Kiskiminetas Presbytery, situated in a rural slice of western Pennsylvania, has 88 churches. Probably only 40 percent of them are served by a full-time minister.
Some are searching for a pastor “and are likely to look for years to find somebody, or they’re permanently vacant,” said Erin Cox-Holmes, the associate general presbyter. “We’re representative of declining, small rural churches that are never going to have a pastor again.”
Not, that is, if they have to attract a seminary-trained minister and find a way to pay that person a living wage. But many small Presbyterian churches are finding new life by utilizing commissioned lay pastors — often people who already live in the area, have other means of support, and who feel called by God to preach and serve a church.
Currently, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has 702 commissioned lay pastors serving 791 congregations — some of them in yoked arrangements, serving more than one church, said Marcia Clark Myers, director of the denomination’s Office of Vocation.
“The CLP role is supposed to be for presbyteries who find a mission need that is not adequately met by ministers of Word and Sacrament,” Myers said. The two predominant areas are small churches that can’t afford to pay a full-time pastor, and immigrant or racial-ethnic congregations.
In Kiskiminetas Presbytery, CLPs fill an average of about 25 pulpits a week, Cox-Holmes said — working as solo pastors, associate lay pastors, interim pastors, and chaplains.
In this part of Appalachia, “the presbytery chose to make a high school diploma the educational requirement to become a lay pastor,” along with the additional training required, Cox-Holmes said. “And out of our cadre of lay pastors and lay preachers, a couple of them have been to college, but the bulk of them come at it through the school of life experience. They generally are selected or identified as potential pastors by their congregations, based on their passionate love for Christ and their demonstrated leadership skills at the local level.”
The idea of using CLPs to fill pulpits is not without controversy.
“Presbyterians have held a high standard of educated ministry over the years,” Myers said. Seminary training has long been valued, and sometimes “there is a concern on the part of ministers who have gone through all that we require — and we require a great deal — and who feel that a CLP is a shortcut that somehow devalues all that they went through.”
There also is concern about compensation — that “churches are hiring CLPs as cheaper pastors,” or that people are becoming CLPs to avoid the rigors of going to seminary, Myers said.
There may be occasional cases of that, she acknowledged. “But for the most part, we have to recognize that there are a lot of small churches that simply don’t have the resources” to hire a full-time pastor.
The PC(USA) has an oversupply of ministers, she said, some of whom can’t find a call. And “we have all these churches that are small and needing leadership, and can’t afford to pay.”
Alaska connection
The push to approve commissioned lay pastors in the 1980s was led in part by David Dobler, then the executive presbyter of Yukon Presbytery in Alaska, who saw the need for leadership in native villages throughout the region. He is now the president of Sheldon Jackson College in Sitka.
Alaska had a tradition of using lay pastors as evangelists, Dobler said in an interview. And through some trial-and-error, the presbytery came up with the model of identifying a group of people from an area who would train to become CLPs, and then two or three times a year sending a teaching team to a village in that area to conduct a week of training.
When the Siberian border opened up — and there had historically been close connections among the people across the border — some Siberian Yupik Alaskans discovered that no missionaries had visited their relatives on the other side for years. Moved by that need, “they suddenly became the missionaries,” helped because they could speak the language and get the necessary visas, Dobler said.
From that came a handful of “really stellar CLP evangelists who heard the call to go and preach, so they did. In some ways, the presbytery was playing catch-up. We did provide training,” he said. “But it really was supporting what the Holy Spirit was doing. That also helped sell the idea in the presbytery.”
Some had the idea that “educated meant seminary,” Dobler said. Some viewed CLPs with “a feeling of second-class nature or ‘Is this the best we can do?’ But it was like that line from Jesus, By their fruits ye shall know them. “
Not about status
When she talks about CLPs, Myers stresses the Reformed understanding of the ministry of the baptized — the idea that all baptized Christians have a place in ministry. It’s not about status, she says — not everyone needs to become a minister or a commissioned lay pastor to serve.
