There is a general rule quoted among church staff that twenty percent of the people do eighty percent of the work. Ask ministry leaders the hardest part of their job and many of them will reply with one word: recruitment.
If they’re feeling extra spiritual that day, they might even quote Matthew 9:37 to you. That’s where you can find Jesus’ proclamation that the harvest is great, but the workers are few.
But there just might be two important details around this verse that we’re missing.
The first detail is the encouragement Jesus gave as part of the solution. Matthew 9:38 records Jesus’ encouragement to his disciples. “Pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields.” Oh, recruitment is difficult, but we were never intended to do this in our own power. That’s good to remember.
Yet it is the next detail that should scare us when we consider the implications. Just one verse earlier we’re told Jesus had compassion on the crowds “because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”1 Is it possible we have been worried about finding volunteers when we should have been concerned with finding leaders?
Jesus understood the importance of leadership. If He were to walk among us today, He might be showing people within the church how to become a pastor.
The Set-Up
There are many forms of leadership, but in the church, one big part of leadership is the need for pastor training. The person serving as pastor is certainly not the only part of the body of Christ. But the pastor is also not like an appendix, as if they are a mysterious and unnecessary part of our physical body.
One in four U.S. pastors (23%) selects “lack of leadership training and development” as a major concern facing their church today. In terms of pastor training, reports show that, as of 2017, only 15 percent of senior pastors were 40 years old or younger, echoing the need for younger pastors in ministry. The State of Pastors research also showed that seven in ten U.S. pastors agree “it is becoming harder to find mature young Christians who want to become pastors” (69%).2
There are numerous reasons why the average age of pastors has increased so dramatically. Often cited are men and women who are staying longer. Healthy lifestyles, even if not always practiced by pastors, are lengthening our lives in general. Couple longer lifespans with a budgetary need to push off retirement, and you start to see the picture.
But not the entire picture.
The Problem
It might not appear that we have a problem. After all, if the current pastors are healthy and able to serve longer, then we don’t have a need to fill these roles. Over 50% of current pastors responding to surveys3 admit to being unhealthy and discouraged. Many denominations are reporting that, while they do not currently have a shortage of pastors, they do not see a source of supply coming that will be able to replace the aging demographic.
Are any teenagers or college-age students asking how to become a pastor?
We have what is called an empty pulpit crisis. When we see this Boomer population of pastors inevitably enter into retirement, will there be enough young men and women to replace all the positions they leave? Will the next generation of harvest fields even have leaders available to recruit the few willing volunteers?
