Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?”
For it is not from wisdom that you ask this. (Ecc 7:10)

Remember the days of old;
consider the years of many generations;
ask your father, and he will show you,
your elders, and they will tell you. (Deut 32:7)

In two previous columns, I have offered some observations on approaching theological training and then on finishing theological training. To complete the trilogy, here is a prequel on considering theological training, or more accurately, on not considering theological training.¹Can a prequel be part of a trilogy? Don’t contact me, but I’m sure the other editors of Themelios would love to hear from you…. Last year the UK transdenominational ministry recruitment charity 9:38²As in, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field’ (Matt 9:37–38). See https://www.ninethirtyeight.org/. held a consultation day with several stakeholders involved in theological training and ministry within the UK Reformed evangelical constituency. The aim of the day was ‘to identify the building blocks that will need to be put in place to build an approach to recruitment over the next decade which is responsive to both the urgent needs in the harvest field and the changing cultural landscape all around us.’³Orlando Saer, introduction to ‘Unblocking the Pipeline: Identifying and Addressing Obstacles to Ministry Recruitment in UK Reformed Evangelical Churches’, https://www.ninethirtyeight.org/938-consultation-day/. Accompanying this day was a basic report undertaken by 9:38 entitled Unblocking the Pipeline: Identifying and Addressing Obstacles to Ministry Recruitment in UK Reformed Evangelical Churches. This basic research included two surveys, ‘Ministry Aspiration Outcomes’, consisting of a targeted questionnaire of 792 individuals between the ages of 23–34,⁴‘Respondents were asked whether at some point they had seriously considered, or been encouraged to consider, pursuing a paid ministry role. 61% indicated ‘yes’ (against 39% no). Of those who indicated ‘yes’, 50% were still exploring a ministry path. The remaining 50% were asked to list the four most significant factors in reaching that decision, i.e. the issues which dissuaded them from pursuing a ministry pathway.’ ‘Unblocking the Pipeline’, 5. and ‘Routes into Pastoral Ministry’, surveying 407 men and women in pastoral ministry positions. Additional data was gathered including historic student numbers from training institutions and mission agencies, together with anecdotal comments and analysis from stakeholders. The report covers several areas including: the level of concern about pastoral ministry uptake among young adults;⁵Within the RIPM survey, ‘43% of respondents were either “really concerned” or “alarmed”’ (the highest two categories) about the issue. Only 13% indicated ‘not worried’. ‘Unblocking the Pipeline’, 9. diagnosing the hesitancy in terms of declared disincentives; stakeholder commentary in understanding the disincentives; possible building blocks for the future; and some inspirational examples. I don’t want to parrot the findings of the report here. It is readily available and well worth reading.

This report was a helpful data point when I was asked recently to give a brief presentation and ‘discussion starter’ to a group of ministers in Edinburgh with the following brief:

How do we equip and enthuse the next generation of church leaders? What are some of the concerns that are stopping people considering vocational ministry as a viable option? What do we need to be thinking through as church leaders? That kind of thing.

Thinking about this myself and consulting with wise and learned colleagues,⁶For whom I give thanks. I jotted down some reflections in terms of diagnosis and possible remedies, some of which overlap with the findings of the 9:38 report. Given the international readership of Themelios, it might be interesting to compare and contrast my own observations within my own cultural context and constituency in the UK with your own.

First, variations on the theme of cost seem to be a common refrain when it comes to obstacles for ministry recruitment. There is what might be called the ‘well-being’ cost. Vocational ministry can be, and often is, costly and painful. In a culture which often views discomfort and pain as a lack needing to be avoided at all costs rather than an occasion for learning and growth, there can be anxiety and hesitancy. Then there is the reputational cost. Observing ministers and leaders we have known and loved (or even just read about) and who have been in the firing line means we don’t want to become the poster-boy or poster-girl for prejudice, intolerance, and cancellation from those outside the church. Moreover, looking on the inside, people don’t want to face conflict within the church. Being accused of being overbearing, or the thought of experiencing what it’s like to be under an overbearing leader, is quite simply too much to bear. Then of course there is the financial cost. Anecdotally, we’ve noticed that particularly men are coming forward for vocational ministry later in life rather than being in their early-mid 20s. Being a bit older, they often have much more significant financial commitments and attachments, including children and mortgages. In the UK, we know that a supported ministry is not about being ‘shown the money’ and will involve financial sacrifice. However, many ministry jobs are still very poorly paid. As a result, some people will certainly be staying out for fear of lifelong financial insecurity, especially given the greater political and economic instability of the present time. Older leaders might want to say that youngsters should be willing to be more sacrificial and risk-taking, but it is worth recognising that Covid and its aftermath, a cost-of-living crisis, and general geo-political ‘craziness’ means the world and future seems scarier and more uncertain now than it did for a previous generation.

