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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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Raising up the next generation of gospel workers.
Orlando Sayre is with us.
It is the pastor's heart andit's Dominic Steele.
Just in the past month, two ofthe most respected evangelical
training institutions in theworld have closed or have
announced closure of theircampuses.
In July, spurgeons College inLondon, a pillar of Baptist
(00:29):
theological education for nearly170 years, closed.
They cited financial strain anda dramatic decline in student
numbers.
And then, just a few weeksearlier, trinity Evangelical
Divinity School, teds in Chicago, long regarded as a flagship
seminary of North Americanevangelicalism, they said they
(00:52):
would shut down their Illinoiscampus and relocate to Canada,
merging with Trinity WesternUniversity in British Columbia.
Just let that sink in.
I wasn't paying attention, Ididn't see this coming, but I've
read.
Student numbers at Trinity havedropped from 750 full-time
equivalents to 400 full-timeequivalents, and it's not
(01:16):
isolated.
Across the UK, australia andglobally, churches are asking
where will the next generationof 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 networkand chair of 938 UK ministry
(01:40):
aiming to raise up gospelworkers.
He helped lead the YarntonConsultation, the most
comprehensive look yet at thestate of ministry recruitment in
the UK and he's with us todayand it is disturbing for our
pastor's hearts, orlando it isdisturbing.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
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 sendout harvesters workers into his
harvest field, and it doesn'tseem to be happening.
(02:21):
It does concern us.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
It leaves us asking some really hard questions as
you met and I know you had a bigsummit, the Yarrington
Consultation in the UK.
Are you guys calling it acrisis?
I feel like it's a crisis.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I don't know about the word, whether it's a crisis
or a concern or an anxiety orwhatever it is, but it's
certainly tricky.
It's certainly tricky because,in the short term, there are
posts that need to be filled inchurches around the country and
elsewhere, there are ministriesthat need to be staffed.
But in the longer term andthat's really the bigger issue
(02:56):
there are people that we want tobe raised to a kind of
replacement philosophy ofministry.
We want to see new ministriesgrow because we've got a big
task to do.
The gospel needs to reach morepeople who are in darkness and
need to be brought into light.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, now you did this consultation 30 or 40
ministry leaders from across theUK.
You surveyed 30 theologicaltraining institutions.
Help us with some data.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Well, the data was interesting.
It showed what we had suspected.
So one of our great concernswas the data we were picking up
was simply anecdotal.
So, for example, in the past,where would you see the most
(03:48):
likely source of new churchleaders coming from?
A couple of very well-reliablesuppliers would be the children
of current pastors would be one,but also those, for example,
who had been leaders of theirown student Christian unions at
university.
And when we just talked aroundthe place, I talked to my
ministry peers are any of yourkids thinking about ministry?
(04:09):
No, none of them are, was theanswer.
Talk to people on Christianunion leadership teams Are any
of your committee thinking aboutgoing to Christian ministry?
No, none of them are.
And so we were relying on thatkind of data.
The fact that vacancies weregoing unanswered, unfilled
people without the suitablegifts being appointed, and so on
(04:30):
.
We had that to contend with.
So we had to say come on, let'ssee if we can actually ask
around a bit more, put somesurveys into the field and work
out what's going on.
And we did find that….
So you've done the surveys.
So we did the surveys in thelead-up to the yanton
consultation last year and thatwas one of the things that we we
(04:51):
took as our sort of basis whenwe, when we, when we met and we
found that, yes, the theologicalcolleges intake had dropped,
and had dropped significantly,um, in some cases 30.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
I'm just looking.
I mean you've been a littlediscreet about whether or not.
We're prepared to put this upon the screen, this table, but
I'm looking at it and I'm seeingone of them down 30%, another
down 8%.
You know there's a concern.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
There's a real concern, and it stretches across
the field, not just in terms ofactual theological education,
but also for many like theministry trainee schemes,
churches which used to appointone or's worker, a youth worker,
an assistant pastor, unable tofind one, agencies and the total
number of missionaries beingsent out in 2015 or on the field
(05:44):
in 2015 1939, 2023 are 1700,and so we're down to 10 9.9.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
10 and I mean the missionaries is further down the
pipeline, but we're down thereas well.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah, we are, and that, of course, it's both
harder to track where people endup the further they go from
home, but also more concerning,because we do believe in global
mission.
