Nearly one-third of the PC(USA)’s
more than 11,000 congregations are without pastors. The problem
is especially severe among small and rural churches.
The PLSE, in collaboration with the Fund
For Theological Education Inc., will try to learn of potential
church leaders as early as their high school years and to build
a vast churchwide database of young people identified by their
congregations as prime candidates for church service.
Attorney John Aldridge Sr., an elder at Peachtree Presbyterian
Church in Atlanta, came up with the idea and has campaigned for
it.
Aldridge said the PLSE and the Presbyterian Leadership Database
will establish a “virtual community” in which gifted,
young leaders of tomorrow will be cultivated, in an environment
that will help make them “better able to hear and respond”
to a call to ministry.
“The concept of PLSE is not a program in and of itself,”
Aldridge told the Presbyterian News Service. “It is the
infrastructure, the pipes and wires that give us the capability
to proactively identify and engage gifted young leaders in the
PC(USA).”
With their consent, young people’s names are added to the
database. PLSE helps the nominees with mentors, resources, parish
internship opportunities and access to ministry programs in their
areas. The names are also made available to PC(USA) seminaries
and other entities to help nominees in exploring their calls.
So far, several dozen people have been enrolled, and the pace
of nominations is picking up.
“Congregations are excited about the program,” said
the Rev. Gini Norris-Lane, the Presbyterian PLSE coordinator.
“They’re excited about that fact that there is a way
for them to suggest ministry as a possibility for some of their
talented young people in an intentional way that is easy for them.”
In September, PLSE officials sent information kits to all PC(USA)
churches describing the idea and encouraging congregations to
identify high school and college-age students who might have gifts
for ministry, and to urge them to consider the pulpit as a possible
career choice.
The program is expected to hit full stride by this summer.
“We think the first six months of 2004 is really when we
will know and see how much traction PLSE gets at the church level,”
Aldridge said. “All the information is now in the hands
of the churches. Without active, aggressive participation by our
congregations, we won’t be successful.”
Aldridge said it’s anybody’s guess how many churches
will participate during what he calls the “initial thrust.”
“I think the higher estimates were maybe up to 50 percent,”
he said. “The lower estimates were down around 20 to 25
percent, somewhere in that range.”
PLSE was unveiled during last year’s 215th General Assembly
in Denver, CO. It was developed in consultation with a wide variety
of Presbyterians, including seminary and denominational staff,
pastors and elders.
“It’s like we’ve planted the seeds,”
Aldridge said, “and the question is how many are going to
sprout.”
Three other protestant denominations are watching the program
closely and plan to use it as a model in establishing their own
PLSE programs: the Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church,
and United Church of Christ.
PLSE is funded by a grant from the Lilly Endowment and contributions
from Presbyterians and other sources. The Fund for Theological
Education houses the database and staff at its Atlanta offices.
Aldridge got the idea for PLSE after seeing some startling statistics
about the PC(USA) while serving as a trustee of Columbia Theological
Seminary in Decatur, GA.
He learned that nearly 4,000 of the PC(USA)’s 11,150 churches
are without pastors, and that almost two-thirds of the vacancies
are in churches with fewer than 100 members. More than 40 percent
of active PC(USA) pastors are 50 years old or older, and only
7 percent are under 35.
More than two-thirds of PC(USA) seminarians are second-career
students, with a median age of more than 35 years. That means
they’ll have less time in ministry than those who start
studying for ordination in their 20s.
The PC(USA)’s office of Churchwide
Personnel Services is the denomination’s primary point
of coordination for the PLSE project.
“It’s really reactivating feeder systems for the
development of leadership that … used to work to send people
off to seminary,” said the Rev. Marcia Clark Myers, the
PC(USA)’s associate director for Churchwide Personnel Services.
“The whole system is designed around (the idea that) every
church has somebody to promote.”
For additional information about PLSE, log on to www.theplse.org,
or contact the Rev. Norris-Lane by phone at (404) 727-1547, or
by email at presbyterianplse@thefund.org.
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