Denominational lines are changing. In recent years, they’ve become more porous than ever, where people easily move through quickly dissolving boundaries, searching for the right fit. And it’s not only members who migrate throughout and within this post-denominational society; ministers are doing the same. This migration may simply be the natural order of things, or it might also be dependent on theological issues, like gay marriage and ordination, or on other very personal reasons.
“It may be a matter of people finding community in a different way,” says Rev. Dr. Harry Oussoren, who handles congregations’ health and well-being at the United Church of Canada as its executive minister of congregational, educational and community ministries.
He wonders if denominational lines are even worth keeping in today’s society. “With moderate differences, can we afford to be separate communities with all the overhead that entails? Or is there a better way to do mission together?” Ousorren asks. “If there’s a bell-ringer in all of this, maybe that’s it.”
Forty ministers from the Presbyterian Church have joined the UCC since 1985, while 10 United Church ministers have become Presbyterian since 1990. Some of the influx to the PCC may be due to the United Church’s 1988 decision to support gay ordination and ministry, though such reasons for leaving aren’t necessarily kept by the church – or at least, not made public. Still, the numbers aren’t so large that one would think the Presbyterian Church has been fundamentally changed due to their deflection.
But when considering all of the ministers who have migrated to the PCC from other denominations and countries, it is reasonable to think that they have influenced the church. In total, since 1990, 216 ministers from other denominations applied to the PCC; 111 were received. Three-quarters of the received ministers came from Reformed Church denominations, with the largest ones being the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa, the Presbyterian Church of Korea, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and the UCC. Of the non-Reformed denominations, the most popular are those with Pentecostal and Baptist backgrounds.
Rev. Gordon Haynes, associate secretary for Canada Ministries at the PCC, says we’re living in a pluralistic society where congregations are now willing to welcome ministers from another denomination or another country – and the Presbyterian Church is becoming increasingly multicultural because of it.
“The old denominational and cultural boundaries are not really there anymore,” he said. “Is that a bad thing? No. If we didn’t have these ministers coming in, we’d have a hard time filling all the positions.
“I don’t think we’ve ever been a church that has provided fully for all the ministers we need,” continued Haynes, “and I’d argue that we’d be a poorer church if we didn’t have people coming in from elsewhere.” Currently there are about 170 vacancies in the PCC’s nearly 800 charges. This doesn’t include temporarily-filled pulpits by supply ministers, interim ministers, lay missionaries, or summer students.
Filling all the pulpits has always been a struggle for the church, says Rev. A. Donald MacLeod, research professor of church history at Tyndale Theological Seminary in Toronto. After church union, when about 80 per cent of clergy left for the United Church, the need became extremely urgent “and there were many imports.” Then, during WWII, many clergy became chaplains, and after the war, 130 church extensions in suburban areas caused a clergy shortage in outlying areas. It was anticipated that women would help fill the need when their ordination was allowed in 1966, but family restraints often limited the locations in which they could work.
Throughout the last century the church has welcomed various immigrants. The Irish were amongst the largest group, first during the 1920s, and again after WWII when ministers of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland couldn’t find work because of their limited educational background and the surplus of clergy in Northern Ireland. Dutch ministers came over mostly between 1948 and 1951 because of hard times in their home country, though most chose the Christian Reformed Church over the Presbyterians. Hungarians came in large groups after 1956, and a “huge effort” was made to integrate Reformed church people into the PCC. Finally, South Africans have come into PCC ministry mostly since the end of apartheid in 1990.
“The Irish contingent was very fundamentalist in their ethos,” says MacLeod. “Not always clearly theological or Reformed, influenced by the religious culture of the north, particularly its anti-Roman Catholicism. The Dutch provided strong theological ballast for us. The Hungarians had their own scholarly approach and were highly cultured and intellectual, and politics were always important to them.”
More recently, the growing number of Koreans in the PCC have influenced the congregations where they minister. Haynes said more English-speaking congregations are willing to welcome second-generation Koreans to the pulpit; and indeed, more and more are heading in this direction. This is a marked difference from only a decade ago, meaning Korean influence is slowly moving out of the Han-Ca presbytery bounds.
