What do we say to our young first call pastors
Greetings all . . . I have been having a wonderful time here in New Jersey* and New York and will report on that later, but I just received a note from a recent seminary graduate regarding the difficulty of finding a call. This topic has been brought up in many venues as an issue hitting many of our graduates. There do not seem to be many calls open, available or offered and there seems to be a growing anxiety about it all. Add on some of the realities of race, gender, geography, etc. and one can see how difficult it might be to find a good match.
Here are the original questions that were sent to me:
- What is being done in the PCUSA to encourage young clergy and/or
churches to hire young clergy? (specifically those of us looking for a
first call)
- Why does it take so long to receive a call?
(I've been looking for 10 months, lots of phone interviews and a couple
of face-to-face interviews, but no job offer yet.)
- Why should young clergy stay in the Presbyterian Church when the church doesn't (in my opinion) seem to be doing a good job of encouraging their ministry? (For context, I've had several Methodist Conferences and some other denominations calling me wondering if I'm interested in applying for a job in one of their churches).
So bloglandia . . .
- How would you respond?
- Is this what others/you have experienced?
- What if anything can, should we do?
- What are we doing?
- Other thoughts?
Feel free to respond on this blog or grab a question or two, blog them and send me a trackback or link.
* Here is one blog recap from the Breakfast a Lawrenceville PC in Trenton. And yes we had eggs and I was the ham.
