023 at 10:42 AM
A huge part of organized religion is community. And it really requires physical community. The boomer generation was the last that truly had that. Where most people were born, lived, and died in the same region, if not town. Where people’s friends came from the local community- service clubs, schools, and churches. Post-boomer, we see the trend of community evolving beyond location. People move around, often between states. People find community online, not downtown. All of which nullifies one of the major forces that keeps organized religion going.
Combine the general irrelevance of religion itself for younger people (not to mention some of its moral deficits) with the lack of need for a church-based community, and it’s hardly surprising that we see this demographic trend.
smrnda · 09/09/2023 at 5:29 PM
I’m not totally ready to write off the in person, geographic community just yet. People are often not meeting people downtown not because they wouldn’t want to, but because there is no ‘downtown’ where they live. Young people tend to want to live places that offer decent in person community options, but they are often too priced out of housing. But where the design supports it, in person community is still a thing.
But I do see religion declining, outside of congregations that serve minority or immigrant communities. There are just too many options and the benefits are small. If you go play board games or go out dancing, you’re going to meet people, have fun, but without a bunch of judgment and people trying to make you follow rules.
Chris Peterson · 09/10/2023 at 10:33 AM
It’s not a binary thing… we used to have local community and now we don’t. But I do think that how we define community has changed radically in the last half century, and is changing even faster now, and represents an important factor in the decline of organized religion.
ericc · 09/11/2023 at 2:39 PM
Yes, religion declined decades before local physical community declines…in Europe. So the internet may be a multiplier, but it can’t be the instigator of the decline since the decline preceded it in some places.
This is not a new or surprising suggestion, but I think it’s more to do with social safety nets and material & social benefits. Folks go to curch at least in part for the perceived material social benefits. You don’t just worship there, you meet your spouse there. You shake hands with the boss there. For poor folk (such as my grandparents) you got the occasional food support there, or help from the congregation when you needed some muscle power. But when the state is providing those meals, the nurse, when the social norm is to hire your muscle power, and the young people and bosses congregate elsewhere…well, when all that’s left is worship, many stop going.
Robert C · 09/10/2023 at 1:08 AM
Also cheaper. Don’t have to pay a pastor and the upkeep on an aging church building. One of the several benefits of atheism is all the money you save.
Astrin Ymris · 09/10/2023 at 8:59 PM
The problem is (as our good Cas has said before) that evangelical churches tend to be highly authoritarian, and authoritarian groups are often full of back-stabbing and power plays, not a true supportive community.
jennny · 09/09/2023 at 12:04 PM
In large swathes of the UK, churches are closing by the dozen, or clinging onto the cliff edge with their fingertips to remain open. I asked a 45yo priest I know well how she was enjoying her new job as a Canon in a Cathedral here. She replied she was loving it, and felt she’d ‘found her niche in Cathedral ministry’ and friends who were parish vicars had congratulated her and almost felt jealous. Maybe I’m speculating here….but I just wonder if the Canon had realised, or maybe even subconsciously felt that she’d always have a future in a cathedral role – these aren’t experiencing the same decline as anglican parishes – parish priests face a constant struggle to keep their churches open for the handful, the couple of dozen ageing worshippers. So who would willingly go into theological college to train for a dying cause which has no possibility of ever reviving? Recently I also spoke with a member of one of the few methodist churches still open in rural Wales. He said their congregation – I know to be 12-15 elderly folk were under threat of closure, but a member had died and left a large bequest so they could remain open. Again, realistically, who’d want to pastor such decaying and moribund little flock, all of whom will have likely popped their clogs in the next few years?
Ficino · 09/10/2023 at 11:13 AM
I saw an article in the Telegraph, behind a pay wall, the headline of which was saying that bloated bureaucracy of the Church of England is siphoning money away from local parishes.
The husband of someone I know is a vicar in a struggling parish in Kent. He was applying to become private chaplain to a major governmental office. He didn’t get the post. His wife was very much hoping for it because their life in the parish is very stressed and struggling. But if he had gotten the post, he’d be an example of the people I presume are targeted in the article, i.e. they have a “living” but it’s not in a parish.
