Changing times
29/01/23 03:04
The Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ offers a training and certification program for local church faith formation leaders. The program consists of a dozen or so classes, offered online. Each class is three contact hours. There are additional requirements to complete the certification program. The classes include basic courses in instructional design, creating safe spaces, planning, educational psychology, theology, polity, and other topics. The program is accessible to students outside of the Southern New England Conference and its online format has made it an attractive professional development program for faith formation leaders in other parts of the country. With the demise of the denomination’s national certification program for educational leaders, the Southern New England Conference program is emerging as a standard for professional educators in the United Church of Christ.
Faith Formation is a high priority for the Southern New England Conference. The Conference employs highly qualified and experienced professionals to administer its programs and the Faith Formation Leadership Training program is well run and coordinated. It is easy to see how the program could be expanded to serve leaders across the denomination.
The program, however, is far less rigorous than the national certification program for teachers which was in place earlier in my career as a pastor and church educator. When I was certified as a specialist in church education, a graduate degree and ordination was required for specialist level certification along with specific additional educational requirements, a continuing education requirement, and a regular rigorous re-certification review. It is difficult to compare the old certification program with the Southern New England program because they serve a church that has undergone dramatic changes. The United Church of Christ is a smaller denomination with fewer paid professionals than was the case decades ago. The Covid-19 pandemic has had a deep impact on every congregation in the denomination. Churches are discovering ways to minister with much leaner budgets than was the case before the pandemic.
As an elder, who has been around for several generations and expressions of the church, I’ve witnessed big changes in how leaders are recruited, trained, supported, and deployed through the church. From my perspective, there is a lot of grief over the loss of programs and people. The United Church of Christ no longer publishes any church school curricula that is unique to our denomination. We used to have two companion publishing houses. The Pilgrim Press, the oldest printing house in the United States, focused on book-length publications. United Church Press focused on publishing church resources, including curricula for childhood and adult education programs. The two houses have now been combined and there is just a trickle of titles available from Pilgrim Press. Long gone are the days when our denomination operated a giant resource warehouse with a complete shipping department. We’ve downsized and endured round after round of layoffs. It is a reality that has been experienced by other mainline denominations.
I could wallow in the grief of all of the losses, but that wouldn’t change the reality. The times have changed and, for the most part, memories of the way it used to be aren’t helpful in providing the leadership and resources the church needs. Still there are times when I find myself a bit nostalgic for the old days. Perhaps that is natural for someone who is my age.
It seems to me that the church is facing a scarcity of leaders. Congregations are having difficulty finding and hiring the professional ministers they want. Lay volunteers are giving fewer hours and a different level of commitment to the jobs in the church. At the same time that the church is having trouble finding enough professional leaders, the nature of volunteers is shifting radically. Volunteers show up for individual projects on occasion, but are unwilling or unable to make a commitment to regular leadership and follow through for important programs.
There is a perception that millennials are not joiners. They will show up and become active at times, but they are unwilling to commit to assuming leadership. They have an expectation that churches provide programs, but do not assume leadership of producing those programs. There are a lot of reasons for this. The post-pandemic work environment makes great demands on professionals. Cell phones have made people accessible around the clock and with them has come the expectation that people be accessible. As a part-time professional, I am well aware that there is an expectation that I respond to phone messages and emails on the days when I am not working. Full time professionals experience even more pressure to be constantly available. There is nothing new about the challenges of juggling career and family. We were a two-career family when we were raising our children. We know how demanding it can be to balance the needs of a professional life and life as a parent. But there is a different quality to the current generation of young professionals. There are fewer barriers between work and home. I didn’t have a phone in my car when I was driving our children to school activities. I simply was not available until I got home or to my office where there was a phone. People had to wait.
The church may be experiencing hard times, but this is not the end. New leadership will emerge. As I reminded students yesterday when I was teaching a class for the Southern New England Conference, there are several places in the bible where a generation is considered to be roughly 40 years. Modern generational theory divides generations into 20 year time blocks. Whether it is 20 years or 40 years, we can count on a shift in the leadership of the church. New leaders with new qualities will emerge. Just as we boomers are stepping aside for the people of Generation X and Millennials, they will be stepping aside for those in generation Z and generation Alpha. In a way, I wish I could stay around to hear the Millennials when they get to be my age and start going on about “the way things were in my time.”
