The American Churchman: The Pastor Shortage

And welcome to the American Churchman podcast, where we encourage American churchmen to take dominion, to take their responsibilities seriously, to serve our Lord Jesus Christ, and just to be better all-around churchmen.

The Growing Shortage of Pastors in America

So today we're going to talk about a growing issue, and I think this is something that is particularly pertinent for our audience, which is the shortage of pastors, especially younger pastors coming into the ministry.

But before we get to that, this is my co-host. Everyone knows who's obviously followed the podcast, but Matthew Pearson. Matthew, thanks for being with me today to talk about this. Oh no, I can't hear you, Matthew.

I don't know if.

You're coming through. No, no, no. I muted my mic. I'm sorry. How are you doing, John? It's great to be here, as always, and as you can see from the setup, the lighting's a bit wonky because I just got moved into my new apartment.

So I'm getting married in about a month, and so now we're getting set up, and I'm still kind of trying to balance, okay, where do I want this? Where do I want that? So that may explain the quality for all the people on YouTube that watch,.

Because, yeah. The quality's actually better than it's been in previous weeks, because you.

Actually have good internet now. Yeah, yeah. I got the best one possible. There was a little promo code thing for it, like, oh, you could get this for this. And I'm like, shoot, with this podcast, I'm tired of having a pixelated camera.

So yeah, no, we're good now. There you go. Yeah,.

I'm excited about that, because we've had some technical issues in the past from not just you, but also me. And now I have a new computer. You have new internet. We should be good. Everything should be fine.

It wasn't the feds disrupting us as much as we'd like to let everyone know that. But yeah, so I actually just got back last night. I was away for the weekend unexpectedly. I was in Lynchburg, Virginia, so near Liberty University.

And my wife, she has a good friend that passed away. And it was kind of a crazy situation. It's sort of sobering, because you can pass away at any age. She was 36 and had strep, which I've never heard of someone at that age dying from strep.

But it went too far. She was checked in on, I think it to a hospital, a local hospital. And then they were waiting too long. And so it wasn't until Tuesday that they went to a better hospital. And by Wednesday, though, she was gone.

Her organs were shutting down. It's kind of a crazy. Yeah, it is. And there's pictures on her Instagram of her hiking the previous week, healthy, all the rest. But just a reminder, God can take us any time.

And so I'm kind of coming off all of that, but glad to be back. And we're going to talk a little bit about just the direction of the church in America. And I think this is super important, especially for young Gen Z Zoomer males who want to see the church continue, because you basically are going to have to decide whether it's going to continue.

Millennials and Gen Z males are going to have to decide whether they want to actually put the work in and pursue actually what Matthew's pursuing now. And if that doesn't happen, then yes, there will be churches closing.

There will be a shortage of pastors, basically. So that's going to we're going to give hope, though. I mean, there's some solutions perhaps some of the members of the audience haven't thought about, which will hopefully present to you.

But maybe the best place to start here, Matthew, is you are a seminarian right now. And I know from just talking to you, I've never asked you numbers and I don't plan to, but you're taking jobs all the time.

Like if you can do an odd job, you take the odd job. You'll take multiple jobs. Anything you can get, you do so that you can pay your tuition. And now you're obviously going to get married later this year.

You're not quite done with seminary. And it's a strain to get through all of that. And, you know, I don't know what avenues that you've taken to try to alleviate that pressure. But I know that's one of the things we're going to be talking about is the financial disincentive.

Maybe if you want to start out, since you're living this life now, just tell us your logic in even pursuing seminary. And then how did you try to pay for it?

Calling, Seminary, and the Cost of Preparation

Yeah. Well, the reason why I'm doing seminary is based off of, I feel, a call towards ministry. And when, at least in like the Reform world, typically when we speak of pastoral calling and things like that, there's two things, the internal and the external call.

The internal is like a bit more subjective because it's your fallible perception of where the Spirit is leading you. Now, of course, there are people that they'll use, oh, well, God told me this, or I feel the Lord is directing me here.

And it could be the most imprudent, unwise thing in the world. But that's like part of a calling to ministry is feeling the Spirit dragging on you. But part of confirmation of the internal calling is the external calling as well.

So people in your life around you, be it church leaders, be it congregants, be it family, all these sorts of groups coming together and like all pointing you in the same direction and be like, hey, maybe the Lord is calling you to ministry.

