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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Christian leaders join Dominic Steele for a deep end conversation about our hearts and different aspects of Christian ministry each Tuesday afternoon.
We share personally, pastorally and professionally about how we can best fulfill Jesus' mission to save the lost and serve the saints.
The discussion is broadcast live on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/thepastorsheart">Facebook</a> then on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@ThePastorsHeart">YouTube</a> and on our <u><b><a href="http://www.thepastorsheart.net">thepastorsheart.net</a></u></b> website and via audio podcast.
The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Unblocking the pipeline: Identifying and addressing obstacles to ministry recruitment- with Orlando Saer
In the past month, two of the most respected evangelical training institutions in the world have closed or announced closure of their campuses.
In July, Spurgeon’s College in London—a pillar of Baptist theological education for nearly 170 years—closed, citing financial strain and a dramatic decline in student numbers.
A few weeks earlier, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS) in Chicago —long regarded as a flagship seminary of North American evangelicalism— said they would shut down its Illinois campus and relocate to Canada, merging with Trinity Western University in British Columbia.
TEDS student numbers have dropped from 750 to 400 fulltime equivalents.
These are not isolated incidents. Across the UK, Australia, and globally, churches are asking:
Where will the next generation of gospel workers come from?
Orlando Saer—lead pastor of Christ Church Southampton, Chair of the Reach UK South church planting network, and Chair of 9:38, a UK ministry seeking to raise up gospel workers, has helped lead the Yarnton Consultation, the most comprehensive look yet at the state of ministry recruitment in the UK.
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Raising up the next generation of gospel workers. Orlando Sayre is with us. It is the pastor's heart and it's Dominic Steele. Just in the past month, two of the most respected evangelical training institutions in the world have closed or have announced closure of their campuses. In July, spurgeons College in London, a pillar of Baptist theological education for nearly 170 years, closed. They cited financial strain and a dramatic decline in student numbers. And then, just a few weeks earlier, trinity Evangelical Divinity School, teds in Chicago, long regarded as a flagship seminary of North American evangelicalism, they said they would shut down their Illinois campus and relocate to Canada, merging with Trinity Western University in British Columbia.
Speaker 1:Just let that sink in. I wasn't paying attention, I didn't see this coming, but I've read. Student numbers at Trinity have dropped from 750 full-time equivalents to 400 full-time equivalents, and it's not isolated. Across the UK, australia and globally, churches are asking where will the next generation of gospel workers come from? Today, from the United Kingdom, old friend Orlando Sayer, lead pastor of Christchurch, southampton, chair of the Reach South UK church planting network and chair of 938 UK ministry aiming to raise up gospel workers. He helped lead the Yarnton Consultation, the most comprehensive look yet at the state of ministry recruitment in the UK and he's with us today and it is disturbing for our pastor's hearts, orlando it is disturbing.
Speaker 2:Most of us are aware that the future of the Christian faith is reliant on churches, and churches need leaders, and leaders need to be trained up. They don't come out of nowhere, and so where we've been wanting to see the Lord work and send out harvesters workers into his harvest field, and it doesn't seem to be happening. It does concern us.
Speaker 1:It leaves us asking some really hard questions as you met and I know you had a big summit, the Yarrington Consultation in the UK. Are you guys calling it a crisis? I feel like it's a crisis.
Speaker 2:I don't know about the word, whether it's a crisis or a concern or an anxiety or whatever it is, but it's certainly tricky. It's certainly tricky because, in the short term, there are posts that need to be filled in churches around the country and elsewhere, there are ministries that need to be staffed. But in the longer term and that's really the bigger issue there are people that we want to be raised to a kind of replacement philosophy of ministry. We want to see new ministries grow because we've got a big task to do. The gospel needs to reach more people who are in darkness and need to be brought into light.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now you did this consultation 30 or 40 ministry leaders from across the UK. You surveyed 30 theological training institutions. Help us with some data.
Speaker 2:Well, the data was interesting. It showed what we had suspected. So one of our great concerns was the data we were picking up was simply anecdotal. So, for example, in the past, where would you see the most likely source of new church leaders coming from? A couple of very well-reliable suppliers would be the children of current pastors would be one, but also those, for example, who had been leaders of their own student Christian unions at university. And when we just talked around the place, I talked to my ministry peers are any of your kids thinking about ministry? No, none of them are, was the answer. Talk to people on Christian union leadership teams Are any of your committee thinking about going to Christian ministry? No, none of them are.
