As mentioned in previous posts, we interviewed over 40 religious leaders from different Christian traditions for this project. Each religious leader in our study had a “call story” to share—a story of how they came to understand a calling to vocational ministry. We observed three types of call stories: Sense of call followed by challenges:…
Pastors in historically Black Protestant churches generally agree that both their influence as pastors and their churches’ influence in their communities has been declining. Although a recent Pew Research Center study explains in detail the reasons behind this issue,[1] in this post, I will focus on a single church to show how difficult and necessary…
Mark Chaves and researchers from the National Congregations Survey note that “clergy are a highly educated segment of American society,” with a majority of clergy holding graduate degrees.[1] However, there is much variation across denominations and traditions. Roman Catholic congregations have the most highly educated congregational leaders (91% have graduate degrees), closely followed by mainline…