Robert C · 09/10/2023 at 1:02 AM
As affiliation declines in Western Europe and North America, “Pentecostalized” Christianity is making gains in the global South. It’s my understanding that preachers in the growing Pentecostal tradition aren’t trained for the ministry as much as “called” by their convictions and/or the opportunity to turn a fast buck through preaching as performance, no academic credentials required.
Since it’s becoming increasingly apparent that Christianity is basically irrelevant, perhaps the solution to the paster recruitment problem is to simply drop the educational requirement and hire preachers based on their ability to entertain by posturing and cavorting in front of a Jumbotron while their congregants do that praising thingy with their hands?
Kevin R. Cross · 09/10/2023 at 2:23 AM
Can see this going back to the 19th century days of pastors just being whoever the congregation trusts for the job. There were seminary trained pastors, but there were also the local guy who read his bible and had a good voice for the sermon. Overall “skill” at the job will decline.
Zaqqum · 09/10/2023 at 10:05 AM
With religious observance declining in the US, pastoring simply doesn’t have the rock star draw it used to, outside of megachurches, and those little ponds are well-stocked with big fish already. People seeking fame, attention, money, and power, will find something else to do to get it.
Lucios · 09/10/2023 at 6:10 PM
Hey, silver lining: now have a surefire way to catch pedophiles early. They’ll be the only ones applying to Catholic seminaries.
Less joking, but more petty reaction: Good. The sooner Christianity dies the fuck out the better our chances of fixing the damage it’s done to the planet before it becomes completely uninhabitable.
Astrin Ymris · 09/10/2023 at 9:04 PM
I think corporate greed has done a lot more damage to the planet than the Catholic Church.Not hatin’, just sayin’.
Chris Peterson · 09/10/2023 at 9:22 PM
It has also massively advance human development. It is part of human nature, and an essential part of our economy. The problem isn’t the corporations, it is the lack of political will to effectively regulate those corporations. “Greed” does not have to be a bad thing. It does not have to cause harm.
Kevin R. Cross · 09/11/2023 at 8:36 AM
Greed as a motivator is just fine. Greed as a way of life is when things start to go off the rails.
Chris Peterson · 09/11/2023 at 9:10 AM
Of course. Like so many other things. “Greed” is typically used in a negative sense, but the concept itself just represents a continuum from healthy to pathological.
Astrin Ymris · 09/11/2023 at 9:35 PM
I think we need to draw a distinction between ambition and greed. Greed is an unslakable maw, a hunger that can never be satisfied. Ambition is a drive to meet a certain goal. And after you reach that goal, you can set a new goal to turn your energy toward. Someone ambitious can set a goal to become wealthy, and once they’ve become wealthy, can in theory turn their attention to another goal, like providing solar toilets to the third world. Yes, they can decide to set a goal to become even wealthier, but the point is, ambition is satiable.
Greed, in contrast, is intrinsically insatiable. A greedy person can never be satisfied, because whatever they have is never enough. They can never rest on their laurels, they’re driven to acquire more and more.
I agree that private enterprise is a good thing if appropriately regulated. I’m dubious about the value of mega-corporations. I agree with Bernie Sanders: If it’s too big to fail, it’s too big to exist. Why should taxpayer money be used to save billionaire executives from the consequences of their own short-sided decisions? Is accountability only for poor children whose parents can’t pay their school lunch bills?
Chris Peterson · 09/11/2023 at 11:30 PM
I’d say they are apples and oranges. I’m not talking about ambition (which can also range from healthy to pathological), but about the desire for material acquisitions… which we call “greed” when it goes too far.
Here, however, the discussion was about “corporate greed”. And that is very different from individual greed.
Astrin Ymris · 09/15/2023 at 4:49 PM
You’re right. Corporations literally exist to attenuate personal responsibility. It’s like the Bystander Effect on steroids.