Speaker 2:And so we were relying on that kind of data. The fact that vacancies were going unanswered, unfilled people without the suitable gifts being appointed, and so on. We had that to contend with. So we had to say come on, let's see if we can actually ask around a bit more, put some surveys into the field and work out what's going on. And we did find that…. So you've done the surveys.
Speaker 2:So we did the surveys in the lead-up to the yanton consultation last year and that was one of the things that we we took as our sort of basis when we, when we, when we met and we found that, yes, the theological colleges intake had dropped, and had dropped significantly, um, in some cases 30.
Speaker 1:I'm just looking. I mean you've been a little discreet about whether or not. We're prepared to put this up on the screen, this table, but I'm looking at it and I'm seeing one of them down 30%, another down 8%. You know there's a concern.
Speaker 2:There's a real concern, and it stretches across the field, not just in terms of actual theological education, but also for many like the ministry trainee schemes, churches which used to appoint one or's worker, a youth worker, an assistant pastor, unable to find one, agencies and the total number of missionaries being sent out in 2015 or on the field in 2015 1939, 2023 are 1700, and so we're down to 10 9.9.
Speaker 1:10 and I mean the missionaries is further down the pipeline, but we're down there as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we are, and that, of course, it's both harder to track where people end up the further they go from home, but also more concerning, because we do believe in global mission. We do believe that we in the West still have a sense of legacy that we've inherited, a responsibility to spread, and even though the numbers are not in our favour, the numbers of Christians gathered in other parts of the world are much greater than in the West.
Speaker 1:I'm going to come in a moment to the what's the cause and what's the solution, but one last statistic, and this is the Church of England and we'll put it up on the screen, and this is just devastating. From 2018, recommendations for ordination in the Church of England 580, 2023, 329, a 35% drop. Yeah, 379, yeah, sorry, 379, a 35% drop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 379,. Yeah Sorry 379,.
Speaker 1:yeah, in a 34.7% drop in just six years. I mean, we've watched the Church of England implode, aghast from this part of the world. But what's your take on what's going on there?
Speaker 2:Well, it's very tricky because there is when you see the denomination itself and you see in a state of great uncertainty and lots of effort being put into alternative trajectories that the Church of England might take. That's fine at the level of strategic planning, but at the level of individual decisions, am I going to give?
Speaker 1:my life. Is this a boat that's safe for me to fish from for the next 30 years?
Speaker 2:Yes, Given the state of the world and finances and so on. I want something that feels a little bit safe at least, or at least wise.
Speaker 1:I remember being an independent minister and Peter Jensen becoming the Archbishop here and me thinking I really like the direction he's taking things. I could be a lieutenant and work in his army. You know, that would be a good thing. There's a godliness, there's a leadership, there's a sort of let's take on the world. You know, and I thought I want to help. Yeah, and you're not seeing that from the, the big leaders there at the moment yeah, no, we're not.
Speaker 2:There is a a real loss of confidence and even as we look forward, uh, not knowing who the next archbishop of canterbury will be. You know people like me looking from the sidelines because I'm not part of the church of england uh, there is a sense of um hoping for the least of the least bad option, rather than actually somebody who is going to wave the flag for the Lord Jesus his glory. Yeah, that's what we're left with.
Speaker 1:Okay, when you did the survey and we'll put this up on the screen we got some all sorts of different answers from people on the question of what's holding people back, and do you want to speak to some of these? Yeah?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, I mean there are quite a number of reasons that we suggested and we asked people to comment on those and give some of their own, and it wasn't. In many ways there weren't that many surprises. But when we try to collate them into, let's distill these down to just a few causes of what is the cause of ministry reluctance. We found an interesting parallel, and the parallel is to popular antinatalism. We're all aware of the falling birth rate in Western countries and so on, and lots of questions are being asked by politicians about why people aren't having children anymore, and and the reasons tend to come down to three things. One is cost. It's just the cost of living has made it impossible to conceive of having a family.