Faith Formation is a high priority for the Southern New England Conference. The Conference employs highly qualified and experienced professionals to administer its programs and the Faith Formation Leadership Training program is well run and coordinated. It is easy to see how the program could be expanded to serve leaders across the denomination.
The program, however, is far less rigorous than the national certification program for teachers which was in place earlier in my career as a pastor and church educator. When I was certified as a specialist in church education, a graduate degree and ordination was required for specialist level certification along with specific additional educational requirements, a continuing education requirement, and a regular rigorous re-certification review. It is difficult to compare the old certification program with the Southern New England program because they serve a church that has undergone dramatic changes. The United Church of Christ is a smaller denomination with fewer paid professionals than was the case decades ago. The Covid-19 pandemic has had a deep impact on every congregation in the denomination. Churches are discovering ways to minister with much leaner budgets than was the case before the pandemic.
As an elder, who has been around for several generations and expressions of the church, I’ve witnessed big changes in how leaders are recruited, trained, supported, and deployed through the church. From my perspective, there is a lot of grief over the loss of programs and people. The United Church of Christ no longer publishes any church school curricula that is unique to our denomination. We used to have two companion publishing houses. The Pilgrim Press, the oldest printing house in the United States, focused on book-length publications. United Church Press focused on publishing church resources, including curricula for childhood and adult education programs. The two houses have now been combined and there is just a trickle of titles available from Pilgrim Press. Long gone are the days when our denomination operated a giant resource warehouse with a complete shipping department. We’ve downsized and endured round after round of layoffs. It is a reality that has been experienced by other mainline denominations.
I could wallow in the grief of all of the losses, but that wouldn’t change the reality. The times have changed and, for the most part, memories of the way it used to be aren’t helpful in providing the leadership and resources the church needs. Still there are times when I find myself a bit nostalgic for the old days. Perhaps that is natural for someone who is my age.
It seems to me that the church is facing a scarcity of leaders. Congregations are having difficulty finding and hiring the professional ministers they want. Lay volunteers are giving fewer hours and a different level of commitment to the jobs in the church. At the same time that the church is having trouble finding enough professional leaders, the nature of volunteers is shifting radically. Volunteers show up for individual projects on occasion, but are unwilling or unable to make a commitment to regular leadership and follow through for important programs.
There is a perception that millennials are not joiners. They will show up and become active at times, but they are unwilling to commit to assuming leadership. They have an expectation that churches provide programs, but do not assume leadership of producing those programs. There are a lot of reasons for this. The post-pandemic work environment makes great demands on professionals. Cell phones have made people accessible around the clock and with them has come the expectation that people be accessible. As a part-time professional, I am well aware that there is an expectation that I respond to phone messages and emails on the days when I am not working. Full time professionals experience even more pressure to be constantly available. There is nothing new about the challenges of juggling career and family. We were a two-career family when we were raising our children. We know how demanding it can be to balance the needs of a professional life and life as a parent. But there is a different quality to the current generation of young professionals. There are fewer barriers between work and home. I didn’t have a phone in my car when I was driving our children to school activities. I simply was not available until I got home or to my office where there was a phone. People had to wait.
The church may be experiencing hard times, but this is not the end. New leadership will emerge. As I reminded students yesterday when I was teaching a class for the Southern New England Conference, there are several places in the bible where a generation is considered to be roughly 40 years. Modern generational theory divides generations into 20 year time blocks. Whether it is 20 years or 40 years, we can count on a shift in the leadership of the church. New leaders with new qualities will emerge. Just as we boomers are stepping aside for the people of Generation X and Millennials, they will be stepping aside for those in generation Z and generation Alpha. In a way, I wish I could stay around to hear the Millennials when they get to be my age and start going on about “the way things were in my time.”