We do believe that we in theWest still have a sense of
(06:49):
legacy that we've inherited, aresponsibility to spread, and
even though the numbers are notin our favour, the numbers of
Christians gathered in otherparts of the world are much
greater than in the West.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
I'm going to come in a moment to the what's the cause
and what's the solution, butone last statistic, and this is
the Church of England and we'llput it up on the screen, and
this is just devastating.
From 2018, recommendations forordination in the Church of
England 580, 2023, 329, a 35%drop.
Yeah, 379, yeah, sorry, 379, a35% drop.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, 379,.
Yeah Sorry 379,.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
yeah, in a 34.7% drop in just six years.
I mean, we've watched theChurch of England implode,
aghast from this part of theworld.
But what's your take on what'sgoing on there?
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Well, it's very tricky because there is when you
see the denomination itself andyou see in a state of great
uncertainty and lots of effortbeing put into alternative
trajectories that the Church ofEngland might take.
That's fine at the level ofstrategic planning, but at the
level of individual decisions,am I going to give?
Speaker 1 (08:05):
my life.
Is this a boat that's safe forme to fish from for the next 30
years?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yes, Given the state of the world and finances and so
on.
I want something that feels alittle bit safe at least, or at
least wise.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
I remember being an independent minister and Peter
Jensen becoming the Archbishophere and me thinking I really
like the direction he's takingthings.
I could be a lieutenant andwork in his army.
You know, that would be a goodthing.
(08:45):
There's a godliness, there's aleadership, there's a sort of
let's take on the world.
You know, and I thought I wantto help.
Yeah, and you're not seeingthat from the, the big leaders
there at the moment yeah, no,we're not.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
There is a a real loss of confidence and even as
we look forward, uh, not knowingwho the next archbishop of
canterbury will be.
You know people like me lookingfrom the sidelines because I'm
not part of the church ofengland uh, there is a sense of
um hoping for the least of theleast bad option, rather than
actually somebody who is goingto wave the flag for the Lord
(09:24):
Jesus his glory.
Yeah, that's what we're leftwith.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Okay, when you did the survey and we'll put this up
on the screen we got some allsorts of different answers from
people on the question of what'sholding people back, and do you
want to speak to some of these?
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yeah, sure, I mean there are quite a number of
reasons that we suggested and weasked people to comment on
those and give some of their own, and it wasn't.
In many ways there weren't thatmany surprises.
But when we try to collate theminto, let's distill these down
to just a few causes of what isthe cause of ministry reluctance
(10:06):
.
We found an interestingparallel, and the parallel is to
popular antinatalism.
We're all aware of the fallingbirth rate in Western countries
and so on, and lots of questionsare being asked by politicians
about why people aren't havingchildren anymore, and and the
(10:28):
reasons tend to come down tothree things.
One is cost.
It's just the cost of livinghas made it impossible to
conceive of having a family.
The second one is, I guess, asense of crisis.
Where is the world heading?
Environmental breakdown, thewars?
Do I really want to bring achild into this world?
And the third one is a sense ofconfidence.
(10:52):
Do I have what it takes toraise a child?
Do I, am I able to do that?
Can I?
Have I seen good models ofparenting myself?
No, I haven't.
Can I do this?
Speaker 1 (11:02):
And we I mean we, we say those things.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
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 thedeclining birth rate as a result
.
What we've noticed was thatthose three same things tracked
onto a ministry reluctance,which maybe shouldn't be a
(11:24):
surprise.
So, for example, we noticedthat the cost, the finances, are
enormous in the decision-makingprocess.
The cost of living hasincreased considerably since the
GFC, and particularly in thelast few years, and both in the
short term the idea of seeingthrough the training years and
(11:45):
in the long term can I actuallylive with a family off a
pastor's stipend?
Is that really conceivable?
That's been a huge turnoff andpeople are being very upfront
about that, so it's one of thebig things for people.
The second was the issue ofcrisis, and you just mentioned a
(12:05):
second ago the crisis in theChurch of England, but that's
broader across the otherdenominations too.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Are you seeing that in the FIC and other places?
