Recently she’s been igniting conversation about the role that commissioned lay pastors play in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) – and through that, raising broader issues about leadership and strategies for mission.
What original vision led to the idea that the church should have CLPs? How has that played out over the last 15 years – what kind of work are commissioned lay pastors actually doing at the grassroots level of the church?
What kind of training do CLPs receive?
Are they considered “second-tier clergy” – and if so, what are the implications for ministry?
Or is there another way of looking at things that would better serve both the needs of congregations, many of them small and unable to afford a full-time pastor, and of people who haven’t gone to seminary, but who have real gifts and skills for serving the church?
Wheeler is raising these questions in part because the leadership of the PC(USA) is asking them too. In 2007, the denomination’s Office of Vocation along with the Committee on Theological Education, commissioned a two-part study on CLPs. One part involved a survey, conducted by the PC(USA)’s Research Services, of executive presbyters about how presbyteries use CLPs.
And the Center for the Study of Theological Education was asked to gather information about how CLPs are prepared for their work, and about what those providing the training see as the strengths and weaknesses of that work. To do that, Wheeler collected information from 21 programs, including those based in seminaries, in presbyteries, and in partnerships serving a group of presbyteries.
Wheeler recently presented some of the findings of that research to a joint meeting of the General Assembly Mission Council and the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly. In a denomination in which the majority of congregations are small, and in which seminary graduates are having difficulty finding calls, it’s clear that questions of how to find affordable, trained pastoral leadership remain pressing and on the minds of many.
South Louisiana Presbytery, for example, has sent an overture to this year’s General Assembly asking that the role of commissioned lay pastors be expanded to allow for a commissioned lay pastor at-large – allowing that person to celebrate the sacraments in a number of congregations in a presbytery and to serve his or her own congregation, if it has a pastor, in a role “somewhat similar to a parish associate,” the overture states.
“Given the current reality that many of our smaller-member congregations are unable to afford the services of a commissioned lay pastor, even if one were available in or near the community, much less a minister of the Word and Sacrament, it is incumbent upon the denomination to provide avenues where these congregations may be served by trained laity, especially for celebration of the sacraments,” the overture states. It describes that arrangement as a “visible expression” of the Reformed teaching regarding the “priesthood of all believers.”
Another overture, from Hudson River Presbytery, seeks to extend an understanding that CLPs could be commissioned to serve in validated ministries as well as to particular congregations.
Shifting roles
In her presentation, Wheeler explained the PC(USA)’s history with commissioned lay pastors. In 1995, she said, the assembly, with the assent of the presbyteries, “approved a major upgrade of the role of commissioned lay pastor.” And doing so “was a big step for Presbyterians, who for more than two centuries have been the standard-bearer of stringent educational requirements for ministry.”
There was a lot of debate over what should happen – and in the end, Wheeler said, the denomination was swayed by the understanding that CLPs could meet some critical needs. Immigrant fellowships needed pastors who spoke their language and understood their culture. And small churches in rural areas – Alaska and Appalachia often were referenced as examples – couldn’t necessarily afford to hire full-time pastors, and sometimes couldn’t find tentmakers, because local jobs were so scarce.
The thinking at the time was that each presbytery would have its own training program for CLPs, and that the programs would vary from place to place, she said.
Today, some 15 years later, things look considerably different from what was first imagined.
Most presbyteries use CLPs – the Research Services study found about three-fourths of them did. And they’re using them in ways different from what was originally imagined, Wheeler said.
» Most serve small churches as solo pastors. But often those congregations are not geographically isolated – they’re in all sorts of settings, including cities, suburbs, and small towns.
» CLPs also work in a variety of settings – including as chaplains in nursing homes and prisons, and, in about one-tenth of the presbyteries, as associate pastors.
» The fewest number of CLPs work in the settings that were first envisioned for them – with immigrant fellowships or racial-ethnic congregations.
The research found patterns as well in how CLPs are trained. Presbyteries have found it’s too expensive and difficult to offer their own training programs, so most now use training programs offered by colleges or seminaries, or work in partnership with other presbyteries or synods.
“Most programs now look remarkably alike,” Wheeler said. Typically there are eight components, based on the Book of Order language – with courses in Old Testament, New Testament, Reformed theology (with sacraments added in either there or in the worship component), polity, preaching, Christian education, worship, and pastoral care, with some ethics mixed in. A few require field placement or practical theology or an occasional elective.
