I totally get the "sick of boomers" thing, and I'm a boomer. Still, doesn't it tell you something that in a lot of traditional cultures you don't get to become an "elder" until you're--well--"elderly"? YMMV, of course.

Jan Nunley

[Heh, and I was just talking about faith being "grounded in the empirical" on an earlier thread!]

What if this is just who God is calling? By definition then, God calls who God calls, and That's Good [which would be just As Good then, if God were calling, say, all Millenials]

Yes, yes, yes: sociologically, it's problematic.

JC Fisher (from the border of Boomer&GenX)

I've really had to push back on my gut impulse to respond to this by satirizing it; age bias (in several directions) is harder to put a finger on than, say, racism or heteronormativity.

"How old should we want our seminarians?" is just the wrong question of discernment for both the church and for individuals.

Seminary can be a great place (you know, among others) to find yourself . . . I thought I was going there to prepare for a PhD; then I fell in love with my "mandatory" field work and admitted that maybe I needed to start a discernment process. Certainly I was the last person among my friends who named my calling.

Another young man, who entered our program "ordination track" moved from being certain that he was called to do ministry to a decision that his real passion was doctoral work in comparative religions.

The real challenge for the church today is how we can make discernment at that level of effectiveness available to anyone who's hungry for it. Pinning an arbitrary age to our ideal seminarian is at cross-purposes with this.

People who feel called "early in life" but go on to be breadwinners may well need to investigate what it was that was stirring in them earlier and now, but getting a different job and other "wisdom" for 30 years shouldn't be the pass-card that moves us beyond a process of real listening and conversation with others who care about us and the church.

Martin Luther was 33-4 when he wrote his theses. Elizabeth was 26 when she issued her settlement. Archbishop Tutu turned 80 this year. Jesus's Galilean ministry was in his 30s (substance? accident? wrong theological category?). Joan of Arc was burned at 19. Mother Theresa lived until 87. My current bishop and the one that ordained me are both in their 50s.

My previous rector was in his 60s; my current one is in his 40s; the one I worked with at my last field placement in seminary was in her 30s. I'm in my 20s. I've heard teenagers and octogenarians speak at diocesan conventions and read the weekly lectionary at worship. We all serve the church well . . . and differently. Some of those differences are age-based; most come from the diversity of our gifts.

Certainly all of the work we do comes at the end of some kind of process of discernment and formation, and not as the natural result of hitting an age number.

Looking at it from an institutional point of view, if two thirds or more of my clergy are boomers, and my church is shriveling up because it can't attract young people, and I can afford to sponsor maybe three to five candidates a year for ordination, I'd be hard pressed to accept a baby boomer, unless that person brought some very specific sorts of talents.

As I read this and other entries likes it, I just keep laughing and laughing. When I was 23 I was told to go away for a few years and get real world experience, now the church is salivating over 20 somethings. I went and got a MA in Religious Studies anyway and was involved with "Tentmakers" entrepreneurial clergy who were part of the National Association of Self-Supporting Active Ministries. When our church told me there was too many calls and not enough placements, I offered to be an entrepreneurial tentmaker and was told that it being being a "weekend warrior" would make me bitter and that you could not be a priest unless altar centered. My call persisted despite managing to self fund a variety of community organizing jobs over a decade+

Now of course we think the cutting edge will be entrepreneurial clergy working for parishes that cannot afford full time altar centered clergy.

The only consistent thing over the past 40 years has been that the people in charge and their pundits have been exactly wrong at nearly every turn and remain largely clueless at the present moment.

We have been fad jumpers, hopping on bandwagon as one band or another plays its final tune. So when I listen to all the "we need youth" talk or the "entrepreneur" talk or the "bash boomer" talk I am mostly sure that we are once again behind the curve sitting on the lip of another vacated bandwagon.

So hard as it is, here is my prescription:

1) We have a moral obligation to pastor to all those faithful people now living in parishes that can no longer do more than keep the building open. We may need to ordain "sacerdotalists" who only preside over the sacraments for those communities and perhaps offer peer pastoral care. But we have a similar obligation to elders in all congregations everywhere, to not make things so different as to feel completely alien. we can do parallel development of course, but people who are becoming fragile and anxious because of age should know the church will care for them in some recognizable form.

2) We need to stop bashing one age cohort or another. Healthy communities require people of all age cohorts. The growing cohort in my parish are 50-65, people who are spiritually hungry as the nest empties or work becomes a sideline and not a mainstay. We minister to families with kids and attract some young adults and the actuality is that it is the kids who push their parents to come every week.

3) That leads to a third thing: Demographics are the most powerful reality for parishes so no one plan will fit all. Location and demographics are what shapes a parish, unless it's liturgy or programs are so unusual as to serve as 'magnets". But unless you are a magnet parish your shape is that of the community around you.

4) We are terrorized by the possibility of having something fail. So we study and poll and set up committees and flabber jabber till we think success is a slam dunk, only to find we waited too long. We need to worry less about failing and think more about doing. If you can gather a group of people with energy to make something happen, for God's sake go do it!

5) Somehow we need to dial back the anxiety. We are, as a church, an anxious system and you can just watch it drop here and there. We live in a social milieu of anxiety as well, and there is good reason for it, but blame and recrimination is not the path out, they only stir up defensiveness and resistance.

We have so many wonderful, lovely, compassionate souls with whom we share our faith journey, that it just makes my heart ache to watch us do this dance.

God is truly a mystery, or at least an enigma. Why is She calling so many people in their fifth and sixth decades to be pastors, while calling so few to the many non-ordained ministries required by The whole people of God?

I've been in parish ministry for three and a half decades, and it really makes my heart sing to see young adults in their twenties and thirties responding to a call to full-time ministry. The risks and challenges they face seem, to me, to be so much greater than those that were before my generation at the get go.

By the by, I watched the clip from CNN embedded in the article. I had to watch the vodka commercial to see it. I couldn't find a single boomer in the vodka ad. ( :

The phenomenon is more extreme in our church. I did a calculation in 2010 which estimated that nearly 40% of our clergy were over 55 at ordination, and over 70% were over 45. I believe some months later the people at Church Pension did an analysis with similar conclusions. I could certainly see that the Process (always capitalized) was heavily biased for a couple of decades towards people who were older, even if the P-t-B wanted more young people to consider ordination.

As one for whom youth is no longer visible in the rear view mirror of the highway of life, I suppose it natural that our current "youth obsession" would "bug me" a bit. I do sympathize with those who did not go through with a clergy career at an earlier age. I "considered it" but in the early 1980s, the prospects for LGBT persons in the church were exceedingly dim. I gave it a miss and, in honesty, knowing how much I have changed over time, it's probably a good thing that I did. Knowing how many non-theist clergy there are "not" in the church, I suspect I would be "out of a job" at this point.

I was considering, however, what is really behind our "get young people involved" push. Ultimately, there is a deep anxiety/panic at the roots of this. As I have aged, I see more clearly how religion is much more of a journey than a destination. What one needs is not always "free scope" to do what seems best. It is extremely helpful to have those "senior" to us to help guide us in the tasks of life. I fear that we once knew this, but are forgetting it. In an age of rapid technological advances, those of us who do not "keep up" are "dinosaurs" in our 40s. We're already just "past it," not persons of experience and with a deepening spirituality. My spiritual life is far more complex and rich than it was when I was younger. We are sadly lacking, unfortunately, in good spiritual directors in the church. Who are my directors? John the Evangelist, Origen, Meister Eckhart, Duns Scottus, Dionysius the Areopagite, Julian of Norwich. Not so much, unfortunately, my local clergy. I am not surprised, of course. If our emphasis is on relevant music, social action, church planting, etc (not that these are necessarily bad), then how can clergy be expected to be spiritual directors? They're worried about keeping the walls from falling down and the pews filled. Although I honor our youth's contributions, I do not see myself going to a 20-something priest for advice on my spiritual development in the setting of middle age. They have just not "been there done that."

In that vein, however, persons who have a "late life" calling may be often people "just like me" who as they have matured and passed beyond the point where "success" is important, wish to dedicate their lives more to something with more "lasting" meaning. Rather than discourage seminary enrollment, we need to consider not only encouraging this but also thinking of other ways to revive the religious life across the spectrum of age. Many "orders" make demands that simply become impossible as we age. Others have age limits for fear of becoming "nursing homes" for persons who become financial burdens. Encouraging youth does not need to come at the expense of disparaging age. We need to focus broadly on the "process" of living a spiritual and religious life across our years, not encourage more splits in the old versus young controversy.

Since when are young people only attracted to clergy who are their age? I find teens can talk to me about things of importance and meaning quite easily - grandparents and grandchildren are natural allies. Let's help all those who have a call to ministry - whether lay or ordained. I am much more concerned with those who think the only ministry is being ordained. 99% are not -
I went to seminary at age 50 - after not being allowed until 1974 and after resisting it for years.