No Starbucks, no pastor?

Time has an article [Rural Churches Grapple with a Pastor Exodus, by-line Dan Viema; dateline Crookston MN] about the crises rural churches are facing getting and keeping pastors.

A lot of this problem comes from obvious reasons. Small congregations of non-affluent people, often people who are becoming older, have difficulty affording men or women with professional degrees who have come out of theological school with significant debt. Many of these new clergypeople have spouses whose work has helped them get through school and much of this work is of a relatively high professional level and comparable work may not be available in rural or small town areas.

I doubt that there is any simple solution. Combining parishes or sharing clergy may work sometimes. Accepting less than fully educated and credentialed ministers may work sometimes also, but both solutions bring about problems of their own.

But what I find amazing is the article tells us that for the first time a majority of seminarians do not come from rural areas. An expert from Kansas City is quoted as saying “A town without a Starbucks scares them.”

That statement scares me a bit. We have all heard probably for most of our lives about apostles, saints, missionaries, evangelists, pastors, prophets, brothers, priests, and nuns who have undergone real and extensive inconveniences [many not so minor and some fatal] to spread the Gospel and tend to the needs of the faithful.

But no Starbucks?

Please give us a break.