TEC Faces Uncertain Clergy Future
by David Virtue, VOL:
The Episcopal Church is starting to learn some bitter lessons about itself…despite all the talk of the Jesus Movement and “evangelism” now being promulgated as the “new thing” to rescue the church from oblivion.
What is the future for Episcopal Clergy? Headlined a story in EPISCOPAL CAFÉ this week. The Episcopal church is running out of ordained leaders to carry it into an unknown future.
The Episcopal Church is aging with the average age of parish members increasing, but also that 67.3% of active priests are aged 55 and over and since 2009, retirements have outpaced ordinations to the priesthood by almost two to one.
Not good news. What is worse, the pipeline is emptying by the day with closing or juncturing seminaries and with the costs reaching prohibitive levels for churches to pay a priest what he needs when he graduates from seminary. What is more, Nones now outpace Christians in America. Millennials are not darkening the doors of any of the mainline denominations.
The Church’s answer? “Our goal is to invite the church to think out loud about how we bring ordained leaders to our churches. From our experience, study and prayer, we recognize these to be important issues in our time. We invite dialogue in the many and diverse ways we have available: conversations on social media, at church gatherings such as meetings of diocesan transition ministers, diocesan conventions, the House of Bishops, and other leaders in our church. We offer this not as a declaration, but as an invitation to dialogue.”
TEC can dialogue itself to death and nothing will change.
Read here (scroll down)
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