I have been contemplating my seminary doctoral degree lately. A few days ago, I was having a lengthy conversation with a leader at my church about my salary. We were discussing the budget when we went through the costs of ministry, housing, healthcare, and affordability in a beachside town in which inflation is well over national average. When I got home and reflected on our conversation, I realized that my doctorate never came up as a factor in my salary. It wasn’t omitted; we just failed to recognize it.
If you look on most job postings for senior pastor, you’ll still note that a doctoral degree is preferred but not required. However, when you look at the rigors and demands of ministry, I wonder whether my degree is useful at all. At times, it can be a downright hindrance.
When I was growing up in the 1980s and booming 1990s, we were taught that if you worked hard and got an education, you would find a rewarding and well-paying position. The mantra of my generation, Gen X, was simple though bordering on entitlement: Work hard, play hard. My sister and I, and a few cousins, were the first in our family to get college degrees. We came out with student debts, but our jobs were well off to pay them down or, in one case in my family, hit it big to pay it off. We purchased new (or preowned) cars earlier in life than our parents. We had enough generational wealth to have a decent down payment for a starter home. We had Toys R Us and Babies R Us so we had a spectrum of quality products for our newborns at the price points we could afford.
We pursued higher educations. In 2010, well after the tragic events of 9/11 and the housing implosion of 2008, I graduated with my doctorate. It was a “practical degree” in ministry, a DMin, doctor of ministry, focusing on congregational leadership. I thought I’d utilize what I had learned from my field of spiritual formation, caregiving, and New Testament hospitality to build God’s kingdom. I thought that by diving deeper into socio-rhetorical studies that I began in my Masters education, I would bring a fresh biblical perspective to inspire a biblically-literate congregation.
At the time I was serving a small church in a growing suburban area and we were thriving. My dissertation in caregiving benefited the church. We were cultivating missions and outreach programs, which the church already had in its DNA since its founding. We had a vibrant young adults ministry. We were present in the non-profit and civic sectors. But strong growth never quite arrived.
Things changed drastically with the advent of smart phones, social media, and AI, about the same time I entered my next ministry context. My education, which emphasized working with traditional Baptist churches that functioned well in the era of committees, mission programs, and systematic worship, became quickly outdated. The Bible knowledge and spiritual formation I gained in seminary made little difference in the face of Christians who were relying more on the internet, Fox News, and their favorite podcaster to bolster their understanding of scripture. People who once suggested that I read Philip Yancey to learn about the life of Christ were now suggesting Bill O’Reilly. Turns out both authors were sexually immoral anyhow.
Churches no longer needed resident theologians. Distrust in institutions across the nation — especially after COVID — amounted to many people snubbing their noses at high-degree professionals who still championed traditional avenues of knowledge and information. Doctors were getting pushback from patients who questioned medical interventions because of WebMD and AI. Teachers, nonpartisan educated professionals who spend countless hours and money perfecting their craft, contended with politically-charged parent coalitions concerned with nonsense complaints.
For all the talk of “truth” that Christians espouse, there’s an awful lot of anti-fact bias in Christian culture these days. Pastors follow suit, preaching not from historic, biblical viewpoints forged in church dialogue and resulting from hours in the theological library, but from questions posted to their AI generators or research curation resources. Theological perspectives that often go back to the late 19th-century rather than first-century biblical history are becoming the normative way of interpreting scripture. Reading books in a sizable pastor’s library, which provide various perspectives and accountability to such untethered readings, are a thing of the past.
Take women in ministry, for example: Women served as ministers, including bishops and priests, for the first 800 years of Christianity, and then again more robustly after the 1960s. Talk to someone who opposes women in ministry, and you’d think that people held that opposition as orthodoxy since Jesus walked the earth. You can disagree about the notion all you want, but you cannot ignore the historical record. Same with reading Genesis 1 from the perspective of seven literal days: That view is only about 150 years old. It is novel, not precedence. Both St. Augustine and the Great Debater, William Jennings Bryan (who opposed evolution in the Scopes Monkey Trial) believed a “day” in Genesis 1 was a placeholder for an era of time.
Like me, the pastors I know who have degrees of higher learning from accredited schools, though fantastic preachers and astute pastoral caregivers, were filling pulpits in churches that aren’t filling up. The fastest growing churches are those founded by entrepreneurial pastors who are more inclined toward new models of technology than traditional degrees. They have more power to draw new members to churches with coffee bars and special events than traditional Bible studies, rituals, and rites of passage once did in churches with steeples and choirs. While ministers in my peer group were hustling to spend time with aging churches who needed a ministry of presence, the entrepreneurs were bypassing us in size, tithes, and mission. The last time I co-officiated a funeral with an entrepreneur-pastor, it was his first funeral in a year; it was my eighth.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not bitter, and I hope you don’t hear me as such. Many of these newer churches are making disciples, which is exactly why the church exists in the first place. I have lunch with and call many of these pastors my friends. They are building multi-site campuses for good reason. But making disciples for some of these places come awfully close to perpetuating cult-like behavior. When you can get a great cup of coffee at a contemporary church, just beware that you may also have to produce your financial statements if you want to become a member. Just know that sometimes sermons are built around information from the John MacArthur Study Bible rather than the New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary (oh, yes, there is a difference!).
I realize that my doctorate was valuable in some ways. Yet, the degree was mostly about learning research, and research doesn’t amount to much when people don’t believe half of what you say from the pulpit or your church isn’t growing at the same rate as the one down the street. Our classic seminary educations are outdated. We’re dinosaurs. Theological training is really good for nothing when faced with people who care more about political bias confirmation than hearing something they’ve never known about in scripture.
Like many in Gen X, whose purchase power and degrees appear as if they are worth less now than they were 26 years ago, I feel a bit lost and out of place. I like the big steeple. I like the organ. I like stylized liturgy, hymnody, and nuanced Bible studies among brothers and sisters in Christ. I like the kind of discipleship that is more journey than a numbers game. But these values are not easily monetized. They don’t always translate into megachurch status or being invited to speak at leadership conferences. While the dudes with the midlife Mohawks get a lot of press and praise for their multi-site campuses, we silently work in the trenches of grief, unrest, and labor. We pick up the pieces left behind by toxic church cultures that are less empathic. We compensate for theologies that inflict harm on people — particularly women — who are also trying to find a home in this ever-changing world. We try not to complain, but sometimes — especially when your salary is scrutinized because of shrinking tithing margins — we have great reason to. This intends to be more of a lament than a rant, I promise.
The promise of the “hard work” era of yesteryear isn’t bringing the kind of returns we anticipated, and we are paying a high and emotionally disorienting price. Back in the day, my ministry mentors used to put aside a couple of bucks to pay for a round of golf with friends a few times a month; now I have to budget for spiritual director bills to help me make it through to the next funeral and the work it takes to find people who value the same kind of faith journey that I do. Ladies and gentlemen, hear me roar.
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