Houndentenor · 09/11/2023 at 1:14 PM
I’m not so sure, The RCC has had a millenium and a half or so head start after all. But more recently, corporations convincing Evangelicals and Fundamentalists to oppose environmental regulations and to see the climate crisis as a hoax has done a great deal of damage. How often were church and corporate interests working in cahoots? That’s done the worst damage.
Anri · 09/12/2023 at 7:37 AM
Well, first off, I would argue that corporate greed within the Catholic Church is itself responsible for a fair bit of the damage the Church has done, so separating them doesn’t make sense to me.
Secondly, “I didn’t beat ouy as badly as that other guy did!”, even if true, isn’t a reason to give someone a cookie, IMHO.
OldManShadow · 09/11/2023 at 3:06 PM
What exactly is the point of a pastoral position?
You can do all of the good things a pastor is supposed to do on your own. And you’ll be doing it without the negative ideas attached to the name Evangelical or Christian. You can choose the issues to champion, you can choose the charities to start, run, volunteer for, or give to. And you can do it without being constantly critiqued and judged by your congregation.
Communities and people don’t need a pastor. They need a friend. They need someone who cares. They need a neighbor.
Astrin Ymris · 09/11/2023 at 9:47 PM
I beg to differ. My sister is an ordained minister of a mainline denomination church with an MDiv. She’s there when a parishioner is facing cancer, she’s there for the family who’s lost a loved grandparent, she’s there for the parents who’ve just received a devastating diagnosis. Her skills and training have value in a healthy, functional church community.
There are lots of churches that are positive places; you just don’t hear from them because they aren’t involved in Culture War campaigns.
Anri · 09/12/2023 at 7:33 AM
I’m not entirely certain why what you wrote serves as any kind of refutation of what OMS said.
What aspect of pastoral ‘being there’ couldn’t be done by a friend?
(Or, for that matter, couldn’t be done by an authority figure of a different, presumably false, religion?)
LynnV · 09/15/2023 at 7:38 AM
You’re right, we are social animals, and we seek out community in a variety of ways. Church is only one of many.
But after Reaganisn, and especially Trumpism, so many of the mainstream churched becam
LynnV · 09/15/2023 at 7:46 AM
toxic environments that did not attract very many good leaders who cared about their flock – only authoritarian asshats. that’s not to say that this didn’t happen before Reaganism, but that’s probably a big part of what greased the skids of decline.
Astrin Ymris · 09/15/2023 at 4:51 PM
As a seminary graduate, she’s had training in pastoral counseling, which most people on the street haven’t. And if people want to form a club and hire someone with training in public speaking, community organization, and basic counseling to be its titular head… well, what’s the harm, as long as they think the benefit is worth what they’re paying?
I’m not saying everyone must belong to a church, just that it’s a valid option for some people as a way to build a community. I should mention that in the denomination we were raised in the pastors weren’t authoritarian despots like Steven Anderson. They were treated with respect, but no one feared disagreeing with them. Indeed, if they pissed off the congregation badly enough, the church council could choose not to renew their contract for the next year. And that happened at least once to my knowledge.
ATCoffey · 09/15/2023 at 4:41 PM
When the world around us continues to ground itself — intentionally or not — in reality, through access to information, science, and technology, it becomes increasingly difficult to find application to the that world in a book of superstitious mythology and fantasy like the Bible.
I found this to be true when I began pastoring a church in 1990. I genuinely believed that the Bible was the true, literal, word o’ gawd, and I was flummoxed when so much of it didn’t apply to the world my members lived in. At some point, I finally understood why so many preachers spent time telling stories and talking about prophecy — because that way you could make up just about anything you wanted compared to talking about why Jesus walked to such and such town and did such and such thing in one of the Gospels.
That’s a problem today’s pastors are having even moreso, I expect. So finding someone to wrestle around with obvious superstitions and try to make them sound useful is not a job many 20 something’s are going to want to have.
I’m glad that the demographic crisis has finally reached the preachers. Maybe some of those little shithole churches like the ones I pastored will finally close up and go under.