RE: “Young Lutherans are being told that the church is shrinking and that LCMS congregations are closing, and therefore, they should not consider full-time church work. This is a lie of the devil.”

Condemning as “a lie of the devil” any misunderstanding that our brothers and sisters may have is perhaps not the “best construction” (as the term is used in Luther’s explanation of the 8th Commandment). The condescending “we,” as in the author’s “Let’s rethink what we believe,” also seems ill-advised (Ro. 12:10). How will such condemnation and condescension coming from a church worker help encourage open conversation about actually becoming a church worker?

Someone who is in a good position to encourage young people to consider full-time church work might do well to —
• Appreciate the genuine love behind concerns that faithful church members — especially parents — have about the stability and suitability of church work for the young people they care about, and respond to their concerns thoroughly with “gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15).
• Be clear and complete in describing the nature of the church work being considered — its toughest challenges as well as greatest joys — and what serving well in that position will require from one week to the next (Luke 14:28, 31).
• Be forthright with evidence about key trends within the church — e.g. LCMS membership declining from 2.8M in 1971 to 1.7M in 2018 — and in the surrounding culture.
• Thoughtfully discuss how those trends may affect church work in the coming decades.
• Describe how relationships within the congregation (e.g. with elders) and among peers outside the congregation (e.g., in the circuit) provide a support network, and how habits of prayer draw strength from above.
• Emphasize in personal conversations with young people not the institutional concerns about the many vacancies that need to be filled, but how the particular gifts that you see in them could be employed in a fulfilling way to meet genuine spiritual needs.
• Convey reasons to have confidence in the church worker placement process.