No, we're not.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
The FIC is very different to that.
The FIC has seen a resurgenceover the last 15 years or so.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
I'm trying to decide where I want to serve Jesus.
Do I trust the leadership?
I mean John Stevens and peoplelike that seem very impressive?
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, they do, and the team is inspiring, and so
there's a very different.
There's a different field thatwe're playing with just at the
moment.
Who knows what the future mightopen up.
There's a confidence there, butthe other link thing, I suppose,
in that sense of crisis is theway in which ministers have been
brought into the spotlightthrough the various abuses that
(12:49):
have taken place, and there's asense of being tarred with the
same brush.
Am I going to get a kicking ifI put myself forward for a
ministry like this?
Is that something that I wantto do?
I've seen my own pastor or myown people I've seen close by
and had to endure that.
Do I really want to go there?
So that sense of crisis, Isuppose, is a big one.
(13:16):
And the third one I mentioned,that is the issue of confidence,
and this is huge.
The rise in issues to do withmental health, the rise in
issues to do with mental health,anxiety, robustness, and also
(13:36):
the rise of things likepornography, which has been such
a dominant theme, has meantthat lots of people are asking
the question can I really dothis?
Am I cut out?
Speaker 1 (13:40):
for this Do I have what it takes?
Speaker 2 (13:41):
And in some ways, of course, that's a healthy
question to ask.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
You want people to say do I have what it takes?
You want people to be notself-sufficient.
I don't want to too quicklyanswer the question that I am
suitable to lead the people ofGod.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yes, exactly, but the reality is that has become huge
and defining for people andmany are saying I can't do this,
I can't in all conscience saythis is something that I'm cut
out for or prepared to consider.
So those three C's map out in asimilar way in ministry and
(14:12):
maybe a couple more.
One is, I suppose, the comfortissue.
In a previous generation maybeyours and mine, dominic there
was almost a gung-ho attitudetowards you know, sacrifice,
sacrifice, is something we'rewilling to take on.
We're going to give up life'scomforts for the sake of the
gospel and we're finding inyounger Christians today that
(14:36):
doesn't compute, it doesn't gaintraction, the idea of sacrifice
.
There's more of a sense of youknow, we actually need to have a
bit of self-protection here.
We need to make sure that lifewe are going to be insulated
from some of life's worries alittle bit.
That's something that's hard tonail down, but it's something
(14:57):
that we certainly passed in mysort of world and noticing and
maybe one more, I'll give onemore uh, just of those reasons
that people are citing or peopleare 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 decadeor two, there's been a rise of
(15:22):
the sense of the dignity ofordinary work.
Secular callings, yeah, yeah,yeah, and that's which is in
some ways it's a very wonderfulthing, but of course it does
draw into question.
Well, what about the calling ofthe pastor?
Where does that sit?
Is that just any different atall?
Is that just any different atall?
And you remember Paul'sencouragement to Timothy in
(15:44):
chapter 3, saying whoeveraspires to be an overseer
desires a noble task?
And there is a question of isthat nobility, is that dignity
of Christian leadership,something that's just gone out
of the window?
No-transcript.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Well, I mean, as you say that you're almost saying
we've got what we deserved, youknow yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yeah, that may be right.
It's hard when you see cases ofabuse 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 seeand label it in that way, and
(16:35):
that gives the ability forothers to say well, do you know
what?
Oh, I'm experiencing that too,and so people are afraid of
leadership.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, I mean as you say, that.
I mean I've spoken publiclyabout this before, but in 2010,
I was put on trial at theSupreme Court of New South Wales
and the allegation against mewas that I'd not told the truth
to an inappropriate group ofpeople with the motive of malice
(17:06):
.
And in the end, I was found tohave told the truth to the
appropriate group of people andnot with the motive of malice.
But to sort that through wasfour years of my life, thinking
(17:33):
I wanted to preach Christ andwanted to go around and
evangelise and see people cometo Christ.
And how have I ended up here?
Yeah, and in the end, I mean Iwas exonerated, but it wasn't
without cost.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah, it is devastating both for the
individuals affected and thefamilies of of those who are?
