Aunty, our pastor doesn’t do ministry for the children—and families aren’t showing up.
6 May 2024 |
Dear Aunt Sevvy,
Our church lost our youth pastor a year ago and the conference didn’t replace him.
This leaves only one pastor—who, to be fair, wasn’t hired to minister to children. The older members love him, and he ministers well to them.
Still, he never tells a children’s story and doesn’t even know the childrens’ names. We are noticing that few young families come to the church, and that might be why. How do we get him to realize that the children are important?
Signed, Feeling the Lack
Dear Feeling,
Your congregation is experiencing what a thousand others are: the aging of the church, and the shrinkage of staff that leaves gaps in ministry coverage. Across North America, Europe, and the South Pacific, most Adventist churches are small. Most pastors have several churches to cover, and consider themselves blessed if they end up with only one.
A study done some years ago—and it’s only gotten more severe since—showed that among Adventist congregations in North America, 60% of the money and attendance is in 10% of the churches. So only a small proportion of congregations, mostly around large Adventist institutions, can afford a staff of specialist pastors.
That means that most pastors have to be generalists—and no pastor is capable of being all things to all people.
It sounds like your remaining pastor is a good and well-intentioned man. He surely knows the children are important. Aunty suggests you have a kind and constructive conversation with him, and ask him if he might redistribute his work to address children and young families.
(Note: Aunty said “kind” and “constructive.” Talk to him alone. Don’t drop a criticism bomb on him with a whole group of angry people. Help him think of solutions. Think about how you like to be counseled about your deficiencies, and act accordingly.)
But don’t be surprised if he has a hard time with it. Again: not every pastor is equipped for every ministry (that’s from the Bible, not from Aunty) and you already know your pastor is a good minister to older people. So you should be prepared with a second solution, and that’s to organize lay leaders to do what the pastor can’t—and that, too, is biblical.
A postscript: Aunty wonders how long the current congregational model can last. Conferences are having to cut pastors, and fewer students are pursuing a career in church work. Some small churches have closed, and more will. People aren’t attending church in the numbers they used to, nor is evangelism as successful as it once was. We need to pray to discover God’s purpose for Seventh-day Adventist churches—because the everyone-show-up-on-Sabbath-morning-in-person expectation may no longer be realistic.
Aunt Sevvy
Aunt Sevvy has collected her answers into a book! You can get it from Amazon by clicking here.
You can write to Aunt Sevvy at DearAuntSevvy@gmail.com. Your real identity will never be revealed.
