The movements of a 16-month-old make me thankful that God gave us skulls.  Otherwise, we’d all be braindead before then.  All the stumbling, tripping, and falling is funny because we know they can’t really do any better and don’t have the cognitive skills to really assess how what they’re doing is the cause of all the bumps and bruises.  Bottom line: little kids falling is funny.  AFV has been proving this point for 20 years.

You know what’s not funny?  An elderly person who has lost the physical ability to continue to physically function the way they used to, but ignores the facts or lives in denial of them.  Toddlers tripping because they overestimate their physical ability=funny.  Elderly person tripping because they overestimate their physical ability=not funny.

So what’s the point of my hastily conceived and ultimately flawed analogy?  That the way in which most denominations currently train, educate, and ordain pastors and ministers is like the elderly person who has lost the ability to perform like they used to but they don’t notice it or are in denial about it.

So here’s how this normally works in the Wesleyan Church.  Someone who wants to be in vocational ministry must be ordained or working towards ordination in order to be the pastor of a church.  In order to be ordained, they have to take a substantial amount of courses, have 1-2 years of practical ministry experience and approved by a District Board of Ministerial Development.  The majority of folks in this process get their course work done at a four-year private liberal arts college or a bible college.  Others who already have a four-year degree opt for seminary or a program called FLAME, which is for people already in vocational ministry who don’t have the necessary educational requirements to be ordained.  Here’s the problem: all those options, except for FLAME, are extremely expensive and are getting exponentially more expensive in the next few years.  Take a look at the graph below that shows projections from TIAA-CREF on the rise in total college costs at four-year colleges and universities.

That graph makes my heart skip a beat when I consider I’ll have a child ready to go to college in 13 years.  Here’s the problem, if most people continue to go the route of a four-year college to meet the educational requirements for ordination, we’re basically going to have a bunch of pastors in debt up to their eyeballs in a profession that isn’t lucrative (Osteen and others not withstanding).  This is a problem now and, according to projections, it’s going to get much, much worse in the coming years.

Another issue staring us in the face is the decrease in giving to religious non-profits by younger generations.  According to a 2008 study done by Indiana University, 72% of those born before 1929 and 57% of those born between 1929-1945 participated in giving to a religious non-profit.  Contrast that with 47%, 45%, and 41% of those born between 1946-1963, 1964-1981, and after 1981, respectively.  Add in the growing distrust of organizations seen as institutions, the more liberal spending habits, and increase in personal debt of younger generations and it creates a crisis of cash flow for the American Church, which means those in vocational ministry either can’t get paid or will get paid less.

Combine that with the massive increases in educational costs and you have an impending collision that requires some pretty serious attention. 

So I’ve taken a look at the logical and “numbers” side of this issue in Part 1.  Part 2 will be taking a look at it from a biblical view.  Part 3 will be laying out some possible solutions.  I know it’s been doom and gloom on this part but here’s the good news: I believe that reforming this system will end up being a good thing.

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