Affected and the churches ofthose who are affected.
And you know the nextgeneration does see that yeah so
how do we respond?
Speaker 1 (18:05):
I mean your chair of the group, uh, that's trying to
raise up gospel workers.
You've had a big consultationwith 40 or so key leaders.
What have you come up with?
Speaker 2 (18:17):
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 thedisparity between the harvest
and the number of workers?
How do you respond to thedisparity between the harvest
and the number of workers?
You ask, ask the Lord of theharvest to send workers into his
(18:37):
harvest field.
And so we do want to becommitted to prayer.
We must be committed to prayer,and perhaps we have failed in
that in the past.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Perhaps we have taken for granted, assumed it was
going to happen where there wasa wave of people.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
When there's a machine, there's a sausage
machine, whatever it is.
There's a pipeline justoperating without anybody
seeming to do anything to it.
It is tempting to step awayfrom Christ's sufficiency in
that area.
So we want to pray, but we alsothere's things we can do with
(19:12):
the Lord's help and we think,you know, maybe we should think
about this a little bit more.
For example, have we lost asense of vision In terms of
envisioning people, both aboutthe gospel need and about the
calling of the pastor, of theoverseer?
(19:34):
So that's the clarity of visionof you know, there is human.
Sinfulness is universal.
God's wrath is real, judgmentis coming.
Christ is the only way Peoplecan only hear of Christ, through
people telling them and so on.
(19:57):
Are we being clear about thatvision and are we being
motivating and exciting to youngpeople to say do you know what?
This is an extraordinarysituation, the need is real, the
need is urgent.
You have been given somethinghere, a precious gift, the
gospel of the lord jesus christ,which can bring people from
darkness to light.
(20:17):
Do you see, just trying toenvision people, um, in a new
way, in a way that perhaps wehaven'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'msure, dominic, in past, as you
(20:38):
know that we're notionally bythe urgent uh are the pastoral
needs, and most churches are allconsuming.
Uh, the number of hats that thepastor is expected to wear is
(21:00):
huge, and the energy is finite.
All these people saying if youdon't do this, the kingdom will
fall yeah, exactly, and so, andoften it the pastor is more
committed to training than thechurch that he leads, and so the
church is not encouraging thepastor to devote time and
attention to training.
(21:20):
And often, of course, inchurches they're quite divided
churches, and if you have adivided church, not only are the
pastoral needs huge, but thepolitical needs of keeping the
church together are huge.
And so if we can somehow prayand act towards churches sharing
(21:41):
together a sense of theimportance of training,
liberating their pastor andothers to be involved in that
work and others to be involvedin that work, then we're halfway
there to trying to engender aculture of training so that
somebody who's eight years old,14 years old, 17 years old, is
(22:03):
thinking, oh, yes, well, thisseems a very obvious thing for
me to be thinking about for thefuture, things like that.
And, of course, funding.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Funding is huge and you're going to need to make
changes there.
We are going to need to makechanges there.
What sort of things?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
So in the past, of course, the denominations have
often been the ones who havefunded theological education,
and therefore there's been avery easy route through, at
least in the training years.
Exactly the training years, Atleast in the training years.
Exactly the training years andwith fewer being prepared to put
themselves forward for theChurch of England.
And, of course, the FIC is alsonot producing large numbers of
(22:41):
pastors.
Lots of people in FIC circlestraining for something,
different forms of ministry, butnot so many as pastors.
We are going to have to thinkhow are we going to fund
training, and so, in the lightof YonTan a year ago, a subgroup
of that consultation have beenmeeting regularly trying to work
(23:02):
through some of these issues,trying to put pieces together
for a strategy or at least anapproach that will address each
of these.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Great.
Thanks so much for coming andtalking to us.
Orlando Sayer is our guest onthe Pastor's Heart, and Orlando
is the Senior Minister of ChristChurch in Southampton in the UK
.
He also serves as the Chair ofthe Reach South UK for Reach UK
and as Chair of 938, a UKministry aiming to raise up
(23:34):
gospel workers.
My name is Dominic Steele.
You've been with us on thePastor's Heart.
We will look forward to yourcompany next Tuesday afternoon.
