Presbyterian seminaries are noticing a change: their entering classes are getting younger.
More students in their early 20s are coming to study theology — some of them straight out of college, others after spending a year or two doing volunteer or mission work. Some of those students do intend to work in parish ministry — although whether they’ll want to serve the kinds of congregations that most need pastors remains to be seen.
And some Presbyterians involved with programs designed to try to interest high school and college students in considering careers in ministry say they think those programs — along with college programs encouraging students to think of their career choices as part of a discernment process of what they want to do with their lives — are beginning to make a difference.
“I’m wondering if it’s a combination of the job market or the whole 9/11 thing, or we’re a country at war,” said Craig Howard, director of admissions at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. “These students are coming in knowing there are needs in the world.”
Doug Oldenburg, a longtime pastor and the former president of Columbia Theological Seminary, has worked for the past four years with Advocates for Ministry, a program he helped create in which Presbyterian ministers visit colleges and invite students to dinner to talk with them about the joys and challenges of a career in ministry. So far, they’ve taken 1,519 students to dinner at 145 colleges and universities, Oldenburg said.
The students come because “they want to have some meaning in their lives,” he said. “And they don’t see their lives filled with meaning if it’s just 9 to 5, work hard, make a lot of money and have a big house. They want to impact the lives of people in a significant way.”
At Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Texas, the entering classes in three of the last four years have shown the trend towards younger students, and the classes have been growing a little larger too, said director of admissions Sam Riccobene.
“We here at Austin Seminary have made a concerted effort to reach down to younger folks,” Riccobene said. “Our president is visiting at the high school level. We have hired a full-time student recruiter whose job it is to work with college-age people.”
Across the church, “there are a lot of folks who are thinking about this, praying about this, caring about this,” said Lee Hinson-Hasty, coordinator of theological education and seminary relations for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
At Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia, the median age of this year’s entering class is 25 — meaning half are above that age and half are below, said admissions director Ann Clay Adams.
At Princeton Theological Seminary, about a third of the incoming Master’s of Divinity class this year is coming straight out of college, said director of admissions Matthew Spina. Another third are 23 to 26 years old — they’ve taken a little time before graduate school to do something else, to work a year or two, do volunteer or ministry work, complete graduate degrees. For about the past five years, the median age of incoming students at Princeton has been 26 or 27. And an increasing number — now 43 percent — are women, with a boost too in students of color, in part the result of an intentional recruiting effort, Spina said.
So why are more young people choosing to go to seminary?
Some students say they’ve been changed by the church at the grassroots — by what they’ve experienced in their high school youth groups or college campus ministry programs, at church camps and conference centers, or on international mission trips.
Some credit the work of national programs such as the Pastoral Leadership Search Effort (PLSE) or the career exploration initiatives of the Fund for Theological Education, which try to identify teenagers and young adults who may have gifts for church leadership and to encourage them to think about entering the ministry.
A 2001 report from the Center for the Study of Theological Education at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York found more women enrolling in seminary and more racial and ethnic diversity, but also found that seminary students were older than in the past, that nearly 9 out of 10 students who applied to seminary were accepted, and only about a third intended to go into congregational ministry. Some see early signs that may be changing.
And programs at some colleges — many with funding from the Lilly Endowment — are encouraging students to think of career choices in more than just financial terms. That message finds some receptive ground in young people accustomed to documenting community service work on their school applications — many of whom have found the volunteer work they’ve done to be exhilarating, even life-changing.
“There’s been some very fine attention to vocation as a use of your life for good,” Adams said. “You do have a cultivation I think in the more recent student generations of service, not only to the church but to broader society. You have the influence of our students who’ve done the young adult volunteer mission year. We get a wonderful bounce from that at Columbia,” as well as seeing students who’ve spent time working for programs such as the Peace Corps or Teach for America.
Howard, at McCormick, said many seminary applicants have already had experience traveling or working abroad — they’ve seen the church at work in the world and they want to be a part of that. “They want their faith to matter,” said Kerry Rice, director of admissions at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
And people are asking students to consider, “Who am I, and who does God intend for me to be — that’s the question,” said Hinson-Hasty. At some of these discernment events, “you’ll see folks who are chemistry majors, engineering majors, elementary education majors,” along with students from the religion department, he said. And Oldenburg said many students have thanked the Advocates for Ministry leaders for taking an interest — for caring enough about their lives and futures to even pose the questions.
The economy may be a factor as well.
“During economic downturns, we tend to see people go to graduate school,” Riccobene said. “They don’t see any other real options. They’re not getting job offers.”
And some say the September 11 attacks caused young people to think hard about how they want to live.
“All you have to do is turn on the radio or television and you hear somebody else has just died from a bomb or there’s been a tragedy,” Riccobene said. For those who want to demonstrate God’s presence to a hurting world, “the world mood is right. The challenges are here. The need is there.”
Students are open to exploring different degree programs and possible future ministries.
Many of the younger students come from strong campus ministry or youth ministry programs — and that’s often where their initial interest in service lies too, although sometimes that changes once they start in seminary.
“They feel called,” Spina said. “They’re not sure where they’re called — that’s pretty common. And some give us a list” — he chuckles — “maybe pastoral ministry, social justice, counseling, maybe teaching down the road after chaplaincy.”
Rice said he sees a mix — “those who know exactly what they want to do and those who see seminary as a good way to figure it out.”
Some change their mind particularly as a result of internship or field placement experiences, which give them chances to try out different ministry settings, to see what they like and what they don’t, to see where they shine.
“My wife came in 10 years ago thinking the last thing she wanted to do was be a small-church pastor, because that’s what her dad was,” Rice said. “Well, that’s what she is now, a small-church pastor, and she loves it.”
Adams said she’s seeing another shift — with more young students willing to consider congregational ministry, particularly as they encounter more pastors in their 20s and 30s themselves. Jamie Dale, director of admissions at Union Theological Seminary-Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, said students also seem interested in “what I’ll call social justice ministry for lack of a better term” — they want to work in places such as AIDS clinics or programs for immigrants or with inner-city families, sometimes in advocacy.
Whatever their age, Riccobene said, today’s seminary students seem willing to explore. “One of the things they have in common is they seem to be aware that it’s not about them. It’s about what God is moving them to do.”
While some Presbyterians might be tempted to see the rising number of younger seminarians as part of the answer to the PC(USA)’s difficulty in finding pastors to fill some pulpits — a problem particularly in small and rural churches — some admissions directors caution against assuming that even young students who start off in pastoral ministry will necessarily stick with it for the next 30 or 40 years.
They’ve grown up in an environment when multiple job and career changes are expected and encouraged.
“The question is going to be whether they’re going to make ministry, especially pastoral ministry, a long-time career option or whether we will actually see from them just several years in ministry,” Adams said. “The church cannot assume that a student who makes a decision to go to seminary at 22 and goes into the church will still be in ministry by 30 or 32.”
The church sometimes looks at older students — those who’ve had other careers before going to seminary — and says, “They only have 10 or 15 years before retirement. I think we need to live in hope that we get 10 or 15 years out of the young folks,” she said.
Especially in country churches or small towns, “as a pastor you’re kind of isolated,” Howard said. “You can’t date in your own church. Yet you spend sixty hours a week there.”
So it would be smart for the church to put some resources into mid-career development, Adams said — into providing younger ministers the tools they need to stay in ministry, satisfied and productive, for as long a time as possible.