Second is a communication gap between an older and younger generation. In summary, the younger generation are turned off by the overwork and burnout that they see in an older generation of leaders. Meanwhile this older generation thinks the younger generation are, well, flaky and a bit ‘lightweight’. One colleague had some perceptive insights as to where we pitch the idea of ‘urgency’ in gospel ministry. Defined and characterised by our ‘activism’, an earlier generation of evangelicals may well have erred on the side of ‘we’re in a war, people are going to hell, Jesus may come back soon, let’s give it absolutely everything and leave it all out there’. While this is not wrong by any means, it has led to a tendency to neglect one’s creaturely needs. It’s a cliché, I know, but I did overhear recently a ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead’ from one minister. The result is unsustainable, and at times idolatrous, patterns of ministry with consequences for health and family. On the other hand, a younger generation has been brought up in a (secular) culture which has strongly emphasised self-care and living within limits, but only up to a point, and it’s an important point. As my colleague notes, the model many young people have grown up with is a rhetoric of self-care but a lifestyle of hyper-stimulus. However, there are models of an older generation who have been able to emphasise the urgency of gospel ministry but often allied with patterns of life which are slightly healthier (admittedly not always) because they are rooted in older, less 24/7 modes of being. Here’s the communication gap. When the younger generation hear an older generation’s rhetoric, they may hear it as a call to urgency (challenging the world’s rhetoric) but try to fit it into a frazzled and over-stimulated lifestyle and think ‘that’s not doable.’ Meanwhile the older generation hear the talk of ‘self-care’ and ‘well-being’ as self-centred apathy (which in the world’s rhetoric, frankly, it often is), think that people just aren’t committed enough, and so ramp up the rhetoric. This has created something of a ‘Mexican standoff’, with no-one willing to budge.

Third, and more briefly is what I will call convention. Maybe it’s just my own constituency and perhaps I’m mistaken (you’ll detect a nervousness in what I’m about to say), but there has been a culture of conservatism, or maybe more a traditionalism in how we conceive of theological training. ‘We’ve always done it this way’ has been accompanied with an attitude of ‘build it and they will come’, even when the numbers suggest they are not coming. The metaphor of the ‘pipeline’, whether blocked or unblocked, conveys that sense of straight lines and rigidity. Having tunnel-vision and focusing on the usual and well-trodden routes into ministry, we’ve lacked a curiosity and so have both under-observed and under-oxygenated new and innovative training and learning initiatives that might be taking place off the beaten track.

What might be some ways forward here to counter these obstacles of cost, communication, and convention? Here are a few unoriginal thoughts, unoriginal in that most have been echoed in J. L. González’s The History of Theological Education,⁷J. L. González, The History of Theological Education (Nashville: Abingdon, 2015). thus confirming his statement that ‘the study of the history of theological education—particularly of theological education in the wider sense—is one of the best tools we can use for guidance into the future’.⁸González, The History of Theological Education, xi. Tradition is not the same as traditionalism.

First, and perhaps most straightforwardly, we need to get to grips with the cost of learning. Churches need to face up to what it actually costs someone in their mid-thirties to live, move, and minister in the area they’ve be called to, whether it’s rural or city, and work on how to fund that. Funds tend to follow vision if the vision is legitimate,compelling, well-articulated and prayerful. I know that in my context there is some good work being done by individuals, churches, and organizations to collaborate and create training funds to support people, particularly those who might not have access to the usual sources of funding.⁹For example, one newer fund that I am personally involved with is The Sychar Gospel Fund (https://www.stewardship.org.uk/sychar-gospel-fund-what-we-do).