And something about that, though, is oftentimes people get like really into theology maybe. And they'll assume that because they have a hunger for the word of God, because they love learning about theology, that necessarily means you're called to the ministry.

And the thing is, though, is that the call to ministry, the call to be an elder, a presbyter, whatever it is, that's not just based off your love of theology. You can be a wonderful lay person who works like a normal white collar, blue collar job or whatever, and you're really into theology and you even get into it online with people.

And that doesn't mean you're called to ministry. And many people like that exist. And they're like, yeah, I'm not going to ministry. That's not my calling at all. I don't want to do that. So sometimes people get that mixed up.

But part of the call to ministry is this notion of there's not only is there like a love for the things of God, but there's a love to shepherd those and guide them towards that in a pastoral capacity.

And that's something that I feel in my heart. I think that God has stirred in my heart a spirit of love and charity towards those in the church, be they a fellow Theo nerd or be it an old lady that wants to talk to me about her flower garden.

I feel like I'm a fairly patient person. Even if I don't personally find it interesting, I will ask everything I need to know about it and make them feel like I'm actually there listening. So that's part of it is that I really enjoy reading into like this deeper stuff.

But I also just I want to help the church. I want to grow and encourage believers in the Lord. That's part of the call. And all that yapping to say that sort of is what led me to ministry or to seminary, not ministry, but to seminary.

And so part of the reason for seminary is that in the Presbyterian church in America, the denomination I belong to for ordination, they require a seminary degree. And so I'm like, okay, well, if I want to do this, then the means through which I obtained that end is by going to seminary.

And so that sort of is what led me there is this sort of I felt the call towards being a presbyter. And so I'm like, I got to go to seminary then. And seminary is expensive, tuitions a lot. But the good thing is that if you get plugged in with a solid seminary, there are lots of scholarship opportunities.

And I do, by the grace of God, I go to RTS Orlando and they do have, I have a very nice scholarship with them. It's not like, you know, I don't want to go into like all the details. It's not a hundred percent, but it's not like super minimal.

So that's good. And on top of that, my church is helping finance some of my seminary as well. So with that, like it's still for me, cause I'm just like a bit broke because for me, it still is like a bit of money.

I still got to, you know, I'm like, oh, I got to fork over this much money or whatever, but it makes it much more doable. Even if it is still a bit tough and something people also have to remember about seminary is that, you know, you do have to buy textbooks and textbooks can cost money, especially when a professor assigns you a bunch of books to read.

Now, you know, maybe you can, it depends on your conscience in regard to piracy laws and whether you believe that piracy laws regarding eBooks are legitimate or not. But, you know, the digital library does not have everything.

I will say that if you go on, you know, redacted .com or whatever, it may not have all the books that you need. So you do have to fork up money for that. So, you know, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a struggle, but it's not like the most overburdened something due to a scholarship.

And, but yeah, so RTS always offers really good scholarship. I'm speaking of the reform world, but I know RTS always offers great scholarships. Greenville has very, Greenville will give you a very solid theological education and there have very cheap credit hours.

So that's good. So I know there's lots of seminaries out there that offer that. So and the thing too, with calling is the Lord is calling to this. There will be a way made, you can find a way to do it.

So, yeah, but no, I, like you said, though, John, I'm, I'm working a bunch of little different jobs to support myself, you know, getting married soon and all that. So just trying to, trying to balance everything, but, you know, trusting the Lord through it all.

And so, yeah, I know that I feel that in my heart, I feel it through the external calling. And so I think that God will, you know, get me through, help me, help me to fly by.

Churches, Scholarships, and Investing in Future Pastors

One of the things you mentioned I thought was really good is that your church is helping you, which not a lot of churches do that. And I think it's, it's important if your church has a missions budget, and I don't want to be a legalist about this, but I really do think you should have a budget for Christian education.

If you have people that you've cultivated in, in the church who have a desire to minister, send them out. They're missionaries. They may not be in a foreign land. They may be coming back to your very church.

That's possible, but they're doing the same work. They're doing the work of evangelism and discipleship and all the rest. So, so consider investing in the people that are actually sitting in the pews.

That's one of the things my church does. We do have some scholarships, if you want to call them that. They're just, they're more line items in the church budget for people who want to go to Bible college or seminary.

And I'm appreciative of that. It's not a lot, but it, every little bit helps, like you said. So, so yeah, my story is a little different. I went to seminary and it initially was not because I thought I was going to necessarily be a pastor.