“The next generation will be the test,” says MacLeod. “Recent studies suggest that one third of the children of Korean immigrants to North America give up their parents’ faith, one third are nominal, and a third retain their parents’ vital spirituality and love for the church and for Jesus.”
But do migrating ministers have the power to cause bigger changes? Do ministers with pro-gay ordination and pro-same-sex marriage opinions, for example, have the power to change the denomination’s current stance against these issues?
“I fear that change is inevitable,” said MacLeod. “I use the word ‘fear’ as I dread the resulting heartbreak of schism. It’s a lose/lose situation for everyone involved, particularly (and ultimately) gays.”
Some, like Rev. Douglas duCharme who left for the UCC, says he left the PCC to escape this denomination’s insular, controlled environment to find an open, welcoming United Church that encourages new ideas, new perspectives and new methods of ministry. “Within the United Church, there’s room to oppose. There’s permission there. They’re not afraid.”
A minister in the PCC for 20 years, duCharme’s work took on many roles, including interim ministry. But he was often frustrated by the workings of the church. “The process often made me want to rip my hair out,” he said. “People get hurt because they can’t figure out how to work through the restraints of the Presbyterian Church. It kills the spirit.”
Rev. Dr. Michael Caveney agrees. After serving the Presbyterian Church for 19 years, he left for a United Church congregation in Victoria, B.C. He was raised in the PCC, and has been at his current post for about five years.
“The migration is due to the incapacity of presbyteries to deal with modern, current, staffing issues,” he said. “I have found lots of people working in the UCC who were from the PCC, and I think that very few of them have switched for theological reasons or moved around until they found a place that suited them. Most of them were raised, as I was, as Presbyterians, and left the denomination for other reasons.”
Rev. Will Ingram, minister at St. Andrew’s, King St., Toronto, couldn’t disagree more and suggests there is a subtext which migrating ministers rarely discuss. “When I hear of people switching there is always a driving reason beneath it they don’t want to admit.”
The responsibility, he says, is on the ministers to ensure their own success – and the structure is in place to encourage that. “Our system is structured to be collegial and helpful in both pastoral care and clergy success. I think there has to be a lot of conversation about how well clergy set up their own support systems to stay balanced and healthy.
“So much of it is personality-driven,” he says, and the reasons are often more personal than institutional.
Giving ministers the help they need to stay healthy and effective, and therefore, actively serving, is another piece to the puzzle. Of the 31 graduates from Knox College in 1987, for example, only 17 are still in ministry, one has died, two were international students and three were Korean students who were not necessarily destined to ministry in the PCC.
“The bigger question for me is not whether ministers are leaving the Presbyterian Church for the United Church,” said Rev. Dr. Dorcas Gordon, principal at Knox College, “but our ability to sustain ministers throughout their career at various stages. How do we find the resources they need to sustain their work?”
Gordon said colleges can partner with congregations to help bolster the shortage of ministers. “We used to have a system where young people gathered and leadership challenged them to think about how God could use them. It’s still there, but it’s skeletal.
“So who then will challenge them?” she asks. “No one in the guidance office at high school will ask a young person about going into ministry. It has to come from the congregations. They need to be challenged to look at young people and say, ‘I wonder where God is calling you,’ and give them something to think about.”
Rev. Dr. Stephen Farris, dean of St. Andrew’s Hall in Vancouver, agrees. “One of the traditional roles of ministers and sessions is to identify and to encourage candidates for ministry. Perhaps they need to be reminded gently of this responsibility.”
Rev. Dr. John Vissers, principal at Presbyterian College, Montreal, wonders if the issue isn’t just a little bigger than that: “Are the so-called mainline Protestant churches increasingly being looked upon as one shrinking entity, and will there be more traffic among them as a result? Is there an ecclesial and religious realignment taking place in Canadian society? From the perspective of theological education, has our commitment to ecumenical theological education always served us well?”
