Response to an ad by the church's Committee on Theological Education that ran in the print edition of
the Outlook

Dear Editor:

It is encouraging to read the inspiring ‘open letter’ to the PC(USA) from the chair
and vice chair of the Committee on Theological Education. Dr. Wardlaw and
the Rev. Ms. Reed ask searching questions about the state of the church and our
productive use (or not) of recent seminary graduates, many of whom in the past
have counted on small congregations to “raise them up” as preachers and teachers
and givers of pastoral care. In past years these same churches with novice pastors
were often places of hope and transformation for people in their communities.

For a variety of reasons, such mentoring of the best and brightest of our graduates
is rarely available. Congregations that were once deemed excellent "first call"
churches are now closed to those seeking full- time positions as Ministers of
Word and Sacrament. The cry goes up (and has been asserted for decades) that
the church cannot afford a full-time ministry in smaller churches. If you believe
a poll cited recently in The Christian Century (5/17/11), large majorities of us
expect fewer and fewer congregations to be led by full-time pastors, “mainly
because of financial hardship.” From the Presbyterian Panel we learn that while
solid majorities of members and elders (82 percent and 72 percent) believe that
every congregation needs full-time, installed pastoral leadership, only 40 percent
of pastors and 36 percent of non-parish ministers agree. Such low “professional”
expectation of what the church membership deems necessary makes the C.O.T.E.
plea even more urgent.

Whining about affordability is a fiction that comforts only the lazy and
unimaginative. The Presbyterian Church is extraordinarily wealthy; we afford
what we want to afford. In the last two decades there has been ample funding
of building programs (some of them quite extravagant), plenty of dollars for
employing and maintaining large staffs in churches of over 2,000 and funding
for congregational mission initiatives which reach out powerfully, not only
to neighborhoods of local hardship and distress, but to the ends of the earth.
Most readers of the Outlook can name scores of congregations whose budgets
annually exceed $2 million, as well as another score who sponsor not one, but
several overseas mission trips annually. The compensation of our large church
pastors contrasted with what our lowest paid full-time pastors earn is scandalous
considering that we are disciples of the Lord who had no place to lay his head.
Many congregations are well endowed; some presbyteries boast endowments.
All of these funds are tightly guarded – for what? Whatever it is, it is not to
implement the bold initiatives to which the C.O.T. E. paper speaks. Yet our

tiresome, recurring mantra is that we Presbyterians cannot afford to furnish our
own struggling congregations with full-time installed Ministers of Word and
Sacrament.

May the challenge and creativity of Dr. Wardlaw's and Ms. Reed’s open letter be
a beginning step to overcome the lassitude of our declining denomination, whose
presbyteries and General Assembly once believed that they were responsible
for – and indeed capable of – organizing congregations, promoting evangelism
and encouraging mission opportunities. Let our church not become a haven of
discouragement for the brightest and the best.

Benjamin Sparks, a retired pastor, lives in Richmond, Va.

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