I wasn't sure I was between that and law school. I wasn't sure if I should be a lawyer or a pastor. I just knew that whatever career that I went into, I would need, or it would be helpful to have a basic knowledge of the word of God.

And to me, that meant understanding how to interpret it, understanding the broad sweep of scripture, and then also understanding the original languages enough that I could at least get through Lagos and understand what it's talking about.

And, and so I started taking classes with that intent. I did a semester at master's seminary. I did some online classes at Liberty universities, seminary Liberty Baptist. Finally, I went to Southeastern.

That's where I actually got my degree. I transferred some of the credits in to a Southeastern. And I just finally figured out for me personally, I needed to be on a campus to know the languages. So that's where seminary became important was I need someone to force me because I don't like learning the languages.

It's not something that comes naturally. Some people are blessed with the gift of understanding language very easily. I'm not, I'm not either struggle with Greek and I finished all.

My Greek classes, but it's partly on me because I don't practice like barely at all. So I need.

To get on that. Well, it's hard when you're working all these jobs too. You're not, if you're in the word all the time and you're constantly using it, you keep it up. But most pastors I know they don't even, it gets rusty for them, but they can still at least use the tools.

And that's more or less why I wanted to understand it. So anyway, all that to say, getting to that point was not a long-term goal for me. But as I was doing all of this, I felt more and more pulled in a ministry direction.

And to the point now that I think that that is where the Lord is leading me is, is towards that. And part of it is that pastoral heart. You talked about internal and external confirmations. And I can say that I've had that as well, that when you're teaching blesses people and then you have a heart for them.

Maybe give it a little contrast. I was talking to a pastor who I, I dearly love, but he said some things that I told him, I said, this is concerning to me, which essentially was he, for him, pastoral ministry was too slow.

He didn't care for the, doing all the, you know, the funerals, baptisms, counseling, all that kind of thing. And it, it, it just, it wasn't, he wanted to be in the limelight. And I, I said, that's, that's a red flag, actually, like this is a really big red flag.

You should probably resign, especially if you don't think you're being a good pastor. If you just think you're a preacher and you're not a pastor, you should probably find the exit because being a pastor means watching over the souls of your sheep.

It's so much more than just giving a speech and taking a stand even, even if it's a hard stand, it's more than that. It is having, as Jesus had compassion on the multitudes, we have compassion on the sheep in our congregation.

And that's one thing that I sense from you kind of early on, Matthew, is you have that heart for people and, and not just people who are interested in what you're interested in. And that's, that's kind of essential for a pastor.

So anyway, different route, but getting to that point though, is obviously a strain financially on me as well. So this took me about a decade to do, and I did it through working and doing, my company did some tuition match, like a 50 tuition match.

So I could take, I think up to, I don't know, six credits a semester and they would pay for half of it, which was really cool. So that really helped for some of the, the courses. I had to go a little slower on some things I had to, you know, when I did have a semester where I wasn't working, I would just cram in as many credits as I could, you know, and, and learn it all in that semester.

And then of course, before that, my undergrad, you know, that, that you have to get through undergrad before you can even get to seminary. So I had to strategize that as well, financially, which we'll talk about.

But my hope is that as we go through this article, what we'll do is we'll give people some ideas of how they can make it through if they have that heart, because sometimes that's what's stopping them is the finances.

So here's some practical tips you might not have thought of that might get you from A to B. And then maybe we could provoke some people who are, are also called, but just maybe don't think they have the time, or maybe they don't see the need to, to impress upon them that no, there is a need.

And I don't want anyone to get involved in a career choice of calling, especially if it's not their calling, but I do think something's off when we don't have young people taking these roles. So with that said, this is the article and it's from truescript .com.

I just want to remind everyone that TrueScript is a 501c3. We appreciate your support. You can scroll to the bottom. Sorry, that's Forbes. It's not TrueScript. That's TrueScript. You can go to the bottom and there's a little donate tab.

There's also a publish tab if you want to publish with us. The article today, though, is called how can new pastors pay for their education without going into debt? And that's a great question. Before we even get there, I want to go over a few stats.

Financial Insecurity, Social Isolation, and Fewer Men in College

So I was looking at this more broadly and then zooming in on the pastoral vocation. Harvard did a poll and they found that this is recent, actually. When is this? This is spring 2025. More than four in 10 young Americans under 30 say they're barely getting by financially.