Raising up the next generation of gospel workers.
Orlando Sayre is with us.
It is the pastor's heart andit's Dominic Steele.
Just in the past month, two ofthe most respected evangelical
training institutions in theworld have closed or have
announced closure of theircampuses.
In July, spurgeons College inLondon, a pillar of Baptist
(00:29):
theological education for nearly170 years, closed.
They cited financial strain anda dramatic decline in student
numbers.
And then, just a few weeksearlier, trinity Evangelical
Divinity School, teds in Chicago, long regarded as a flagship
seminary of North Americanevangelicalism, they said they
(00:52):
would shut down their Illinoiscampus and relocate to Canada,
merging with Trinity WesternUniversity in British Columbia.
Just let that sink in.
I wasn't paying attention, Ididn't see this coming, but I've
read.
Student numbers at Trinity havedropped from 750 full-time
equivalents to 400 full-timeequivalents, and it's not
(01:16):
isolated.
Across the UK, australia andglobally, churches are asking
where will the next generationof 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 networkand chair of 938 UK ministry
(01:40):
aiming to raise up gospelworkers.
He helped lead the YarntonConsultation, the most
comprehensive look yet at thestate of ministry recruitment in
the UK and he's with us todayand it is disturbing for our
pastor's hearts, orlando it isdisturbing.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
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 sendout harvesters workers into his
harvest field, and it doesn'tseem to be happening.
(02:21):
It does concern us.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
It leaves us asking some really hard questions as
you met and I know you had a bigsummit, the Yarrington
Consultation in the UK.
Are you guys calling it acrisis?
I feel like it's a crisis.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I don't know about the word, whether it's a crisis
or a concern or an anxiety orwhatever it is, but it's
certainly tricky.
It's certainly tricky because,in the short term, there are
posts that need to be filled inchurches around the country and
elsewhere, there are ministriesthat need to be staffed.
But in the longer term andthat's really the bigger issue
(02:56):
there are people that we want tobe raised to a kind of
replacement philosophy ofministry.
We want to see new ministriesgrow because we've got a big
task to do.
The gospel needs to reach morepeople who are in darkness and
need to be brought into light.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, now you did this consultation 30 or 40
ministry leaders from across theUK.
You surveyed 30 theologicaltraining institutions.
Help us with some data.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Well, the data was interesting.
It showed what we had suspected.
So one of our great concernswas the data we were picking up
was simply anecdotal.
So, for example, in the past,where would you see the most
(03:48):
likely source of new churchleaders coming from?
A couple of very well-reliablesuppliers would be the children
of current pastors would be one,but also those, for example,
who had been leaders of theirown student Christian unions at
university.
And when we just talked aroundthe place, I talked to my
ministry peers are any of yourkids thinking about ministry?
(04:09):
No, none of them are, was theanswer.
Talk to people on Christianunion leadership teams Are any
of your committee thinking aboutgoing to Christian ministry?
No, none of them are.
And so we were relying on thatkind of data.
The fact that vacancies weregoing unanswered, unfilled
people without the suitablegifts being appointed, and so on
(04:30):
.
We had that to contend with.
So we had to say come on, let'ssee if we can actually ask
around a bit more, put somesurveys into the field and work
out what's going on.
And we did find that….
So you've done the surveys.
So we did the surveys in thelead-up to the yanton
consultation last year and thatwas one of the things that we we
(04:51):
took as our sort of basis whenwe, when we, when we met and we
found that, yes, the theologicalcolleges intake had dropped,
and had dropped significantly,um, in some cases 30.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
I'm just looking.
I mean you've been a littlediscreet about whether or not.
We're prepared to put this upon the screen, this table, but
I'm looking at it and I'm seeingone of them down 30%, another
down 8%.
You know there's a concern.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
There's a real concern, and it stretches across
the field, not just in terms ofactual theological education,
but also for many like theministry trainee schemes,
churches which used to appointone or's worker, a youth worker,
an assistant pastor, unable tofind one, agencies and the total
number of missionaries beingsent out in 2015 or on the field
(05:44):
in 2015 1939, 2023 are 1700,and so we're down to 10 9.9.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
10 and I mean the missionaries is further down the
pipeline, but we're down thereas well.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah, we are, and that, of course, it's both
harder to track where people endup the further they go from
home, but also more concerning,because we do believe in global
mission.
