by Sandy » Fri Aug 22, 2014 12:15 pm
I had a good friend who was ordained in a Southern Baptist church, and was called to a D of C congregation as their "interim," then was called as their pastor and never went through the process of getting credentials in the D of C. That particular congregation was a bit more conservative than the denomination, their worship guy was SBC as well. It was through knowing him that I discovered the independence and autonomy of the D of C, which is quite strong. But according to him, it's tough to get a pulpit in the D of C. They have a lot of ministers in their late 50's and 60's, and very few vacancies open up, because of a steep decline in membership, attendance and finances. Many of their pastors now serve two congregations.
The UCC appears to be in a downward membership trend as well, at least if the info they report to Wikipedia is correct. The 2002 Handbook of Denominations has their 2000 membership at 1.7 million, but the current report shows just under 980,000. Likewise the D of C figures are 1.2 million in 2000, and 625,000 in 2013. I know a lot of that depends on how they count members, some denominations using the attendance report from year to year, others the "head tax" that congregations pay based on membership to the denomination. But I think if those numbers are close to correct, pastoral opportunities might not be abundant.