So that's kind of a problem. Fewer than half feel a sense of community with only 17 percent reporting deep social connection. Well, that's also really bad. And I would wager if you are not feeling a deep social connection, you're not going to see the need for social institutions like the church.

If you're not connected to the church, why would you want the church to continue? Just 15 percent believe the country is heading the right way. That's irrelevant. Let's see. Traditional life goals are shifting with only 48 percent of young Americans saying having children is important.

And to me, that says that's bigger than just children. That means people aren't thinking long term. They're not thinking generationally. And to get involved in a church as a pastor, you are shepherding people sometimes from the point at which they are baptized and in a Presbyterian church, that's very early, all the way to the point that they're married.

And sometimes even to the point that they die. I mean, if they die early, you are there for the full span of life. You are dedicating yourself to a community as well. It's not just theology. It's people.

It's an organization. And if you're not invested, if you feel disconnected, then you're not going to see the need for that kind of thing. COVID created social isolation, rates of depression, etc. So that's an interesting poll.

That's not about pastoral stuff. Also, women are outpacing men in college enrollment. This is from 2024 story. Women comprise 58 of all college students in 2020. So some of our data is a little older here.

I'm sure that's getting probably worse. But that's kind of an issue that you have now. Women are the ones pursuing higher education. And if you're going to be a pastor, and if you're going to go to seminary, we'll say, then you would need an undergrad degree first.

And if women are the ones filling these roles and not men, that means men are going to blue-collar roles more. Or roles, I should say, not just even blue-collar, but roles that just don't require a degree.

So this brings us to some polls that are quoted in the piece we're about to read. This is from the Church Revitalization podcast. They quote a bunch of things. It was linked. But let's see. Financial disincentives.

They say that the average cost for a bachelor's degree for state resident adds up to over $115 ,000 over four years. Wow. And adding the cost of an MDiv, which could approximate $35 ,000 to $86 ,000 over three years, depending on living expenses, is a big burden.

What else do they say? Let's see. Recent data in North America's 280 Christian seminaries enrolled 78 ,000 students in fall 2022, showing a slight decline overall with specific decreases among evangelicals and mainline Protestants.

So interestingly, Roman Catholics in Orthodox schools saw a small increase. Evangelicals, negative 3 .2%. So enrollment is actually also going down. Let's see. I think this is a Barna poll. The average age of religious leaders has increased from 50 in 2000 to 57 in 2020.

A 2017 Barna study found that the median age of a Protestant pastor was 54 at that time, up from 44 in 1992. So pastors are getting older is basically the theme here. All of that stuff seems to play into this problem.

So I'm going to read the first two paragraphs here, then we'll talk about it. A rising tide of concern is growing from the shortage of pastors. And I should say, sorry, I didn't mention this. Nathan Downey is the author of this.

So Nathan says a rising tide of concern is growing from the shortage of pastors, replacing the aging shepherds currently in our pulpits. This is a problem across denominations, the Malphurs group and Barna group research noting this issue with the succession crisis looming over churches.

We should be thinking now about how to address these issues before the problem gets worse and more churches close because they cannot find a pastor. While there are many factors contributing to this problem, one frequently discussed issue is the cost of education.

For most churches, an MDiv or other seminary degree is required, usually in addition to completing an undergraduate degree. Some students are piling up close to or even over $100 ,000 for their education, but the prospects of ministry afterward are typically either by vocational or significantly lower pay than their families can afford.

As someone who has worked in enrollment for three universities, I think I can offer some vital information. So before we even get there, Matthew, I gave some contributors, possibly potential contributors to this problem.

What do you see as the big one? Do you think it's financial or do you think there's something else that's causing younger potential pastors not to go into the ministry?

Why Young Men Are Hesitant to Enter Ministry

I think part of it is financial, but I mean, the other part of it is just that the percentages of people that are religious is just down generally. I know among Gen Z, part of that's starting to increase a little bit, but a lot of it is just the fact that a lot of Gen Z or millennials just no longer identify as Christian.

And if you don't have that many people identifying as Christian, you're obviously going to see a decrease in those going into ministry for obvious reasons with that. But no, I definitely do think that the financial is a big part of it as well, which is why scouting out for scholarships is so important and trying to find different revenues to allow people to make your journey a bit easier, which is why a big thing for going into seminary is just part of it's just being connected to your local church well enough for them to be willing to say, hey, you want to go into ministry?

Let's help fund you a little bit versus also just networking in general. So part of it is just making friends in various places. And if you're able and willing to do that, that will help a bit. But for some people, they may not have all the connections.