We do believe that we in theWest still have a sense of
(06:49):
legacy that we've inherited, aresponsibility to spread, and
even though the numbers are notin our favour, the numbers of
Christians gathered in otherparts of the world are much
greater than in the West.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
I'm going to come in a moment to the what's the cause
and what's the solution, butone last statistic, and this is
the Church of England and we'llput it up on the screen, and
this is just devastating.
From 2018, recommendations forordination in the Church of
England 580, 2023, 329, a 35%drop.
Yeah, 379, yeah, sorry, 379, a35% drop.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, 379,.
Yeah Sorry 379,.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
yeah, in a 34.7% drop in just six years.
I mean, we've watched theChurch of England implode,
aghast from this part of theworld.
But what's your take on what'sgoing on there?
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Well, it's very tricky because there is when you
see the denomination itself andyou see in a state of great
uncertainty and lots of effortbeing put into alternative
trajectories that the Church ofEngland might take.
That's fine at the level ofstrategic planning, but at the
level of individual decisions,am I going to give?
Speaker 1 (08:05):
my life.
Is this a boat that's safe forme to fish from for the next 30
years?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yes, Given the state of the world and finances and so
on.
I want something that feels alittle bit safe at least, or at
least wise.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
I remember being an independent minister and Peter
Jensen becoming the Archbishophere and me thinking I really
like the direction he's takingthings.
I could be a lieutenant andwork in his army.
You know, that would be a goodthing.
(08:45):
There's a godliness, there's aleadership, there's a sort of
let's take on the world.
You know, and I thought I wantto help.
Yeah, and you're not seeingthat from the, the big leaders
there at the moment yeah, no,we're not.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
There is a a real loss of confidence and even as
we look forward, uh, not knowingwho the next archbishop of
canterbury will be.
You know people like me lookingfrom the sidelines because I'm
not part of the church ofengland uh, there is a sense of
um hoping for the least of theleast bad option, rather than
actually somebody who is goingto wave the flag for the Lord
(09:24):
Jesus his glory.
Yeah, that's what we're leftwith.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Okay, when you did the survey and we'll put this up
on the screen we got some allsorts of different answers from
people on the question of what'sholding people back, and do you
want to speak to some of these?
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yeah, sure, I mean there are quite a number of
reasons that we suggested and weasked people to comment on
those and give some of their own, and it wasn't.
In many ways there weren't thatmany surprises.
But when we try to collate theminto, let's distill these down
to just a few causes of what isthe cause of ministry reluctance
(10:06):
.
We found an interestingparallel, and the parallel is to
popular antinatalism.
We're all aware of the fallingbirth rate in Western countries
and so on, and lots of questionsare being asked by politicians
about why people aren't havingchildren anymore, and and the
(10:28):
reasons tend to come down tothree things.
One is cost.
It's just the cost of livinghas made it impossible to
conceive of having a family.
The second one is, I guess, asense of crisis.
Where is the world heading?
Environmental breakdown, thewars?
Do I really want to bring achild into this world?
And the third one is a sense ofconfidence.
(10:52):
Do I have what it takes toraise a child?
Do I, am I able to do that?
Can I?
Have I seen good models ofparenting myself?
No, I haven't.
Can I do this?
Speaker 1 (11:02):
And we I mean we, we say those things.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
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 thedeclining birth rate as a result
.
What we've noticed was thatthose three same things tracked
onto a ministry reluctance,which maybe shouldn't be a
(11:24):
surprise.
So, for example, we noticedthat the cost, the finances, are
enormous in the decision-makingprocess.
The cost of living hasincreased considerably since the
GFC, and particularly in thelast few years, and both in the
short term the idea of seeingthrough the training years and
(11:45):
in the long term can I actuallylive with a family off a
pastor's stipend?
Is that really conceivable?
That's been a huge turnoff andpeople are being very upfront
about that, so it's one of thebig things for people.
The second was the issue ofcrisis, and you just mentioned a
(12:05):
second ago the crisis in theChurch of England, but that's
broader across the otherdenominations too.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Are you seeing that in the FIC and other places?
