Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-8, (9-13) ; Psalm 138 ; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 ; Luke 5:1-11
- The Call of Isaiah
I’ve read and I’m told that the Church is in trouble.
According to George Barna, 3500 to 4000 churches close their doors each year in America. Some agencies put the number at more like 7,000.
As one church planter put it:
“I foresee a quickening of churches dying in America over the next twenty years. There are tens of thousands of churches filled with communities that have shrunk below 100, 70, 50 and are filled with an aging population. Many of these churches will not know how to survive.” (Drew Goodmanson)
I’m told the Church is in trouble.
Only 15% of churches in the United States are growing and just 2.2% of those are growing by conversion growth. In other words, many others are playing a shell game with the already-Christian, as they move from one congregation to another.
I’m told the Church is in trouble.
According to some estimates churches lose over 2.5 million people each year to “nominalism and secularism,” the majority of whom may never set foot in a church community again. Perhaps you know some folks in this category, or perhaps you were in the category for a while.
Specifically, in the Episcopal Church, according to Dr. Kirk Hadaway (program officer for congregational research) in the most recent state of the Church report to General Convention: “The age structure of The Episcopal Church suggests an average of forty thousand deaths and twenty-one thousand births, or a natural decline of 19,000 members per year,” a population larger than most dioceses. The advanced—and still advancing—age of our membership, combined with our low birth rate, means that we lose the equivalent of one diocese per year.” This is, of course, assuming that most of those 21 thousand babies grow up and continue to practice their faith in the Episcopal Church or elsewhere–a rosy expectation that experience has proven to be false in most cases. (click here to download the State of the Church Report as a PDF)
I’m told the Church is in trouble.
Our experience in the Episcopal Church is not unique. The Southern Baptist Church–which, along with the Roman Catholic often acts as a bit of a foil in conversations amongst Episcopalians–The Southern Baptist Church has the highest proportion of members over the age of 70 years old of any denomination.
In 2008, their outgoing president Frank Page, warned that, should current trends continue as many as half of all Southern Baptist Churches could close by 2030.
And if the Church is in trouble, you might expect evidence to be visible among leaders. Unfortunately it is.
According to Ashland Theological Seminary and the North American Missions board (also found on this blog):
- Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
- Fifty percent of pastors’ marriages will end in divorce. Anecdotally at least, the number seems higher for second career clergy.
- Fifty percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.
- 90% say their Seminary Training did not prepare them for what they face day-to-day in the congregation.
- Eighty percent of seminary graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry after their first position and within the first five years.
- Only 10% reach age 65 as a pastor.
- Almost forty percent polled said they have had an extra-marital affair since beginning their ministry.
- Seventy percent said the only time they spend studying the Word is when they are preparing their sermons.
Pastors’ Wives/spouses:
- Eighty percent of pastors’ spouses wish their spouse would choose another profession.
- The majority of pastor’s wives surveyed said that the most destructive event that has occurred in their marriage and family was the day they entered the ministry.
I’ve heard the Church is in trouble, and looking at these realities would seem to confirm it.
It would be tempting, even for me as a clergy person, to look at the evidence and say that it demonstrates dysfunctional and inept pastors or troubled congregations.
But the thing is, I think that the majority of people in those congregations that end up closing, and the majority of those pastors who ended up throwing in the towel on their ordained ministry are faithful people who had their hearts in the right place.
And maybe that’s an even scarier prospect.
There’s no easy scape goat.
But the fact of the matter is that there aren’t any qualified leaders in the Christian community–not the way we’ve been conditioned to think about it.
None of those pastors were “good enough” to be pastors.
Perhaps some of them made the mistake of believing that they were.
Our first reading this morning has something to say about that. I’m thankful that it is a reading that I’ve heard at every ordination service I’ve been to.
In it, we hear the account of Isaiah’s call to be a prophet.
The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
Consider Isaiah’s reaction to God’s presence. He does not pretend to be worthy. He does not presume to stand before God as a holy person, prepared for whatever task.
“I am lost,” he says, “for I am a man of unclean lips…”
One of my friends, quite an evangelical, explained his decision to prostrate or lay face down at his ordination service, something usually more associated with the Anglo-Catholic wing of Episcopalians/Anglicans. Looking at Isaiah as an example, he said “when God’s in the house, you hit the deck.”
This is the proper response of humanity to holiness.
So no one is fit to be a pastor or priest without divine intervention.
And I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, and it may come as a shock–but none of you are fit to be Christians without Jesus Christ.
Consider the way Isaiah’s story unfolds:
