This year, at assemblies and synods across the country, we are hearing a similar concern: There is a shortage of pastors. Churches need men. Presbyteries need men. Mission works need men. Pulpits are opening, congregations are waiting, and the question keeps coming up: Why are young men not choosing the ministry?
I cannot speak for every denomination, and I certainly cannot speak for every international fraternal delegate at every church assembly. But at the OPC’s General Assembly this year, we heard from several brothers from other churches who spoke of this concern. This is not merely an American problem. It is not merely an OPC problem. Churches in many places are asking where the next generation of ministers will come from.
This has gotten me thinking.
The obvious way to ask the question is, Why are young men not entering the ministry? But I am not sure this is the deepest form of the question. In my own congregation, we currently have three young men who are considering vocational ministry. This means I cannot simply say, “Young men are not interested.” Some are. Some young men still love Christ, love the church, love the Scriptures, and are asking whether the Lord may be calling them to preach the Word and shepherd the flock.
So the problem is not that no young men are considering the ministry. The problem is deeper and more complicated. The shortage of young men entering ministry is not simply a recruitment problem. It is a formation problem. Before the church asks why fewer young men are becoming pastors, we may need to ask why fewer young men are being formed into men capable of embracing costly, durable, public, spiritual responsibility.
The Explanations That Do Not Quite Explain
There have been several explanations. Some have argued that seminary education is too expensive. I am sure that can play a role. A young man looking at tuition, housing, books, and several years of study may be tempted to look elsewhere. But at least in many Reformed circles, this explanation does not fully account for the situation. Seminary education is more affordable now than many people assume. Several seminaries help men find work and keep additional debt to zero. Mid-America, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, and Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary come to mind. Other seminaries, such as the Westminsters, have substantial scholarships for many men in their MDiv programs, and Westminster Seminary California has significant on-campus housing solutions to defray the cost of living expenses. Cost can be a factor, but it does not seem to be the root of the issue.
Others have argued that ministry does not pay well enough, and therefore young men who want to support a wife and children rule it out. Again, there is something to consider here. The ministry is not lucrative. A man should not enter the pastorate if his goal is to become wealthy. But in most Reformed congregations I know, this explanation also does not add up. I have served on the credentialing committee of my presbytery and have seen the starting packages for associate and solo ministers. These are not luxury packages, but they are often sufficient for a man to buy a home, support his wife and children, and have something left for savings. Our calls speak of keeping the minister “free from worldly care,” and many congregations take that seriously.
Still others have suggested that the ministry has become too effeminate and young men who are drawn to masculinity are avoiding it. I think there may be something to consider here, but not quite as it is often stated. Ministry in Reformed congregations is not effeminate. We sing old hymns and psalms. We preach verse by verse through the Scriptures. We catechize our children. We visit the sick and bury the dead. We stand against feminism, egalitarianism, and whatever we are calling sinful male dominance these days. The work of ministry is not soft. It is not a therapeutic hobby for men who do not want responsibility. The truth is that the ministry requires masculine boldness to pronounce condemnation of sin and forgiveness through the gospel!
The Masculinity of Shepherding
But perhaps there is a deeper question hiding underneath the masculinity argument. It may not be that the ministry has become too feminine. It may be that many young men have not been formed to recognize pastoral ministry as masculine in the first place.
The ministry is masculine in the way shepherding is masculine. A shepherd must feed, guard, lead, watch, endure, and stay. He must be gentle with the weak and firm with the wolves. He must have enough tenderness to bind up the wounded and enough courage to confront danger. He must know how to speak and how to be silent, how to comfort and how to rebuke, how to stand before men and how to kneel before God. If that is not considered masculine, then we have forgotten what masculinity is.
And this is part of the problem. The wider culture—and this includes the church—has forgotten what masculinity is. Or, perhaps more accurately, it has offered young men several false versions of it. Some are told that masculinity is inherently suspicious and dangerous, something to be apologized for, softened, or managed. Others are told that masculinity is mainly aggression, self-assertion, physical dominance, online combat, sexual conquest, or contempt for weakness. Neither of these forms young men for the ministry, let alone forms them for marriage, fatherhood, churchmanship, or ordinary adult life. And this is where the ministry shortage begins to look like one symptom of a much broader crisis.
Young men are not doing well in our culture. They are falling behind educationally. They are struggling economically. Many are delaying marriage or avoiding it altogether. Many are lonely, even if they do not always know how to say so. Many lack close male friendships. Many lack older men who know them, correct them, encourage them, and call them upward. Many are living in a digital world that rewards passivity, outrage, irony, pornography, distraction, and fantasy.
This matters for the church because pastors do not drop out of the sky. Seminary does not create ministers out of nothing. A seminary can train a man in Greek, Hebrew, exegesis, systematic theology, church history, preaching, and pastoral theology. It can refine, test, and strengthen him. But seminary cannot give him in three years what the church, the home, and the communion of saints failed to cultivate for twenty-five years.
Before a man becomes a minister, he must first become a man. He must learn to show up, tell the truth, work hard, receive correction, keep his promises, control his appetites, care for others, pray when he does not feel like praying, and do what is right when no one applauds. He must learn that responsibility is not the enemy of joy. Responsibility is one of the forms glory takes in this fallen world. Many young men have not been taught this.
