Willimon Wallaby Woo (2 of 2)

A commenter to the aforementioned post on young people and annual conference by Bishop Willimon made the following comment:

Dear Bishop,
I am well aware of your policy of discouraging the trend of second career folk entering ministry. I was sitting in a United Methodist Men’s retreat day in Baton Rouge where you were the guest speaker and you said as much. I had just experienced the call to ministry and was so excited. I had already applied to a Methodist seminary with which you were associated. Funny, I didn’t think you could possibly be speaking to me. I was only thirty six years old.

Thank God, when I was denied admission to your school, I picked myself up and reapplied to a school just south of there. Now, I’m a member in full connection in another annual conference. I serve on a district board of ordained ministry. I’ve mentored people of all ages as they discern their own call into ministry. I’ve pointed young people to the ministry beginning with their confirmation experience. I’ve worked with older youth and young adults getting them acquainted with district and conference ministries in hopes that ordained ministry would be in their career sights.

I’m an old forty nine years old now. I’ve served churches for the past twelve years. Nobody I know expects to retire before seventy. My thirty-plus years of ministry will only be richer and more fruitful because of my experiences in a first career.

Thank the Lord, I didn’t let you tell me no.

Whew! Praise God for the ministry of this fellow and praise God for the ministry of Bishop Willimon! Isn’t it  nice to be able to do both? I’m not in the least bit interested in judging either Bishop Willimon or his anonymous commenter because even if I did know intimately about the commenter’s situation and what Bishop Willimon tends to advocate, I wouldn’t be qualified.

I think I can safely opine though that this post can be seen as an indicator of what turns into a false dichotomy between encouraging the young to answer their call and discouraging the old from doing the same. While Bishop Willimon’s comments in particular may have affected the anonymous comment greatly, they probably weren’t the only affront that he has felt given his response to Willimon’s post that didn’t even deal with this issue explicitly.

Age and sensitivity to age is such a peculiar thing. People don’t like to be considered old. Inevitably discussions about connectional young adult ministry for example turn to age definitions. About the time somebody turns 31, they start to think that we should be defining young adult ministry as including through age 35 or 40. They are often vehement. At those moments I have trouble believing that it is about a missional imperative so much as it is about individual vanity or more charitably a reaction to the culture. I think that the age definition issue as well as the encouraging young/discouraging old dichotomy are symptoms of a very real “cult of youth” that is present in society. The overvaluing of young in the culture (but undervaluing in decision-making structures in society) can make it sound like someone who is encouraging young people in particular to go into ministry is discouraging old people.

We don’t have the luxury in the church to to discourage older people from answering their call to ministry. There is something unfaithful and disrespectful about it. First of all, we need to be taking everybody’s calls seriously, period. Second of all, it can be argued that second-career folks have bailed out a church that has done a poor job of encouraging younger people to go into the ministry. Based on my relatively limited experience though, we haven’t been discouraging older people from answering their calls. There have been more than one second-career pastor on the cabinet in Kansas East in the past few years. They are getting some of our more challenging appointments and doing wonderful ministry there. Other professional experiences can be a great asset to pastoral ministry and I think that the church has recognized that.

At the same time, we can’t afford to go the other way. It is vitally important to help people recognize their calls as young people and fulfill them. It is vital to our leadership development, it is vital to our efforts to attract new people to the church, and frankly it is vital to our pension and health insurance funds. Leaders in the church need to consider the unique gifts that a younger person might bring to the ministries of some of our medium to large churches. An attitude of “paying your dues” and “moving up the ladder” is not scriptural, nor is it missionally essential, much less advisable. Gaining experience is important, don’t get me wrong and no pastor, young or old, should feel entitled to a certain kind of appointment. That said, I think it is possible that young clergy with some creative mentoring and assistance could bring a breath of fresh air into our congregations that may just be coasting.

I think that our efforts to encourage young people to pursue ordained ministry and to take a greater role in the work of the church have been right on the money. We have identified the lack of young clergy as a problem and are seeking to address it. We can not do this at the expense of older persons who have discerned a call, but I don’t believe we are doing so. Let us boldly go forward challenging all people, young and old, to answer the call that God has put on their lives (and I’m not just talking about ordained ministry) in the interest of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world!

Peace,

Luke