“The possibilities for ministry for every Presbyterian are enormous,” she said.
But “in those places where we really need preaching and the administration of the sacraments, and we don’t have a minister of the Word and Sacrament who can fulfill that role, then we really need a CLP.”
One reason CLPs can fill that need is that often they are serving in communities where they already live, essentially functioning as part-time tentmakers. They may already have another job, or bring with them medical or retirement benefits. The congregation, if it’s short on funds, doesn’t have to pay full freight.
And CLPs often get their training, which might take two to three years, close to home too. It’s part of a trend of extending theological education beyond the seminary walls, which Myers said is responding to a growing desire among the laity for lifelong learning.
“Many of our seminaries are doing some creative things to bring seminary education to the called, rather than bringing the called to seminary,” she said.
For example, the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary offers online CLP training, and recently gained approval for an accredited online Master of Divinity program. (In that program, students spend one-third of their time on-campus.)
“They come from everywhere” for the CLP program, with students ranging in age from their 20s to the 80s, said Melinda Thompson, director of distance education at DTS. “For some presbyteries, we’re the sole provider for CLP training,” said Brad Longfield, dean of the seminary. Other presbyteries mix classes from the online program with supplemental training they provide.
In seven years, about 1,200 people have taken CLP training through Dubuque’s online program.
For many CLPs, doing theological study close to home or online can make the difference between serving the church and not having that chance, Myers said. She met a young woman recently, for example, an elder who told Myers: “I can’t pack up my family and move to where there’s a seminary. I would love to serve those little churches that I can see all around us here, but it’s just not possible for me to go to seminary. So being a CLP is the way that I could respond to the call I feel from God.”
And some congregations led by CLPs are growing. Some CLPs “lead churches that are flourishing in ways they have not for 20 years,” Longfield said.
“We feel blessed to have the opportunity to serve in this way,” said assistant dean Richard “Skip” Schaffer at Dubuque, “and we’re committed to doing it well.”
Presbytery options
Each presbytery decides for itself how to use CLPs.
Seattle presbytery, for example, has plenty of ministers — 200 ordained ministers live in a presbytery with only 60 churches. “Everybody comes,” quipped Stated Clerk Dennis Hughes, “and nobody wants to leave.”
But the city also has been receiving immigrants from all over the Pacific Rim and elsewhere, people showing up from everywhere, speaking many languages.
So Seattle presbytery has determined that commissioned lay pastors won’t be used to serve Anglo congregations, but “we set up a program that would serve first-generation immigrant populations in the hope that the second-generation would generate their own seminarians and move into the church model,” Hughes said.
That’s because “whole fellowships were coming to us with their leadership, and asking to become Presbyterian.”
Latin Americans and Vietnamese have come. Iranians showed up speaking Farsi. A Kenyan fellowship formed, led by a woman who’d been educated at Cambridge.
And the presbytery worked with these immigrant fellowships, often nesting them in established Anglo congregations, and helping their leaders get the training to become CLPs.
Sometimes the presbytery bent the rules. When the leader was required to be an ordained elder to enter CLP training, for example, the presbytery didn’t want that leader to have to leave the fellowship, join an established Anglo church, wait to be recognized and chosen as an elder. “By that time, their fellowship would have been blown to the winds,” Hughes said.
So the presbytery approached the Anglo congregations in which those fellowships were nesting, and asked those congregations to select leaders from those fellowships as elders. “We quite openly said, ‘This bends the rules, this doesn’t break them,’ “ Hughes said. “We need your congregation to help us with this — and bless their hearts, they did.”
In time, just as the presbytery hoped, some leaders from those fellowships are becoming ministers.
An Iranian is studying at Princeton Theological Seminary. A Japanese Presbyterian has completed seminary and been ordained as a minister. A Vietnamese is attending seminary part-time.
Hughes says of Seattle presbytery’s experience with CLPs: “We’re seeing our dream fulfilled.”