No, we're not.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
The FIC is very different to that.
The FIC has seen a resurgenceover the last 15 years or so.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
I'm trying to decide where I want to serve Jesus.
Do I trust the leadership?
I mean John Stevens and peoplelike that seem very impressive?
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, they do, and the team is inspiring, and so
there's a very different.
There's a different field thatwe're playing with just at the
moment.
Who knows what the future mightopen up.
There's a confidence there, butthe other link thing, I suppose,
in that sense of crisis is theway in which ministers have been
brought into the spotlightthrough the various abuses that
(12:49):
have taken place, and there's asense of being tarred with the
same brush.
Am I going to get a kicking ifI put myself forward for a
ministry like this?
Is that something that I wantto do?
I've seen my own pastor or myown people I've seen close by
and had to endure that.
Do I really want to go there?
So that sense of crisis, Isuppose, is a big one.
(13:16):
And the third one I mentioned,that is the issue of confidence,
and this is huge.
The rise in issues to do withmental health, the rise in
issues to do with mental health,anxiety, robustness, and also
(13:36):
the rise of things likepornography, which has been such
a dominant theme, has meantthat lots of people are asking
the question can I really dothis?
Am I cut out?
Speaker 1 (13:40):
for this Do I have what it takes?
Speaker 2 (13:41):
And in some ways, of course, that's a healthy
question to ask.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
You want people to say do I have what it takes?
You want people to be notself-sufficient.
I don't want to too quicklyanswer the question that I am
suitable to lead the people ofGod.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yes, exactly, but the reality is that has become huge
and defining for people andmany are saying I can't do this,
I can't in all conscience saythis is something that I'm cut
out for or prepared to consider.
So those three C's map out in asimilar way in ministry and
(14:12):
maybe a couple more.
One is, I suppose, the comfortissue.
In a previous generation maybeyours and mine, dominic there
was almost a gung-ho attitudetowards you know, sacrifice,
sacrifice, is something we'rewilling to take on.
We're going to give up life'scomforts for the sake of the
gospel and we're finding inyounger Christians today that
(14:36):
doesn't compute, it doesn't gaintraction, the idea of sacrifice
.
There's more of a sense of youknow, we actually need to have a
bit of self-protection here.
We need to make sure that lifewe are going to be insulated
from some of life's worries alittle bit.
That's something that's hard tonail down, but it's something
(14:57):
that we certainly passed in mysort of world and noticing and
maybe one more, I'll give onemore uh, just of those reasons
that people are citing or peopleare 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 decadeor two, there's been a rise of
(15:22):
the sense of the dignity ofordinary work.
Secular callings, yeah, yeah,yeah, and that's which is in
some ways it's a very wonderfulthing, but of course it does
draw into question.
Well, what about the calling ofthe pastor?
Where does that sit?
Is that just any different atall?
Is that just any different atall?
And you remember Paul'sencouragement to Timothy in
(15:44):
chapter 3, saying whoeveraspires to be an overseer
desires a noble task?
And there is a question of isthat nobility, is that dignity
of Christian leadership,something that's just gone out
of the window?
No-transcript.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Well, I mean, as you say that you're almost saying
we've got what we deserved, youknow yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yeah, that may be right.
It's hard when you see cases ofabuse 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 seeand label it in that way, and
(16:35):
that gives the ability forothers to say well, do you know
what?
Oh, I'm experiencing that too,and so people are afraid of
leadership.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, I mean as you say, that.
I mean I've spoken publiclyabout this before, but in 2010,
I was put on trial at theSupreme Court of New South Wales
and the allegation against mewas that I'd not told the truth
to an inappropriate group ofpeople with the motive of malice
(17:06):
.
And in the end, I was found tohave told the truth to the
appropriate group of people andnot with the motive of malice.
But to sort that through wasfour years of my life, thinking
(17:33):
I wanted to preach Christ andwanted to go around and
evangelise and see people cometo Christ.
And how have I ended up here?
Yeah, and in the end, I mean Iwas exonerated, but it wasn't
without cost.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah, it is devastating both for the
individuals affected and thefamilies of of those who are?
