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Filling empty pulpits
From small churches to booming immigrant communities, the demand for commissioned lay pastors is growing
By John Sniffen
When Larry Isakson preaches on Sunday mornings, it’s not a sea of faces he surveys. Rockport (Ky.) Presbyterian Church has only seven members. Even when others from the former coal-mining community attend, only a couple dozen worshipers hear his sermon.
Isakson and the congregation he serves as a commissioned lay pastor don’t worry about the numbers, however. “I feel God uses me to serve these people,” says the retired businessman who drives an hour each way from his home in Russellville, Ky., to preach. “I find it very rewarding.”
Isakson is one of a growing number of elders commissioned by their presbyteries to serve churches that need pastors. Commissioned lay pastors serve more than 600 churches across the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), says Deborah Fortel, one of the members of a project team that studied churches unable to call pastors. Small churches without money to support a minister with a seminary degree are the main beneficiaries of lay pastors. Nearly half of PCUSA congregations now have less than 100 members — and that number is on the rise.
Anticipating the need, in 1996 the denomination approved constitutional changes that empowered presbyteries to give commissioned lay pastors the authority to baptize, perform weddings and vote at presbytery meetings. Now approximately three-fourths of the presbyteries use commissioned lay pastors.
Recent seminary graduates, with school debts to pay, understandably hope for calls to churches that can offer them adequate salary and benefits and help with moving costs. But retired persons like Isakson — at the end of careers, secure financially and with benefits paid by former or other employers — may be happy to serve congregations with tiny budgets. They find the work spiritually and emotionally fulfilling, and often they are already living within driving distance of the church. |
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