Speaker 2:The second one is, I guess, a sense of crisis. Where is the world heading? Environmental breakdown, the wars? Do I really want to bring a child into this world? And the third one is a sense of confidence. Do I have what it takes to raise a child? Do I, am I able to do that? Can I? Have I seen good models of parenting myself? No, I haven't. Can I do this?
Speaker 1:And we I mean we, we say those things.
Speaker 2:I think I remember feeling all those things, but but you're saying it's bigger, yeah yeah, yes, all those things are huge and we see the the declining birth rate as a result. What we've noticed was that those three same things tracked onto a ministry reluctance, which maybe shouldn't be a surprise. So, for example, we noticed that the cost, the finances, are enormous in the decision-making process. The cost of living has increased considerably since the GFC, and particularly in the last few years, and both in the short term the idea of seeing through the training years and in the long term can I actually live with a family off a pastor's stipend? Is that really conceivable? That's been a huge turnoff and people are being very upfront about that, so it's one of the big things for people. The second was the issue of crisis, and you just mentioned a second ago the crisis in the Church of England, but that's broader across the other denominations too.
Speaker 1:Are you seeing that in the FIC and other places? No, we're not.
Speaker 2:The FIC is very different to that. The FIC has seen a resurgence over the last 15 years or so.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to decide where I want to serve Jesus. Do I trust the leadership? I mean John Stevens and people like that seem very impressive?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they do, and the team is inspiring, and so there's a very different. There's a different field that we're playing with just at the moment. Who knows what the future might open up.
Speaker 2:There's a confidence there, but the other link thing, I suppose, in that sense of crisis is the way in which ministers have been brought into the spotlight through the various abuses that have taken place, and there's a sense of being tarred with the same brush. Am I going to get a kicking if I put myself forward for a ministry like this? Is that something that I want to do? I've seen my own pastor or my own people I've seen close by and had to endure that. Do I really want to go there? So that sense of crisis, I suppose, is a big one. And the third one I mentioned, that is the issue of confidence, and this is huge. The rise in issues to do with mental health, the rise in issues to do with mental health, anxiety, robustness, and also the rise of things like pornography, which has been such a dominant theme, has meant that lots of people are asking the question can I really do this? Am I cut out?
Speaker 1:for this Do I have what it takes?
Speaker 2:And in some ways, of course, that's a healthy question to ask.
Speaker 1:You want people to say do I have what it takes? You want people to be not self-sufficient. I don't want to too quickly answer the question that I am suitable to lead the people of God.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, but the reality is that has become huge and defining for people and many are saying I can't do this, I can't in all conscience say this is something that I'm cut out for or prepared to consider. So those three C's map out in a similar way in ministry and maybe a couple more. One is, I suppose, the comfort issue. In a previous generation maybe yours and mine, dominic there was almost a gung-ho attitude towards you know, sacrifice, sacrifice, is something we're willing to take on. We're going to give up life's comforts for the sake of the gospel and we're finding in younger Christians today that doesn't compute, it doesn't gain traction, the idea of sacrifice. There's more of a sense of you know, we actually need to have a bit of self-protection here. We need to make sure that life we are going to be insulated from some of life's worries a little bit. That's something that's hard to nail down, but it's something that we certainly passed in my sort of world and noticing and maybe one more, I'll give one more uh, just of those reasons that people are citing or people are noticing in those who are thinking about ministry. And that's the issue, I guess, of what issues connected with calling so in the last um decade or two, there's been a rise of the sense of the dignity of ordinary work.
Speaker 2:Secular callings, yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's which is in some ways it's a very wonderful thing, but of course it does draw into question. Well, what about the calling of the pastor? Where does that sit? Is that just any different at all? Is that just any different at all? And you remember Paul's encouragement to Timothy in chapter 3, saying whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task? And there is a question of is that nobility, is that dignity of Christian leadership, something that's just gone out of the window? No-transcript.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, as you say that you're almost saying we've got what we deserved, you know yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that may be right. It's hard when you see cases of abuse in the church, and some of them are real cases of abuse, but others are oh, I now have a category to define what I see and label it in that way, and that gives the ability for others to say well, do you know what? Oh, I'm experiencing that too, and so people are afraid of leadership.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean as you say, that. I mean I've spoken publicly about this before, but in 2010, I was put on trial at the Supreme Court of New South Wales and the allegation against me was that I'd not told the truth to an inappropriate group of people with the motive of malice. And in the end, I was found to have told the truth to the appropriate group of people and not with the motive of malice. But to sort that through was four years of my life, thinking I wanted to preach Christ and wanted to go around and evangelise and see people come to Christ. And how have I ended up here? Yeah, and in the end, I mean I was exonerated, but it wasn't without cost.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is devastating both for the individuals affected and the families of of those who are? Affected and the churches of those who are affected. And you know the next generation does see that yeah so how do we respond?
