Types of Call Stories among Religious Workers: Part One
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…
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Remaining Relevant in a Post-Christian and Urban Culture
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…
Latinx Congregations: Case Study #1 — Iglesia Episcopal San Juan
Immigration is a major component in the changing U.S. religious landscape. According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of Latinx Christians increased from thirteen…
7 Suggestions for Outsourcing Your Church’s Staffing Needs
What are some options to consider when church staffing needs exist, but, as scripture states, “the laborers are few?” Oakmont Baptist Church in Greenville, North…
Coming Out of the Wilderness: Case Study #2 — Reimagining a Church’s Facilities
“We don’t need the building [for our mission]. Other people do need the building and should be in the building because there’s possibilities that God’s…
How are Clergy of Color Faring in White Protestant Denominations?
Racial and ethnic inequality is well documented in many aspects of daily life in the United States, such as in educational and employment opportunities, home…
Changing Patterns Among Nazarene Churches with Multiple Clergy
In Church of the Nazarene, congregations report the number of clergy serving the congregation. The clergy may be full-time, part-time, paid, unpaid, active, or retired.…
Changing Patterns among United Methodist Churches with Multiple Full-Time Clergy
This article examines changes in the number of United Methodist churches with multiple full-time clergy between 2000 and 2019 and the changing makeup the associate…
Podcast Episode: “Bivocational by Choice” featuring Ben Connelly
Can bivocational ministry be a strategic choice and not just a reluctant concession to financial constraints? In this episode of Leading Ideas Talks from the…
Insights Learned from Interviewing Agnostics Who Go into Ministry
As mentioned in one of our previous posts, the Religious Workforce Project team interviewed more than 40 congregational leaders for this study. In most cases,…
From Lay Ministers to the Pulpit
While the main research question in the Religious Workforce Project interview deals with how congregations in the Washington, D.C., area harness their financial and human…
Coming out of the Wilderness: Case Study #1 — Rethinking How to Staff Ministries
“…I believe that we are in a wilderness moment. … Just as the people of Israel were in a wilderness moment long ago, we are…
Clergywomen in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Lutheran women in the United States first gained the right to become ordained clergy in 1970 when the conventions of two predecessor denominations to the…
Who Cares for Clergy?
By Dr. Ann A. Michel Religious communities through history have always found ways to care for and support clergy. And this need is arguably greater…
Churches Continue to Increase Lay Staff
By Lovett H. Weems Jr. As congregations seek to carry out their missions faithfully, they will want to assess their spending on personnel. In that…
Is Your Church Spending Too Much or Too Little on Personnel?
By Lovett H. Weems Jr. Church leaders often ask if their spending on personnel is reasonable in relation to comparable churches. This question is not…
Changes in Seminary Enrollment Patterns, 2000-2020 | Part 5: Observations and Implications
The previous four posts discussed seminary enrollment trends among were Roman Catholic students and students from selected clusters of denominations from Black Protestant, Evangelical Protestant,…
Changes in Seminary Enrollment Patterns, 2000-2020 | Part 4: Roman Catholic
The previous three posts discussed seminary enrollment trends among students belonging to some Black Protestant, Evangelical Protestant, and Mainline Protestant denominations. In this post, we…
Changes in Seminary Enrollment Patterns, 2000-2020 | Part 3: Mainline Protestant
The previous two posts discussed seminary enrollment trends among students belonging to some Black Protestant and Evangelical Protestant denominations. In this post, we discuss seminary…
Changes in Seminary Enrollment Patterns, 2000-2020 | Part 2: Evangelical Protestant
The previous post discussed seminary enrollment trends among students belonging to some Black Protestant denominations. In this post, we discuss seminary enrollment trends among students…
Changes in Seminary Enrollment Patterns, 2000-2020 | Part 1: Introduction and Black Protestant
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…
Still Fewer Young United Methodist Elders in 2022
By Lovett H. Weems Jr. For seventeen years, the Lewis Center for Church Leadership has issued annual reports on clergy age trends in the United…
Does an Aging Population Explain High Clergy Ages?
By Lovett H. Weems Jr. A significant concern within many faith communities in recent years has been the increasing age of clergy in the United…
How are Clergy of Color Faring in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America?
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has had goals and policies in its churchwide office and synods since the late 1980s to increase racial and…
Congregations That Thrive without Full-Time Clergy
By G. Jeffrey MacDonald From the outside, First Parish Church (United Church of Christ) in Newbury, Massachusetts, appeared to be chugging along reasonably well after…
Pastoral Staffing Arrangements in Small United Methodist Church Congregations
It should come as no surprise that over the past few decades Christian congregations have been shrinking in terms of their average weekly worship attendance.…
Podcast Episode: “The Pandemic’s Real Impact on Clergy and Congregations” featuring Scott Thumma
How has the pandemic shaped the vitality and resiliency of congregations? Did it really prompt large numbers of pastors to leave ministry? In this episode…
Leading in Small Church or Multi-Church Settings
Are you a pastor serving more than one church? Or a leader in a congregation that’s part of a multi-church ministry? In this Leading Ideas…
2 Churches — 1 Pastor
By Lewis A. Parks It’s important to remember that in some denominations, the normative expectation of a local church to have a resident pastor is relatively…
The Pandemic’s Real Impact on Clergy and Congregations
This article shares highlights from an in-depth interview with Scott Thumma, available in Leading Ideas from the Lewis Center for Church Leadership of Wesley Theological Seminary.…
Pastoral Staffing Arrangements in Small Nazarene Churches
Over the past several decades, the average weekly worship attendance of Christian congregations has been decreasing. In 1998, the median number of regular participants of…
Four Incarnational Benefits of Bivocational Ministry
By Steven C. Van Ostran It has been my experience that bivocational ministers see themselves and are looked upon by others as second-class ministers —…
The Resilient Small Church
One of the most thoughtful gestures related to my ministry occurred a few months ago. I received an email from a United Methodist district superintendent…
How Has COVID-19 Impacted Religious Participation?
How are congregations faring two years after the outbreak of the COVID pandemic in the United States? Has the number of worshipers who attend services…
Clergy Age Trends Have Paved the Way for the Religious Workforce Project
Several research projects by the Lewis Center for Church Leadership paved the way for the current Religious Workforce Project. The longest continuous effort by the…
Previous Research by the Lewis Center Related to Religious Workforce
Several research projects by the Lewis Center for Church Leadership paved the way for the current Religious Workforce Project. Most of these involved the United…
A Mobile Religious Workforce?
Early on the Religious Workforce Project (RWP), like other congregational studies, faced a sampling challenge: what list of congregations would we work from for recruiting churches…
Lewis Center Launches Major Study of the Nation’s Religious Workforce
WASHINGTON, DC — The Lewis Center for Church Leadership of Wesley Theological Seminary has launched an initiative to study the makeup of the religious workforce…