NEWS STORY: Episcopalians Target Need for Generation X Clergy

c. 2000 Religion News Service DENVER _ When Nathan Humphrey was first considering becoming an Episcopal priest, an official in his Maryland diocese laughed at him and told him to come back when he had more experience. “It was (an) out-of-hand dismissal,” said Humphrey, who is now 26 and a 1997 graduate of Yale Divinity […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

DENVER _ When Nathan Humphrey was first considering becoming an Episcopal priest, an official in his Maryland diocese laughed at him and told him to come back when he had more experience.

“It was (an) out-of-hand dismissal,” said Humphrey, who is now 26 and a 1997 graduate of Yale Divinity School.


There is also the story of the woman ordained at 32 who had been told to read an article on how “unhappy” Episcopal priests are when she was considering ordination. And there was the man who was ordained at 31, but was told “No one under 40 should even think about ordination.”

Unfortunately, Humphrey says, his story and the stories of countless others are all too common. Young seminarians, he says, are often discounted, discouraged and told they have little to offer the proud Anglican tradition.

At its triennial General Convention meeting here this week (July 5-14), the Episcopal Church set a goal of doubling its 2.5 million membership by 2020, and hopes to raise $13 million for a campaign to help fill the pews.

But Humphrey and others say if the church is looking for new members, it should start with the disaffected and unchurched Generation X _ those born roughly between 1960 and 1980. But without the clergy who can speak to that generation, they say few Gen Xers will be flocking to the Episcopal Church.

Church leaders are equally wary of the low number of young clergy _ less than 2 percent. With fewer than 300 clergy under the age of 35, church leaders _ like their Roman Catholic counterparts _ are wondering who will take over the pulpit when baby boomer clergy retire.

That’s why Humphrey and others are pushing “Gathering the neXt Generation,” a fledgling network of 20- and 30-something clergy who are trying to make the institutional church more open to younger clergy, and to convince suspicious members of Generation X that they can find a home in the church.

“There’s a lot of gray hair in the Episcopal Church,” said the Rev. Beth Maynard, a 37-year-old Episcopal priest in Massachusetts. “And when you have a graying clergy, you have a graying church.”


Maynard said the church has been “utterly infatuated” with priests who enter the ministry as a second or third career, while shunning younger clergy. Maynard said age can be an issue for a 50-year-old priest who has little in common with someone in their late 20s or early 30s, creating a cultural gulf between the clergy and young lay members.

The Rev. Jennifer Baskerville, a 33-year-old priest in Morristown, N.J., counsels young church members via the Internet, talking about relationships and family problems in online chat rooms. “They’ll do that with me, but not with a rector who is 50,” she said. “It’s a different way of relating.”

Indeed, how Generation X members relate to the world around them is largely what defines them as a group. Much of the change has been fueled by the advent of “postmodernism,” a philosophical shift with major real-world ripple effects.

Generation X is the first group to come of age in a culture when half of their parents’ marriages end in divorce. With two-career families, many were left to raise themselves with video games, the computer and MTV. In the boom of the 1980s and the recession of the early 1990s, institutions rose and fell around them.

Unlike previous generations, Generation X sees a world with more gray than black and white. A postmodern mind sees the world as interactive and molded by personal experience. Answers are complicated, not simplistic. Questions and discussion are welcomed, not discouraged.

All these factors have dramatic effects on how Generation X sees the church. Contentious issues, such as homosexuality, are non-issues because everyone holds a piece of the truth. Generation X doesn’t like being told what to believe, but is hungry for authenticity, truth and shared experience.


The Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, signaled in February that the church needs to find a new way of relating to Generation X.

“These young people require utter authenticity,” Griswold said at a Maryland retreat. “They associate the church with utter hypocrisy. … They see it as deadly and energy-zapping. They must know that we are not out to make them something they are not; our aim is not to convert them so we can put another notch on our belts.”

One church study shows that only about 15 percent of Generation X identify themselves as Christians, making them a vastly under-reached domestic mission field. Maynard said Generation X can find the authenticity and community it craves in the Episcopal Church.

“There is this tremendous parade of baptized believers over time that I have the privilege of stepping into,” Maynard said. “But accessing that line in any local Episcopal institution at this point is sometimes a challenge.”

Maynard’s group recently received a grant of more than $80,000 to launch pilot programs in three dioceses to recruit Generation X priests. And some, like Baskerville, say they can sense a difference, with younger faces at diocesan meetings and retreats.

One of the biggest challenges is changing the institutional mind-set to allow for the unique talents of Generation X and remove the “cookie cutter” approach to the clergy, Baskerville said.


“To expect the same kind of life experiences of a 23-year-old as a 43-year-old is not helpful or appropriate,” Baskerville said.

DEA END ECKSTROM

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