When I entered the ministry in 1957, there was no such thing as a volunteer priest in the Episcopal Church. (Roman Catholic priests didn’t receive a salary, but their church gave them everything else.)
On my first assignment, the church housed me and gave me an old car, medical benefits, a retirement fund, and $2,400 a year. Often, at the end of the month, I would run out of money and had been known to go through the trash cans after a church dinner.
As time passed, many clergy demanded a housing and automobile allowance to buy their own houses and cars and bigger salaries. The days of the poor pastor were almost over.
In our last church, the pastor was paid over $170,000 a year, including housing and a car allowance. (In some megachurches, the senior pastor is paid in the millions.) It’s evident that with the church in decline, most congregations cannot afford that kind of money, so the alternative is to hire clergy on a part-time basis and often without benefits.
In the Diocese of Hawai‘i (my canonical diocese), where the cost of living is very high, hiring clergy from the mainland is almost impossible without paying him or her a very large sum. About twenty years ago, the diocese developed its own seminary training so those who wished to be priests did not have to pack up and move to the mainland. They could be trained locally online and in weekend classes. This trend has worked reasonably well, which has allowed many smaller churches to keep their doors open.
This is what is going to happen in the future. Seminaries will be online, and dioceses will offer their own courses on how to be an Episcopal priest. Also, those seeking ordination will be trained to perform specific duties so that, on a part-time basis, they can develop a skill set in different areas. For example, some could be trained to lead worship, others to be in charge of Christian education programs or to visit the sick as well as those who might be homebound, and many more specialties. Each diocese would offer special training in specific forms of ministry.
These ministries would be voluntary or have a small stipend but no auto, housing, medical benefits, or pension. Most clergy members would have a secular job or financially be able to volunteer.
Future ministries will also put a great emphasis on home churches, run by small groups (twelve to twenty-five people) attached to a headquarters where larger gatherings for many small groups would occur periodically. This type of church structure can exist with or without clergy. It did with the early church.
In a future blog post, I’ll share my ideas about what church facilities might look like. They are very different from today’s image of a building with a steeple, cross, landscape, parking, and other utilitarian buildings. They might have a pastor, small staff, and maintenance people, primarily volunteers. Because they are moneymakers, there will often be childcare centers on-site. Occasionally, a church might be able to afford paid staff, but that would be the exception, not the standard.
In short, the ministry would be almost entirely volunteer, which, back in 1957, when I started in the church, such an idea would seemed ludicrous. Today, it’s a reality.
And yes, I would love to serve as a volunteer priest.
PeaceLoveJoyHopeKindness
Bil
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Bootstraping….hmmm.