I do not say this to scold them. I do not think the most useful thing to say is, “Young men are lazy, weak, and irresponsible.” Some are. So are some middle-aged men, and so are some old men. Sin is not generationally limited, but many young men are not refusing responsibility because they are uniquely wicked. They are refusing it because they have rarely seen responsibility presented as glory. They have not been patiently trained to desire burdens worth carrying.
The Rival Liturgies of the Digital World
This is where social media and digital life have done particular damage. This is not simply about “screen time,” though most of us who use social media excessively would probably be better off pulling away from it for a while. The deeper concern is that social media forms young men in rival liturgies. It trains them in habits, instincts, reflexes, and desires that run directly against the grain of pastoral ministry. It trains fragmented attention.
Pastoral ministry requires sustained reading, long prayer, careful listening, sermon preparation, hospital visits, ordinary administration, patience with slow sanctification, and long faithfulness in one place and in the same direction. The digital environment rewards speed, reaction, novelty, and emotional spikes. It is difficult to form pastors in a world that is constantly training men not to attend.
Social media trains what can be called spectator masculinity. Many young men consume masculinity without practicing it. They watch men lift, fight, debate, build, preach, hunt, argue, lead, and conquer imaginary worlds. They consume strength as content; they admire courage from a distance. They can talk endlessly about leadership while rarely being responsible for actual people. But a man does not become strong by watching strength. He becomes strong by bearing weight.
Further, social media trains avoidance of embodied risk. Ministry is intensely embodied. You have to look people in the eye and sit in rooms where grief is thick. You have to preach in public, and you have to correct real people, not avatars. You have to disappoint people, forgive people, and sometimes be misunderstood by people you love. Online life allows a man to curate, withdraw, mute, block, perform, or disappear. Pastoral ministry does not.
It trains cynicism toward institutions. A young man can spend years consuming stories of pastoral failure, denominational corruption, celebrity scandal, theological compromise, and online outrage. Some of that criticism is deserved. Churches have failed, and pastors have sinned. Churches have sometimes protected themselves when they should have protected sheep. But there is a kind of constant exposure to failure that does not produce wisdom. It produces contempt. A young man may become very skilled at diagnosing every problem in the church while never giving himself to the patient work of building anything.
The Influencer and the Pastor
The irony is that many young men are drawn to online teachers, influencers, and commentators who appear confident, masculine, and authoritative. Some of those men may say true things, and some may even be useful. But the contrast between the influencer and the pastor is worth considering, especially since everything the influencer does is for engagement.
The influencer gathers attention; the pastor gives attention. The influencer performs authority; the pastor bears responsibility. The influencer is rewarded for being interesting; the pastor is called to be faithful. The influencer can move on when the audience turns; the pastor stays with the flock. The influencer speaks to a crowd he does not know; the pastor must speak to people whose sins, sorrows, marriages, children, fears, and graves he knows. This does not mean that public teaching online is worthless. But we should not confuse influence with office. We should not confuse visibility with shepherding. And we should not be surprised if young men trained to admire the influencer’s platform struggle to desire the pastor’s burden.
That may be one of the most important parts of this whole discussion. The young man who admires theological combat online may not yet be ready to sit patiently with a grieving widow. The young man who loves the idea of masculine leadership may not yet be ready to serve unnoticed. The young man who wants to preach hard truths may not yet be ready to love hard people. The young man who wants to be useful in the kingdom may still need years of ordinary formation. That is not a reason to despise him. It is a reason to disciple him.
The Slow Work of Raising Men
The church does not need to panic. Nor does it need to imitate the online masculinity gurus. The answer is not to make ministry look more edgy, more combative, more platformed, or more attractive to restless young men. The answer is to recover ordinary Christian formation.
We need fathers who train sons to see work, worship, marriage, fatherhood, and church membership as honorable burdens. We need older men who do more than complain about young men. They must know them, invite them in, correct them, and give them something useful to do. We need elders who notice gifts early and test them patiently. We need pastors who take young men with them on visits, let them see the hidden parts of ministry, and show them that the work is costly but good.
Some of those sons may become ministers. Most will not, and that is fine. The church does not need every faithful young man to become a pastor. We need faithful husbands, fathers, elders, deacons, friends, craftsmen, teachers, farmers, soldiers, businessmen, and neighbors. We need Christian men in every lawful calling. But if we are not forming men for ordinary Christian responsibility, we should not be surprised when fewer are ready for extraordinary ecclesiastical responsibility.
We should pray that the Lord would raise up ministers. We should encourage young men to consider the ministry. We should help them pay for seminary, support them through trials, and rejoice when they are called to preach. But we should also ask harder questions. What kind of boys are we raising? What kind of young men are our churches forming? Are we giving them examples of joyful, sacrificial, masculine, pastoral strength? Are we inviting them close enough to see that ministry is not merely a platform but a life poured out for Christ and his sheep? The question is whether we are willing to do the slow work. The church does not merely need to recruit pastors. She needs to raise men.
©Everett Henes. All Rights Reserved.
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Everett Henes
Everett Henes (MDiv, ThM, DMin) is pastor of Hillsdale Orthodox Presbyterian Church, where he has served since 2008. He is husband to Kimberly and father of five children and grandfather of five (and counting!). He teaches US History and Philosophy of History for Jackson College in Michigan. He is currently working towards a PhD in Humanities with a focus in US Religious History from Faulkner University. In his spare time, he enjoys competing in powerlifting and strongman and teaching homeschoolers Taekwondo.
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