Children of the Cloth

In a moment, the 6-year-old girl will preach.

But for now, in a church pew, Summer Dowd-Lukesh bounces on her father’s lap. She knows her sermon by heart, so no use taking it to the pulpit, where she might fiddle with her papers or roll them up like a spyglass. Empty-handed--at 3 feet, 8 inches, 44 pounds, in a burgundy velvet dress--Summer scampers to the podium and climbs atop a stool in Mary Jane shoes.

She will see whether she likes this preaching thing. Someday, Summer might be a pastor or a zookeeper. It’s hard to sort out in the whirligig of her days at home in Rancho Cucamonga, where she must feed chickens, shoot marbles, gather walnuts, soar on a tire swing, dream in a treehouse and write in her secret diary (yes, there’s a boy she loves).

On this night, Summer will deliver her first sermon, as a winner in the Claremont School of Theology’s Future Ministers Competition. Two other winners in three age categories, for 5- to 17-year-olds, also will preach for the first time. And then each of the winners will walk away with a prize that could shape her or his future:

A one-year scholarship to the school’s graduate seminary--that’s worth $8,000 in tuition now and likely thousands more by the time Summer is old enough to get a master of divinity degree. (The scholarship cannot be exchanged for cash).

Nationwide Effort to Attract Youngsters

Claremont’s competition is part of a growing effort nationwide to get kids as young as 5 to consider the ordained ministry. Major commitments underway include a private foundation’s multimillion-dollar grant program to “recruit talented young people” and a plan by U.S. Roman Catholic bishops to target youth for the priesthood.

In Claremont, organizers of the preaching contest wanted to dangle a carrot in front of young people that they wouldn’t forget.

“That is awesome,” said Kathy Lee, of the prize awarded to her 16-year-old daughter, Kelsey Lee, one of the preaching winners. “That’s maybe God’s calling her to say, ‘Hey, this is it, girl.’ ”

And maybe: Hurry.

With seminary statistics telling a troubling story, mainline churches and other institutions are trying to catch children before they stray into more tempting, lucrative careers. Consider: the average Catholic priest is 58. More than 50% of seminarians tracked by the Assn. of Theological Schools are 35 or older. And in the last 30 years, while the Catholic population grew by 31%, the number of students in Catholic seminaries plummeted by 60%. (By comparison, enrollment in rabbinical schools is up.)

The numbers are forcing church leaders and theologians to think like recruiters and rethink the way young people enter the ministry. Is the ministry a calling first and vocation second, or vice versa? (The word “vocation,” in fact, derives from the Latin vocatio, “a calling.”) Or, these days, does the call come when the door to the ministry is opened for a young person who might not otherwise hear it in the hubbub of a MTV, modem-plugged world?

“If it is put to the child, ‘OK, you do this well, so therefore the job opportunity is there for you,’ that would be a fundamental shift in the way most churches conceive of the ordained ministry,” said Robert K. Martin, assistant professor of religious education at Yale Divinity School. “Most churches would be quite adamant in saying, ‘This is not a normal kind of occupational choice you choose. This is an occupational choice that discovers you.’ ”

Claremont’s preaching contest got one of the judges, the Rev. Paul Tellstrom, thinking about whether the pulpit was any place for a child.

“Could this be harmful?” wondered Tellstrom, pastor at Mt. Hollywood Congregational Church. “Could this pull someone in who now has to be a minister?”

But then Tellstrom remembered how he felt at age 11, when he heard God’s call. He was lonely and discouraged, with no one to confide in--and put off the seminary until he was 36. Now he is heartened by the way Claremont’s contest confirms a young person’s intuition by giving her a chance to preach--and backing up winners with a meaningful prize.

“If this is what they’re doing right now,” Tellstrom said of the entrants, “they are feeling some kind of call. I’m not saying that this is the bolt of lightning, but this might be something that seals that call--’Yes, I was right to think of it.’ ”

Until now, efforts to tap kids have been subtle. But the sit-back-and-wait approach isn’t working, some church leaders say. San Dimas pastor James Bowser, for instance, used to volunteer for a Rotary Club career program when he lived in Tulare, Calif., hoping a high school student would sign up to follow him for a day. In eight years, no one ever did.

At a two-week program in Atlanta, the Thomas / Shockley Youth Academy takes promising African American students, ages 12 to 14, and puts them through preseminary training. The students are tracked through graduate school to make sure they keep focused on the ministry, said the Rev. Rodney T. Smothers, chairman of the board of the academy, which is sponsored by the United Methodist Church.

“Baseball, football teams recruit kids when they’re 10, 11 [years old],” Smothers said. “We have to identify potential candidates for the ministry. . . . If we are really talking about developing innovative, cutting-edge leadership for the church, we need to get ahold of these kids early on and help shape their lives.”

Church Screening High School Students

Last year, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles began screening students in its Catholic high schools for potential priests, brothers and sisters, based on their response to 96 statements. Sample statement: “I’m a very compassionate person.” (Students mark how strongly they feel about the statement on a scale from five to one.)

The questionnaire was designed to gauge a pattern in the students’ overall responses, said Father Alex Acland, a vocations director for the archdiocese.

“This is where we tell them, ‘You have this gift. You might want to use it.’ ”

Also underway:

* An Indianapolis-based philanthropic foundation, Lilly Endowment Inc., is giving more than $15 million in grants to programs aimed at attracting youth to the ministry. Officials with the foundation, which is associated with pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co., say they are concerned about the quality of the ministry for the next century.

