From the Duke News Service

November 29, 1999

Duke Divinity School will help congregations rethink the way they recruit and sustain pastoral leaders through a three-year, $3.5 million program funded by Lilly Endowment Inc., Duke University officials announced Monday.

The project will draw together theologians, historians, social scientists, researchers and church leaders to identify excellent ministry, ways to encourage it and strategies to plan for and support strong pastoral leadership. The team's members will work cooperatively to disseminate their findings and promote a dialogue through conferences, symposia and print and electronic media. A dissertation competition for doctoral students focusing on pastoral leadership and ministry also will be sponsored to promote future scholarly work.

"There is evidence that ordained ministry, despite many strong exceptions, is in some respects a troubled profession," said Jackson W. Carroll, who directs the school's J.M. Ormond Center for Research, Development and Planning and will oversee the Lilly Pastoral Leadership Project. "Low morale is not uncommon among the clergy, and an apparently growing number of clergy are dropping out.

"We don't believe that the problem is due, as some have argued, to the quality of clergy candidates," added Carroll, the Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams professor of religion and society at Duke who specializes in the study of ministry, church leadership and congregational life. "The fact is that the changes in our society have, in many ways, changed the clergy role, outstripping the pace of our education and ministerial formation systems to train the next generation of leaders."

Today's clergy, who are more likely than ever before to be women, are working in a new environment, he said. Increases in hard-lined theological debates, non-traditional spirituality and "consumerist" attitudes toward religion, a growing focus on one's own church instead of the overall denomination, more two-career clergy families and economic shortfalls place fresh pressures on today's ministers, preachers and priests.

"If seminary faculties, regardless of denomination, accept the work of the program and give it standing by incorporating it into their curricula, and clergy and their congregations are helped to understand and respond adaptively to the challenges before them, then we will know our work has been useful for ministry," Carroll said.

Project participants will represent both Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations, including Free Church, Reformed, Wesleyan, Pentecostal and liturgical traditions. The group also will be ethnically inclusive, especially of African-American traditions.

"The Divinity School is grateful for this extraordinary opportunity to study and shape pastoral leadership for the church," said L. Gregory Jones, dean of the divinity school. "Lilly Endowment has provided resources that will enable this thorough, thoughtful and innovative work."

Lilly Endowment is a private, Indianapolis-based foundation that supports community development, education and religion.

Duke Divinity School is one of 13 accredited seminaries for the United Methodist Church and has more than 460 students from 30 states and 10 foreign countries in four degree programs.

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