Most training programs involve about 130 contact hours – roughly the equivalent of three college classes, Wheeler said. Participants usually must read several hundred pages of material and write at least one paper as well. Usually, everyone who completes the coursework is given a passing grade, she said. Those findings led Wheeler to ask Presbyterian leaders some questions – questions not about what is now, but what makes sense for the future:
Does the denomination have the right curriculum for training CLPs?
Typically each of the eight topics is given equal weight, although “surely experience has taught us that CLPs need more of some this subject matter” and perhaps less of others – and maybe need to learn some things not in the Book of Order categories. Wheeler suggested instructing the PC(USA)’s Office of Vocation to look at the research, consult with those providing the training, and suggest alternatives.
Are CLPs given enough training, considering the work they’re being asked to do?
“You can have a church without a building, without a budget, and without programs, but there is no church unless the Word is rightly preached and the sacraments are rightly administered,” Wheeler said. And Presbyterians have always believed that those who perform those functions must be knowledgeable. Some CLPs do come with the life experience and background in theology and Scripture to do that well, she said.
“But many – I would venture most – aspirants to the role of CLPs are not already equipped to do those things,” she said. “Will three-and-a-half ungraded, introductory college courses, a retreat or two, and conversations with a mentor or supervisor make them so?”
Some para-professional training courses – for physicians’ assistants, for example, are much more intense, she said – as are the requirements for certification as a Christian educator. Wheeler suggested the Office of Vocation might also be asked to make recommendations for standards for preparation and areas of study for CLPs.
How should Presbyterians define the leadership provided by CLPs?
In many ways, she said, they’re viewed as “second-tier clergy,” and “there is evidence that many CLPs think of themselves as approved for church-wide service,” she said.
“We seem to be edging toward the creation of two classes of ministers of Word and sacrament – one with theological degrees, minimum salary and pension, the other informally educated and paid only token amounts without benefits,” Wheeler said.
That raises the question of how elders should be viewed in the PC(USA), she said. One suggestion being discussed is the idea of assigning “commissioned elders,” rather than commissioned pastors — in other words, developing the leadership potential of elders rather than seeing them as some sort of “substitute pastors,” Wheeler said.
In what innovative ways can the PC(USA) assist congregations that are struggling?
Wheeler told of her own congregation in a small town in upstate New York – a church, like so many others, without enough money to pay a full-time pastor. For years, the congregation shared the services of its pastor with a nearby presbytery camp – but in time, that arrangement came to an end. At about the same time, the Methodist church in town – wanting more than the part-time arrangements it had been limping along with – insisted that the bishop allow them to share a minister with the Presbyterians, or the congregants threatened to all become Presbyterian.
A merger is likely, and “the chances are excellent that there will be a vital mainline Protestant congregation in our town 25 years from now,” Wheeler said. Without that arrangement, both the Methodist and Presbyterian congregations likely would have died out.
Wheeler sees in this personal example an illustration of deeper challenges the PC(USA) faces.
“My point is this: our denomination is making a lot of decisions about its future based on what might be called laissez-faire congregationalism,” she told the Presbyterian leaders. “We have full-scale congregations with highly-trained leadership where we have a natural constituency that can afford to pay for the privilege. Where our kind are dwindling, in numbers or resources, we offer something less, and many of the churches that get something less will not make it.”
Part of the response, she contends, needs to be a different kind of conversation about where Presbyterian churches can survive – and where they cannot.
“We cannot, of course, have churches everywhere, but we should make our decisions about when to go and where to stay based on missional considerations.” Wheeler said. “Is a mainline Protestant ministry in this place important? If so, how is that possible? Should we merge with other churches there in order to create a critical mass that has resources for skilled leadership? Should we, instead of trying to find some pastoral patch for every existing congregation, leave some sites to other denominations and agree with them that we will concentrate where we would be of most help?”
In that conversation, she suggested, the solution can’t be always to rely on commissioned lay pastors.
Wheeler said that “some CLPs do a splendid job, and they should go on doing it. But sending them on a mass basis to serve struggling churches, which is happening in some locales, may give the appearance of viable Presbyterian ministries when the reality is not there. Might it not be better to face the question of what kind of presence God wants us to have in that place sooner rather than later?”
Instead of using CLPs in all those places, Wheeler is suggesting a new form of Presbyterian creativity – one that uses new styles of leadership in new configurations, with an emphasis on listening for God’s leading rather than preserving what’s there.