They may have only been involved in their church for a set amount of time. And whereas they think that they want to do this, they don't have the means to do so. But it's not to say that seminaries shouldn't be the price that they are, though.

Maybe they should be. But you do have to fund the people that are doing it. You do have to make sure that the people who are teaching you have a livelihood and an ability to live as well. So there's varying factors going into it.

But it's hard to say if it's one thing in particular, because a big thing that I know is what I just clarified, is that with the proper channels, with the proper networking, with a good connection with your local church, you will have means to make it work.

So that's what I'd say about that. And part of the reason my church was willing to do that is that when I was looking into going to seminary, up to that point, I had been a member of the church for four years.

I had put myself out there. I helped set up the Lord's Supper. I was in the choir. I taught some Sunday schools for the kids and some for adults and things like that. And so by reaching out and being like, hey, I want to help the church in this way and this way or this way, churches will see that you're willing to do that.

And seeing that, they're willing to help you out. And so part of it is just also putting yourself out there with that. Because if people can't see that, if you say you want to go into ministry, but they don't see you helping on the ground level, how are they going to be comfortable?

Not let alone just sending you off, but also maybe helping fund you. So I would say that a big part of it is just to do it, network and get involved with your local church to a degree. Now I understand too that in a church environment, be it like a mega church or maybe be at a church, which is not technically a mega church, but still has a lot of people.

So for example, the church that I attend right now has about like 600 people. It may be a bit more difficult because there's so many people. I was blessed to have like a smaller congregation of about 120 people.

And so I was able to actually be able to, you know, get involved in these different things. But I mean, that's what I'd say is just, you know, like put yourself out there because the challenges are difficult financially, but there are many routes that you can take to.

Alleviate the financial burden. So. Yeah. We're going to talk about some of those in the article. I think it's actually really interesting because there were things that I didn't even know about. And I thought that I took all the advantage of all the, I don't want to call them shortcuts, but the, you know, financial incentives that financial help that existed.

But so Nathan gets into reducing the cost of undergraduate programs, and he talks about how he uses two universities as examples. Liberty is the first one because Liberty has a lot of online stuff. You can go and get an MDiv or a like, even if you want to get an MDiv somewhere else, you can at least get your undergraduate there if you want to.

And he does the calculation and 120 semester credits at $390 a credit is $46 ,860. That's just the credits, right? So if you're living on campus, if you're doing the rest, it's, it's incredible debt that you're taking in.

If you just pay that, that's a lot of money. So the thing is though, and this is what a lot of people don't under don't know schools will accept usually a certain degree of transfers for Liberty. And I did not know this.

They allow for 75 of credits to be transferred in. So that, I don't know if that's new. I thought it was 50%, but it's 75, which means that you can go to other schools and up to 75 of the credits can be transferred.

That means you can go to community college and you can take, you can test out of courses. And that's what Nathan talks about. He says that, um, there's a website study .com. And if you go to it, it has, uh, right here, there's the Liberty university online insignia.

You can start saving on credits. You can choose a, let's see, let's go to courses. You can choose, uh, courses. So here's history and you can choose, let's say Western history of Western art. It's a three credit, uh, course.

You could actually do it through study .com and it's legitimate. Like if you pass the tests and everything, you will have a, there's a, a matriculation agreement where Liberty says they'll honor it. And I was going to say, cause I'd never heard of study .com, but when I was doing this and they're still are around, you can do clep tests are called.

You can also do D S S T tests. Those are usually a higher level undergrad credits. Like a clep test would be like English one-on-one, but I tested out a lot of classes just doing that. Like, uh, English one-on-one, one-on-two six credits.

I paid at the time it was like 90, 80, 90 bucks. It's probably more now, but I sat in a, uh, a proctored exam for about three hours and that was it. I had the credits. I didn't have to take the class cause I already knew it.

If you study for those tests and you're self-motivated, then that can save you a whole lot of money and you don't have to go through all the things everyone else has to go through. So, uh, I think that's a really, uh, really good idea that a lot of people don't take advantage of.

Um, there's also institutional challenge exams. I never heard of this either. So Liberty has it on their website. I ice, not the ice we're all talking about. It's, it's a different ice institutional challenge examinations.

You can, for a fee of $130, uh, register to, to test out of business history, psychology, sociology exams. So I know this is super practical, but I think this will be super helpful for people who think this is out of reach.