Affected and the churches ofthose who are affected.
And you know the nextgeneration does see that yeah so
how do we respond?
Speaker 1 (18:05):
I mean your chair of the group, uh, that's trying to
raise up gospel workers.
You've had a big consultationwith 40 or so key leaders.
What have you come up with?
Speaker 2 (18:17):
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 thedisparity between the harvest
and the number of workers?
How do you respond to thedisparity between the harvest
and the number of workers?
You ask, ask the Lord of theharvest to send workers into his
(18:37):
harvest field.
And so we do want to becommitted to prayer.
We must be committed to prayer,and perhaps we have failed in
that in the past.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Perhaps we have taken for granted, assumed it was
going to happen where there wasa wave of people.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
When there's a machine, there's a sausage
machine, whatever it is.
There's a pipeline justoperating without anybody
seeming to do anything to it.
It is tempting to step awayfrom Christ's sufficiency in
that area.
So we want to pray, but we alsothere's things we can do with
(19:12):
the Lord's help and we think,you know, maybe we should think
about this a little bit more.
For example, have we lost asense of vision In terms of
envisioning people, both aboutthe gospel need and about the
calling of the pastor, of theoverseer?
(19:34):
So that's the clarity of visionof you know, there is human.
Sinfulness is universal.
God's wrath is real, judgmentis coming.
Christ is the only way Peoplecan only hear of Christ, through
people telling them and so on.
(19:57):
Are we being clear about thatvision and are we being
motivating and exciting to youngpeople to say do you know what?
This is an extraordinarysituation, the need is real, the
need is urgent.
You have been given somethinghere, a precious gift, the
gospel of the lord jesus christ,which can bring people from
darkness to light.
(20:17):
Do you see, just trying toenvision people, um, in a new
way, in a way that perhaps wehaven'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'msure, dominic, in past, as you
(20:38):
know that we're notionally bythe urgent uh are the pastoral
needs, and most churches are allconsuming.
Uh, the number of hats that thepastor is expected to wear is
(21:00):
huge, and the energy is finite.
All these people saying if youdon't do this, the kingdom will
fall yeah, exactly, and so, andoften it the pastor is more
committed to training than thechurch that he leads, and so the
church is not encouraging thepastor to devote time and
attention to training.
(21:20):
And often, of course, inchurches they're quite divided
churches, and if you have adivided church, not only are the
pastoral needs huge, but thepolitical needs of keeping the
church together are huge.
And so if we can somehow prayand act towards churches sharing
(21:41):
together a sense of theimportance of training,
liberating their pastor andothers to be involved in that
work and others to be involvedin that work, then we're halfway
there to trying to engender aculture of training so that
somebody who's eight years old,14 years old, 17 years old, is
(22:03):
thinking, oh, yes, well, thisseems a very obvious thing for
me to be thinking about for thefuture, things like that.
And, of course, funding.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Funding is huge and you're going to need to make
changes there.
We are going to need to makechanges there.
What sort of things?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
So in the past, of course, the denominations have
often been the ones who havefunded theological education,
and therefore there's been avery easy route through, at
least in the training years.
Exactly the training years, Atleast in the training years.
Exactly the training years andwith fewer being prepared to put
themselves forward for theChurch of England.
And, of course, the FIC is alsonot producing large numbers of
(22:41):
pastors.
Lots of people in FIC circlestraining for something,
different forms of ministry, butnot so many as pastors.
We are going to have to thinkhow are we going to fund
training, and so, in the lightof YonTan a year ago, a subgroup
of that consultation have beenmeeting regularly trying to work
(23:02):
through some of these issues,trying to put pieces together
for a strategy or at least anapproach that will address each
of these.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Great.
Thanks so much for coming andtalking to us.
Orlando Sayer is our guest onthe Pastor's Heart, and Orlando
is the Senior Minister of ChristChurch in Southampton in the UK
.
He also serves as the Chair ofthe Reach South UK for Reach UK
and as Chair of 938, a UKministry aiming to raise up
(23:34):
gospel workers.
My name is Dominic Steele.
You've been with us on thePastor's Heart.
We will look forward to yourcompany next Tuesday afternoon.
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