Young pastors are often turned down for positions because a retirement age minister wants the job. When a church is struggling to pay for a pastor, they can hire a pastor who is already retired, so they don’t have all the financial obligations that they would with a full-time, installed minister.

As common sense dictates, an insurance company needs a good percentage of healthy people in order to do well. When healthy people pay into the plan but do not need to use it often, then the company makes money.

Overall, people who are older tend to have more health problems than those who are younger. As Americans, we are living longer, but not always healthier, lives. We need more medical attention for more years. For clergy, years of eating mayonnaise salads at the potluck, lethargic sermon prep, and drinking to alleviate stress mean that our bodies are not in super shape as we reach a certain age. We’re a bit better at our boundaries, but we’re still working over 50 hours a week.

Compound the additional years with the rising costs of medical care, and we can see how much that can strain an insurance plan.

Sadly, the insurance plan of the Presbyterian Church (USA) does not have a young membership. Look closely. This is from a few years ago, but if we go by these numbers, we can see that a mere 14% of our clergy is under 45, and a whopping 70% is over 50. These are active clergy, so I’m sure the number of retired clergy that the plan is supporting is overwhelming.

The Board of Pensions (BOP) has $6.8 billion. We’ve been informed by the BOP that we’ve got a serious $28.6 million deficit problem looming and they are trying to figure out what to do about it. We need good jobs for young clergy. But I fear that what the BOP plans is going to exacerbate the problem, because it will force more young clergy out of the system.

Why do I say “more” young clergy out of the system? Because the BOP gives major incentives to clergy to stay until they are 70. Each year that clergy stay past the age of 65, allows the member to get more Social Security benefits and more BOP benefits upon retirement. So pastors stay in those prime, end-of-the-career callings longer. With the stock market crash, many pastors need to do this, but giving perks to those who work past retirement age bottlenecks the system so that younger clergy cannot get calls.

Now, not only does the BOP plan to give retirement age clergy incentives to work longer, but they also have a proposal for a new dues structure called “Dues Plus.”

•Member dues for health insurance will be 19% of effective salary (this goes down from 21% for those who do not have dependents).

•Mandatory dues would cover 65% of dependent coverage.

•Members choose what kind of coverage that they want: members plus partners, members plus children, member plus family.

Why is this Dues Plus plan bad for younger clergy?

First, many young pastors can’t handle another expense.

I don’t know if you’ve talked many young clergy lately, but they are not faring well in our system. It’s no wonder that 41% of clergy dropout in the first 10 years of professional ministry. They have educational debts that have piled up, even as our seminaries have hoarded more endowment money and poured millions into their building projects.

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