Second is the need to both democratize and demystify theological learning. We must defrock an implicit, and sometimes explicit, clericalism that theological training is only for the brightest and the best. Our churches need to develop a culture of learning and catechesis which is appropriate for all believers and where there are always opportunities to go higher and deeper.¹⁰Early on in The History of Theological Education, González notes that the distinction that we make between theological education for the church as a whole and the training for the pastorate ‘did not exist in the early church’ (p. 7). Returning to this in his conclusion and facing what he sees as the current crisis in theological education, he notes that ‘we must learn that theological education must be a continuum, leading from catechetical teaching, through the continued education and growth in discipleship of the entire church, to the training of pastors and other leaders, to the most sophisticated levels of research and reflection’ (p. 138). This is important directly, both in terms of individuals’ discipleship and apologetic witness in our chaotic cultural moment, and also indirectly. If a church aims to equip the many to some level, then the ministry and mission of the whole church is enriched, and in that process we end up discovering and nurturing those who are able to go further into more senior leadership roles. A rising tide lifts all the boats.

Third, and closely related, is the need for flexibility in learning. Our metaphor should not be about one ‘pipeline’, where you can pretty much predict the candidates who will be pushed through it, but rather many ‘pathways’. While in no way lowering the normative bar of the New Testament qualifications for presbyteral ministry in terms of character, competencies, and knowledge, ‘many pathways’ thinking can work with the assumption and enjoy the surprise that we have no accurate idea who might end up coming through into senior, supported church leadership.

Fourth, alongside equipping and enthusing whole congregations, we need to have leaders who themselves are equipped and enthused and who can be models and mentors for the next generation.¹¹Cf. González, The History of Theological Education, 119, 129. As one colleague observed, a younger generation shouldn’t be looking at an older generation and see a lot of burnout, leadership failure, and the leaving of frontline ministry. Positively, this younger generation are much more attracted to working alongside others than to the idea of carrying the burden of leadership as the single senior leader. If this younger generation see today’s leaders pacing themselves better, accepting their created finitude, more obviously continuing to be equipped for the changing demands of ministry, and having peer support amid the really knotty issues they encounter, supported ministry might be a lot more appealing. To circle back on what I observed above, what a younger generation needs to see and hear from an older generation is the urgency of the gospel call allied with patterns of life which are sustainable, human, rooted, and healthy. The latter is perhaps the failing of that older generation—either we haven’t lived that way or we’ve not publicly talked about healthy ways of life for fear of being accused of ‘selling out’ or ‘compromising with the world’. But it’s incumbent on an older generation both to model gospel urgency—because we are talking here about eternal realities and because Jesus did say the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few—and to model gospel living—which means healthy human patterns of life, not hyper-stimulated ones.¹²We all need to be reading Kelly M. Kapic’s You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2022). Spiritually, we need to build resilience, creating new models of leadership and ministry that are neither over-active nor flaky but men and women who are resilient because they are abiding in Christ and experience daily Witsius’s wonderful definition of that theologian, one who ‘not only knows and believes, but has also sensible experience of, the forgiveness of sins and the privilege of adoption and intimate communion with God and the grace of the indwelling Spirit and the hidden manna and the sweet love of Christ—the earnest and pledge, in short, of perfect happiness.’¹³Herman Witsius, On the Character of a True Theologian, ed. J. Ligon Duncan III (Greenville, SC: Reformed Academic, 1994), 36. This edition is available online: http://tinyurl.com/59bbew22 This is the kind of powerful stuff that might unblock any pipeline.

And finally, we need an encouragement of God’s sovereign presence and promise as we continue to work out how the church ‘does’ theological training in our cultural moment. As González notes, it will be difficult, indeed impossible for us, but for God:

God is already reforming the church. God is reforming it, whether the church wants to be reformed or not. Like it or not, that future is upon us. The Holy Spirit will lead the church along paths of theological education that today we do not even suspect. This does not depend on us but is rather the action and promise of the Lord who said that even the gates of hell—and even less the gates of the twenty-first century—will not prevail against the church. Therefore, our task for today is not so much to see how we bring about the reformation that God requires and promises but rather how we join it.¹⁴González, The History of Theological Education, 130.

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