ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
NPR has reported on a variety of workforce shortages, and religious institutions are no exception. Churches are having a hard time finding pastors. Clergy are retiring and dying faster than new ones are entering the ministry. As Vermont Public's Nina Keck reports, many small, rural congregations are rethinking their future.
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NINA KECK, BYLINE: Ever since their 83-year-old pastor died last year, Bonnie (ph) and Buddy Smith (ph) and a handful of other members of the North Chittenden Community Church have been worshipping on their own.
BUDDY SMITH: It used to be when you pulled in the yard, you could hear people singing because the church would be full.
BONNIE SMITH: The little kids would have their Sunday school, and...
SMITH: And the piano was being played.
KECK: It's very quiet this Sunday morning.
SMITH: Yeah, it sure is.
KECK: According to a 2023 Gallup poll, the number of Americans who regularly attend religious services has dropped to 30%. That's down from 42% 20 years ago. And those who do go tend to be older and on fixed incomes. That's at the heart of the clergy shortage.
SMITH: It's hard to find anybody to come here to preach because there's no money.
JILL COLLEY ROBINSON: I'm having a hard time bringing pastors to churches.
KECK: Reverend Jill Colley Robinson is the district superintendent for the United Methodist Church in Vermont. She says in 2023, about a third of the more than 100 churches she supervises were without a pastor or were changing leadership.
ROBINSON: And I'm seeing that we need to ask clergy to serve more than one church - sometimes three or four or five churches in a geographic area - in order to afford to pay the pastor appropriately for the work but also to make sure that there is a pastor for each church in each small town where they're located.
KECK: That extra workload is falling on increasingly older pastors. Colley Robinson says the average age of their licensed clergy is 70, and fewer young people are entering the ministry. Last year the Vatican announced a decline worldwide in the number of men and women entering Catholic religious orders. Burlington Rabbi Jan Salzman says the shortage is impacting synagogues and mosques as well.
JAN SALZMAN: Also in pastoral care and in chaplaincy, working in prisons - all the places where clergy hang their hat.
KECK: Vermont's high housing costs and low salaries are a big part of the problem, she says. Becoming a rabbi or ordained minister requires advanced degrees, which can mean racking up significant student loan debt. And Salzman says this type of work is hard.
SALZMAN: One minute I'm being interviewed, and the next minute I am counseling somebody who is dying. And the next minute, I'm teaching a rabbinic student. So the job is complex, demands a lot. And if it fits you, there isn't anything else you want to do.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Singing) Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.
KECK: Fifty-nine-year-old Michelle Fountain is among a growing number of new pastors who juggle multiple jobs.
MICHELLE FOUNTAIN: For the most part, Monday through Friday, I wear my teacher hat. Saturday and Sunday is more my pastor hat.
KECK: Fountain felt called to ministry during the pandemic. She took courses on the weekends while teaching full-time and was hired to lead the United Church of Ludlow before completing her license because of the need.
FOUNTAIN: I am a pastor because of a pastor shortage.
KECK: Experts don't expect the shortage to get better any time soon, and that's forcing small rural congregations to ask tough questions like, do they always need to worship on Sunday morning? Can they join with a neighboring church? And how much ministry work can members themselves take on? Back at the Community Church in North Chittenden, they've been looking for a pastor for more than a year. Bonnie Smith says it's been frustrating and sad without one.
SMITH: Very sad, but I don't know how to go about doing it either because they're hard to find. But God's still here. As long as we're here, he will come. He will be with us.
KECK: For now, she says, that'll do. For NPR News, I'm Nina Keck in Chittenden, Vermont.
(SOUNDBITE OF 9TH WONDER SONG, "SEASON COURAGE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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