By Cynthia Woolever
While ordained clergy serve in a variety of settings, our research focuses on pastors serving as leaders in congregations. We found some general patterns in the career paths of pastors as they live out their call in local church ministry. We also know from previous research that when and how people are called to serve changes over time.
Here are a few key findings from the U.S. Congregational Life Survey study of pastors conducted in 2008 and 2009. (One key leader in a national random sample of congregation completed the leader survey.) We compare some of our results to those found in an earlier study, reported in Clergy Women: An Uphill Calling (see note below for additional information on the earlier study).
- Catholic priests have distinctive career paths when compared to Protestant pastors: Most priests (67%) have spent more than two decades in ministry. They also move the most from job to job compared to other pastors (Catholic priests average 5 positions; mainline Protestant pastors, 4 positions; conservative Protestant pastors, 3 positions).
- Mainline Protestant women pastors also have distinctive career paths: Almost all (90%) are in ministry as their second career. They are clustered in the early-career stage (48% have fewer than 10 years in ministry) to mid-career stage (48% have between 10 and 20 years in ministry). In contrast, half of mainline Protestant male pastors (51%) have served more than 20 years in parish ministry.
- The percentage of mainline senior or solo Protestant pastors that are women has climbed to 28%. This represents a substantial increase since 1994.
- The career paths for conservative Protestant pastors are different from other pastors as well: Most of these clergy have longer tenure in their current job as a local church pastor (having served a median of 10 years, compared to 5 years for mainline Protestant pastors and 5 years for Catholic priests). They hold fewer jobs over their ministry career when compared to other pastors. Of those with a prior career, conservative Protestant pastors have spent the longest time in their previous occupation (a median of 10 years in previous occupation, compared to 7 years for mainline Protestant pastors and 6 years for Catholic priests).
- In general, a small percentage of Protestant clergy serve as senior pastors at some point in their career. Overall, the percentage of church pastors serving as a senior pastor at any given time does not exceed 15%.
- Protestant clergy tend to move out of associate pastor roles the longer that they stay in parish ministry.
- Over the course of their ministry career, increasing percentages of Protestant pastors move into interim ministry positions.
- Parish pastors stay in their ministry positions longer, the longer they are in parish ministry. Frequent job changes tend to occur in the earlier career stages.
Interested in learning more about the shifting landscape of clergy career paths? View the slides from my presentation at the recent Religious Research Association meeting.
Note: In 1994, the Center for Social and Religious Research at Hartford Seminary (later to become the Hartford Institute for Religion Research) received a Lilly Endowment grant to study clergywomen. The central goal was to “assess the profession of ordained ministry as it is being lived out in the lives of clergy women in the 1990s and to understand how these patterns are the same as or different from those experienced by men.” Clergywomen—serving in congregations and elsewhere—in 15 Protestant denominations participated.
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