Baby Boomers Heading Back to Seminary


A


t 51, Vincent Guest could well be the professor at a table filled with 20- and 30-year-olds. He is leading a lunchtime social justice meeting


for seminarians at Theological College at Catholic University in Washington.


Forks clink on plates in the basement conference room as


Guest opens the November meeting in prayer. “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” he says as he bows his head and clasps his hands.


Guest is not a visiting professor. He is a seminarian, just like


the other younger men at the table. But he is not alone in his age group. According to a decade-


long study of enrollment by the Association of Theological Schools released in 2009, the fastest-growing group of seminarians include those older than 50. In 1995, baby boomers made up 12% of seminarians, while today they are 20%.


“I think I was always looking for something else in a lot of


ways and always felt the call to do something else,” Guest said. He spent time in government and Pennsylvania politics


before settling into a career in law. He had a three-bedroom home near the Jersey Shore with a meaningful job as an attorney helping the poor.


Though


successful by any measure with a job that made a difference, he kept looking.


“Helping


Leah Daughtry studies at Wesley Theological Seminary library in Washington.


people with domestic violence, you know suffering from domestic violence


or immigrants who were being deported ... I just saw their brokenness. In so many different ways, they were broken. And I know they needed to be touched by the love of God,” he said.


8 The feeling that something was missing led Guest to


Theological College to study to become a parish priest in Camden, New Jersey.


“Ministry, whether that be a priest or a minister or a


rabbinical student touches people’s lives at the core, where God is where it’s most meaningful. I think people grasp that and are searching for that,” he said.


Guest, who never married, was good candidate to become


a priest. As a young man, he enrolled in the seminary for a few years to become a priest before leaving to experience life


It is a journey that has played out similarly for a lot of baby


boomers. “Many of them felt a call early in life, maybe in their


teenage years or college, and set that aside to be the bread winner for the family or do what the family expected them to do,” said the Rev. Chip Aldridge, admissions director at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington.


The Methodist seminary, which boasts students from 40


denominations, has also seen a rise in baby boomers in the last decade, making for some interesting classes.


For many of the boomers who went to college in the


analog age, they have to get up to speed in a hurry to learn in the digital era.


“Everyone has to be able to use online academic tools. ...


They’ve got to be very comfortable with technology,” Aldridge said.


The majority of seminarians are still in their 20s and 30s. “You’ve got two very different kinds of rich experiences


when the baby boomers and the millennials come together in the classroom setting,” Aldridge said.


“Yes, the baby boomer may have had a career, two


careers, has raised a family, but millenials are coming from these colleges where almost all of them have some overseas studies, almost all of them have been on some kind of volunteer mission; they speak a second language. So in some ways those two sets of life experiences complement each other, and it becomes a very rich conversation,” he said.


One benefit, unseen a decade ago when boomers began


returning to seminaries, was the impact they would have on shrinking mainline denominations.


“They’ve got a little bit of that financial burden taken off


them because of a previous career behind them,” Aldridge said. “We’ve got a lot of churches that would not have been able to have a full-time pastor unless these baby boomers are returning to study and are raising their hand and saying, ‘Send me to those churches because I’m ready for something quiet in the country or outside the beltway.’ “


It’s a working retirement plan that skips the beach house. “Whose got time to lie on the beach? There’s so much


going on out there,” Leah Daughtry said.


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