* The Methodists will sponsor Exploration ‘98, a Nov. 13-15 workshop for 1,000 young people from across the country at the Los Angeles Airport Hilton & Towers. The church pays room and board for participants to “discern if God is calling them to ordained ministry.”

* A three-year plan by U.S. Catholic bishops includes a study on what young people think about religious vocations and programs to coax them into church life.

“The current situation is not so much one of rising hostility to [religious] vocations as declining encouragement of them,” the bishops’ study said.

As a result, in a recent survey, 89% of the country’s Catholic dioceses reported that they had started programs to get kids thinking about the ministry, including one that puts a priest, brother or sister in regular contact with a kindergarten class.

Such efforts are different from those of individual parents pushing their small children to the piano or gymnastics beam, developmental psychologist Nancy Cobb said.

“When it’s a large-scale effort, you wonder to the extent that parents are mobilizing and kids are getting caught into something,” said Cobb, a Cal State Los Angeles professor who runs a psychology of religion laboratory on campus. “It feels too much like a human effort and not a response to that true spiritual call or dimension.”

But, some church leaders argue, the Bible says King David first heard God’s call when he was a shepherd boy--so why shouldn’t children be encouraged to minister? In Pentecostal churches, for instance, it’s not unusual for children to lead worship.

At an evangelical church in Detroit, Anthony Estes began preaching at age 5. Anthony has “a special call in his life from God” and does not need seminary training or life experience to deliver a message, said his minister, Elder Jesse T. Stacks. Anthony, 12, preaches at churches of different denominations throughout Detroit.

Most kids never get the chance to write and preach their own sermons, said Stephanie Graham, organizer of Claremont’s Future Ministers Competition. The contest started last year as part of the school’s 40th anniversary festivities and as a way to get the attention of young people and their parents.

“I thought, ‘What kind of prize could we offer that would be really spectacular, really encourage . . . more than just a T-shirt, more than just a trophy?’ ” said Graham, public relations director at the school, which is associated with Claremont Graduate University. (Winners must get a bachelor’s degree before accepting the graduate school scholarship.)

On this October evening, more than 50 people wait to hear the winning sermons in a Claremont church. None of the winners paces, no one bellows.

Kelsey, the 16-year-old winner from Lancaster, talks about firsts in her life, like rock climbing. She mimics the way she must buckle her safety straps and tells the crowd about how she trusted God to push her up the rock--and past other hurdles in her life. Kelsey, who is thinking about becoming a minister, grins at the crowd and speaks as though she’s talking to friends.

Bixler McClure, the winner in his age division, wants to be a minister when he grows up. At his church in Shell Beach, 12-year-old Bixler times his pastor’s sermons and analyzes her words. He notices she often starts her sermon with a question, so he did, too: “Ever feel like a hamster in a cage?” In church, as a volunteer liturgist, Bixler sometimes gets to read scriptures and lead readings with the pastor. At the Claremont ceremony, he preaches in a quiet, steady voice, telling about how he overcame a stuttering problem with God’s help.

Summer doesn’t falter. Remember, she says, in a soft voice, when Jesus and his disciples were on a boat? She forms her mouth into an O shape. The wind blew, “who-oo, who-oo,” she says. But Jesus talked to the water, and the water got still. “Jesus wouldn’t let his friends get hurt,” Summer says. “And we’re all Jesus’ friends.”

Summer’s mom, 30-year-old Michelle Dowd, had asked her whether she wanted to enter the contest. Summer said yes, it might be fun, and it was.

After delivering her sermon, Summer examines her armful of prizes, including a T-shirt and beaded bracelet. She doesn’t look at the scholarship certificate--”a ticket to their college,” she calls it.

Does Summer feel like she has to use it? Summer is too polite to roll her eyes, but her voice hints at exasperation.

“Not really,” she says. “I just like first grade.”

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Ministers in the Making

Claremont School of Theology’s Future Ministers Competition gives students ages 5 to 17 the chance to write and deliver their own sermons. The winners in three age categories get a one-year future scholarship to the school’s graduate seminary, which charges $8,000 in annual tuition. This year’s topic was “In God We Trust.” Excerpts from the three prize-winning sermons follow:

“One time when I was at Disneyland, my family and I were in Mickey Mouse’s house, and I was so excited, I ran all around looking at things. I didn’t see my mom and dad and sister and brother leave the barn, and I found myself all alone. At first I was scared, but then I thought, my mom and dad would never leave me. They know I’m lost. They’ll come and get me. That’s kind of what it’s like with God.”

--Summer Dowd-Lukesh, 6, of Rancho Cucamonga

*

“When I was in third grade, I was Christopher in a production of ‘The Velveteen Rabbit.’ Back then, I had a problem with ss-stuttering. The director of it was really angry with me. I had a really bad time in rehearsals because of my problem. I had to rely on my faith to help me deliver good performances, which I did. Since my stuttering problem is gone, I have been able to do many more things with my voice.”

--Bixler McClure, 12, of Shell Beach

*

” . . . Trusting in God is more than a specific incident or moment of desperation. Trusting in God is more than a comfort or security when we’re at the end of our ropes. Trusting in God is a lifestyle. A lifestyle in which every day we look to God for answers and rely not on ourselves, but on Him. . . . A trust that promises inner light and peace.”

--Kelsey Lee, 16, of Lancaster