Pulpit Magazine

(By Jesse Johnson)

* Jesse serves as the Pastor of Local Outreach at Grace Community Church.

National Public Radio (NPR) is running a series over the next 11 months called “The Young and the Godly.” This series examines the lives of young ministers in the United States, and highlights a 23-year-old pastor who is six months pregnant.

As the first installment pointed out, every nation in the world gets less religious as it gets more wealthy. “Climb the global social ladder and the masses stop believing in God” is the rule that seems to apply world-wide. Except in the United States. Barbara Hagerty, the correspondent filing the series, explains that as the United States has gotten wealthier, more people are becoming religious.

So NPR is going to spend a year looking at the lives and callings, fears and musings, families and assemblies of the next wave of young ministers. To give NPR credit, they have picked up on a religious phenomenon that is obvious to those inside many churches today: there is a movement of young people with the desire to go into a life of ministry.

While an exposé on Southern Seminary is not likely, the series so far has been quite interesting, and shows that this recent interest in ministry is not isolated to the solid, Reformed, and Bible-based churches we are familiar with. They plan to look at Hindus, Imams, monks, priests, and pastors.

Their second installment follows Chris and Katie Bishop, a husband and wife team, through seminary and into their first positions as pastors in the United Methodist Church. Chris is 25 while Katie is 23 and will have her first child in a few months. The story begins at their graduation: “The graduates are giddy and godly, more women than men. Some are just out of college, but most are launching their second careers. They fiddle with their caps, anxious to begin their journey.”

They end up in rural Maryland; Chris as a youth pastor at a larger church, and Katie as a the senior pastor of two small congregations. Katie is portrayed as a fish out of water. She is a city girl living in a town with turkeys on the road and where most people actually make hay.  Hagerty predicts that the couple will have struggles because their salary is only $33,000 each, which could make it difficult to raise a kid. Moreover, Katie is so much younger than most in her congregations- she could be their granddaughter.

There is audio of Katie administering communion: “behold, the body of our Lord Jesus.” Haggerty later asks her what her biggest fear is. “My water breaking when I’m preaching,” she joked.

Haggerty lets you listen to some in the congregation who are uncomfortable about having a female minister. Although many in the congregations believe that once they get to know Katie, they will be won over.

Striking to me is that the piece examines the call to ministry that both of the Bishops experienced. Obviously, at no time was the idea of qualifications for the ministry addressed.

The NPR website says there is a wave of young people entering the ministry, and this wave is nation wide, and across all faiths. The website suggests it is for “altruistic” reasons. Sadly, the biblical reasons (including the pastoral prerequisites of 1 Timothy and Titus) are largely if not totally ignored.

Only time will tell what the impact of this surge in “professional” ministry will be. From all appearances, however, it largely lacks a biblical foundation, without which it is doomed to fail.

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