Speaker 1:I mean your chair of the group, uh, that's trying to raise up gospel workers. You've had a big consultation with 40 or so key leaders. What have you come up with?
Speaker 2:Well, nothing earth-shattering, there are no golden bullets, but we started, of course, where the Lord Jesus himself starts. How do you respond to the disparity between the harvest and the number of workers? How do you respond to the disparity between the harvest and the number of workers? You ask, ask the Lord of the harvest to send workers into his harvest field. And so we do want to be committed to prayer. We must be committed to prayer, and perhaps we have failed in that in the past.
Speaker 1:Perhaps we have taken for granted, assumed it was going to happen where there was a wave of people.
Speaker 2:When there's a machine, there's a sausage machine, whatever it is. There's a pipeline just operating without anybody seeming to do anything to it. It is tempting to step away from Christ's sufficiency in that area. So we want to pray, but we also there's things we can do with the Lord's help and we think, you know, maybe we should think about this a little bit more.
Speaker 2:For example, have we lost a sense of vision In terms of envisioning people, both about the gospel need and about the calling of the pastor, of the overseer? So that's the clarity of vision of you know, there is human. Sinfulness is universal. God's wrath is real, judgment is coming. Christ is the only way People can only hear of Christ, through people telling them and so on.
Speaker 2:Are we being clear about that vision and are we being motivating and exciting to young people to say do you know what? This is an extraordinary situation, the need is real, the need is urgent. You have been given something here, a precious gift, the gospel of the lord jesus christ, which can bring people from darkness to light. Do you see, just trying to envision people, um, in a new way, in a way that perhaps we haven't been effective at doing so? There's a bit of that, um, there's a bit too, I think, of changing cultures in churches. Now you'll have seen this, I'm sure, dominic, in past, as you know that we're notionally by the urgent uh are the pastoral needs, and most churches are all consuming. Uh, the number of hats that the pastor is expected to wear is huge, and the energy is finite.
Speaker 2:All these people saying if you don't do this, the kingdom will fall yeah, exactly, and so, and often it the pastor is more committed to training than the church that he leads, and so the church is not encouraging the pastor to devote time and attention to training. And often, of course, in churches they're quite divided churches, and if you have a divided church, not only are the pastoral needs huge, but the political needs of keeping the church together are huge. And so if we can somehow pray and act towards churches sharing together a sense of the importance of training, liberating their pastor and others to be involved in that work and others to be involved in that work, then we're halfway there to trying to engender a culture of training so that somebody who's eight years old, 14 years old, 17 years old, is thinking, oh, yes, well, this seems a very obvious thing for me to be thinking about for the future, things like that. And, of course, funding.
Speaker 1:Funding is huge and you're going to need to make changes there. We are going to need to make changes there. What sort of things?
Speaker 2:So in the past, of course, the denominations have often been the ones who have funded theological education, and therefore there's been a very easy route through, at least in the training years.
Speaker 2:Exactly the training years, At least in the training years. Exactly the training years and with fewer being prepared to put themselves forward for the Church of England. And, of course, the FIC is also not producing large numbers of pastors. Lots of people in FIC circles training for something, different forms of ministry, but not so many as pastors. We are going to have to think how are we going to fund training, and so, in the light of YonTan a year ago, a subgroup of that consultation have been meeting regularly trying to work through some of these issues, trying to put pieces together for a strategy or at least an approach that will address each of these.
Speaker 1:Great. Thanks so much for coming and talking to us. Orlando Sayer is our guest on the Pastor's Heart, and Orlando is the Senior Minister of Christ Church in Southampton in the UK. He also serves as the Chair of the Reach South UK for Reach UK and as Chair of 938, a UK ministry aiming to raise up gospel workers. My name is Dominic Steele. You've been with us on the Pastor's Heart. We will look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