You can actually get through undergrad fairly easily. I did it for probably, yeah, I don't know. Um, $10 ,000 with all the credits and everything. That's that. And that was now, you know, I don't even want to say how long ago, but you know, today, you know what, $16 ,000, you can, you can actually get through this stuff.

Uh, if you want in a cost efficient manner, if you're planning on going on to higher education, because if you already know you want to be in seminary, then the undergrad is just, you, you basically just have to get that out of the way.

So you can get to that next level. At least that's how I looked at it. Uh, he does the similar math for Purdue. Oh, I should just mention this. So he does the math. He goes, if you transfer in as much as you can, your degree now costs $13 ,550.

Um, Purdue university, he does the same thing. They have a similar, uh, Arrangement. And if the degree will cost you $4 ,125 and 80 cents, if you go the route, he's suggesting, I did this through Thomas Edison college and I didn't do the same thing.

I, I went to community college and, um, I did a, I transferred a bunch of credits from other institutions, but I tested out of a bunch of stuff and it really did help me kind of get a leg up so that when I was going, when I was deciding between seminary and law school, um, they're looking at my GMAT or actually that would be at my LSAT.

Uh, and then my, I guess my GMAT, um, I'm not, I can't remember if I had to do that for seminary or not. Uh, and they're also looking at my, my GPA, which is determined based upon the classes I've taken, not the ones I've tested out of.

So technically my GPA in undergrad was 4 .0 because I only took a few classes from the institution that actually gave me my history degree. Um, everything else was transferred in from other places. And, um, so that those are some, some helpful things there.

He goes on and talks about seminary costs. And he says, if you're a resident of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, or West Virginia, so Matthew and I are out of this, uh, and you're a Baptist, Matthew's definitely out of this.

Uh, you can go to seminary for free. And that is due to the Charles Casey foundation. A lot of the guys at Southeastern who I went to school with got either half their tuition was paid for by the convention or they had this scholarship.

And I was the only one I knew of that paid it all myself. I did. I paid every credit in seminary. I did pay for myself working my way through it, but, um, you might not have to do that. And there's scholarships you can get to, I know in undergrad, I took some scholarships.

So that's basically the practical advice that Nathan gives. I think that's the summation of it. Um, you can get through this cheaply if you just think about it in a strategic way. And those are just a few ways that I would suggest looking at it.

Um, I'm not convinced that's the only thing I keep preventing people from going this route. I do think it is a big one though. People just don't have the money, but I know that there's also like some churches are also going this direction of trying to raise up in house pastors.

And I look at that as the substitute for the Bible, uh, Institute model, because in a lot of non-denominational and Baptist churches, I don't think Presbyterian churches as much, but in non-denominational settings for a long time, Bible institutes were part of the feeders into pastoral ministry.

You would go for like maybe a year, maybe two years. One of the big ones in my state is called word of life. There's one in Florida as well. I don't know if you've been there, Matthew, but word of life, Florida is also no, uh, but you, you go for a year or two, you do some Bible courses.

It's basic. They'll, they'll maybe take, you'll do hermeneutics. You'll do some basic theology and then they'll send you out. And is it ideal necessarily? Is it the best education? Well, maybe not, but it's, it might be all you can afford.

It might be the only thing. So there was a lot of pastors who that's, that's all they had going into a church. And, and then they learned on the job and they figured it out and hope with more study in the Bible, they got much better at understanding and preaching.

But the Bible schools have been shutting down now for 20 years, just going out of business. The conglomerates like Liberty university are kind of swallowing them up and gaining the business they used to have.

And so a lot of these places are now looking in their congregations also to see, okay, who, who has interest in preaching? And maybe the pastor takes you under his wing and tries to show you the ropes.

And then, um, you do some online courses if you feel insufficient, but that's it. You're not after the degree. You're just after some experience and some basic knowledge. And that is another route you can go in many of the traditions that are listening here.

You, you don't necessarily have to go to seminary. None of the disciples obviously did. They, they, they did have three years with Jesus. So that does mean something, but, uh, maybe ask your pastor if he would just show you the ropes or take it whatever time you have, if you have a day a week or half a day, or maybe three hours, and you just say, all right, I'm going to take these three hours.

I'm going to go help my pastor, whatever he wants me to do. If he's doing counseling, I'm going to ask him if I can do counseling with them or watch, um, that's an education. And it's probably a better education in some ways, cause it's practical.