Considering a Career in the Clergy? What You Need to Know

July 2, 2010 — -- A friend's daughter who's about to graduate from high school was recently asking for career suggestions on Facebook.

"Get your liberal arts degree, take a little bit of everything and wait to declare your major until you have a better idea of where your interests lie," offered one 40-something.

"Get yourself into a solid business or engineering program. You want to make money, don't you?" chimed in another."Go to seminary school!" suggested the youth pastor in the online crowd.

Amid the thunderous silence that befell the digital room, I couldn't help but wonder: Is a career in the clergy even a viable vocation these days? Didn't training to be a reverend or rabbi or monk or imam go out with eight-track tapes and rotary phones?

Admittedly, one of the last times I set foot in a temple was for my bat mitzvah nearly 30 years ago. You might say I'm the poster child for religious indifference.

But it's not just me. According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 26 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 are not affiliated with any particular religion. In comparison, when my Generation X peers were that same age, 20 percent of us were unaffiliated. And when our boomer parents were under 30, only 13 percent of them were unaffiliated.

Enrollment in theological schools is down too. The Association of Theological Schools, a collective of more than 250 North American graduate institutions, reports that overall enrollment has waned since 2005.

Still, the association reports that roughly 75,000 students are currently enrolled in theological graduate programs and that each year more than 14,000 complete their degrees. Ask them why they chose to follow this particular path, and you'll often hear that working as a spiritual adviser was an undeniable calling.

If you, too, are contemplating life in the clergy, here's what you should know before you head down that holy road.