Part-Time Is Plenty: Thriving without Full-Time Clergy

by G. Jeffrey MacDonald

As former ATS Executive Director Daniel Aleshire told me, prospective MDiv students increasingly can’t justify borrowing tens of thousands of dollars when the jobs they’d be training for are part-time. Because the entire system is predicated on demand from students who foresee full-time careers as clergy, the theological education industry is undergoing massive disruption. “The Industrial Revolution really produced the professional guild that we call clergy, and that’s actually the thing that’s breaking apart,” says Cameron Trimble, chief executive officer of the Center for Progressive Renewal, an Atlanta-based nonprofit that does consulting for mainline churches. “The industry of paid clergy, and all the institutions that produce these paid clergy, are collapsing under their own weight because the financial model is so broadly broken.”