We Don’t Have a Pastor Shortage—We Have a Stewardship Crisis

Mr Patrick Herold April 16, 2026

We Don't Have a Pastor Shortage — We Have a Stewardship Crisis

What if the challenge facing Episcopal parishes today isn't really about finding enough clergy — but about finding enough connection? That question is worth sitting with, especially now, in the luminous stretch of the church year between Easter and Pentecost, when the Spirit is doing its most restless and generative work. If you've ever worried about the long-term health of your parish, this is an invitation to reframe the conversation — and to discover that stewardship may already be happening all around you in ways you haven't fully named.

The Real Question Beneath the Numbers

Conversations about parish sustainability often default quickly to a familiar anxiety: there aren't enough clergy, there isn't enough money, there aren't enough young families in the pews. These concerns are real. But a growing number of church leaders are pushing back on the "pastor shortage" narrative, arguing that it misidentifies the problem. The deeper challenge, they suggest, is a stewardship crisis — a gradual erosion of the connective tissue that binds parishioners to one another, to their community, and to the mission of the Church.

Stewardship, in this fuller sense, is not primarily about the offering plate. It is about showing up. It is about a parish that invests in its neighbors, forms its children in faith, honors the complexity of its history, and makes space for people to belong before they are ever asked to give. When those roots go deep, generosity follows — not as institutional obligation, but as a natural expression of gratitude and love.

"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." — Matthew 6:21

The inverse is equally true: when people feel genuinely connected — to worship, to formation, to service, to one another — their hearts are already engaged. The financial dimension of stewardship tends to follow that engagement, not precede it.

Stewardship Is Already Happening — Can You See It?

Look honestly at your parish calendar right now. St. Anne's Episcopal in Annapolis offers a vivid example of what multi-layered community investment looks like in practice. This spring alone, they have offered a Parish Circle for Eastertide and Pentecost,^[1] a scholarship program for graduating high school seniors,^[4] Vacation Bible Camp,^[8] a Truth and Reconciliation "Say My Name" ceremony,^[5] and both a Cemetery Survey Day and a Greenscape Day.^[7] Each of these is a stewardship act — an investment of time, talent, and presence in the Body of Christ and the community it serves.

When a parish tends its cemetery, it is stewarding memory and honoring those who came before. When it awards a scholarship, it is making a material investment in the next generation of faithful people. When it gathers for a Truth and Reconciliation ceremony, it is stewarding relationships — including with those its tradition has historically marginalized. These are not peripheral programs. They are the living proof that stewardship is far larger than any annual pledge drive.

The Season of Pentecost, which begins June 8, 2025, is a particularly powerful moment to name all of this out loud. Pentecost marks the birth of the Church in community — the Spirit moving through a gathered people and sending them outward. It is the theological anchor for everything a living, breathing parish does together.^[3] What better time to help your congregation see that they are already participating in something holy?

Staying Connected Between Sundays

Here is a practical truth that every parish communicator knows: most of your parishioners' lives happen between Sundays. The challenge — and the opportunity — is to build connection that doesn't evaporate when the postlude ends. That is precisely where tools like Digital Faith become genuinely useful for parishes serious about stewardship as relationship.

Digital Faith is a Connectional Community Management System designed specifically for faith communities. It allows parishes to maintain a professional, welcoming website without requiring any programming knowledge — meaning your staff or volunteers can keep content fresh, relevant, and alive. Its AI-enabled content management makes it easy to publish news, post sermon reflections, and announce upcoming events quickly and gracefully. Built-in blogging templates mean that a formation reflection, a stewardship story, or a volunteer spotlight can go from idea to published in minutes.^[1]

Perhaps most meaningfully for stewardship formation, Digital Faith integrates devotional resources — including content drawn from the Book of Common Prayer — directly into your parish website with just a few clicks. Imagine a parishioner who couldn't make it to Sunday's formation session opening your site on a Tuesday afternoon and finding a reflection rooted in that week's lectionary, or a prayer tied to the current liturgical season. That is connection. That is relationship. And that, over time, is what cultivates the kind of belonging from which generosity grows.

Online giving integration means that when someone reads your stewardship story or watches a recap of Vacation Bible Camp and feels moved to give, the pathway to do so is immediate and simple. Reducing friction in the giving process isn't a gimmick — it's good stewardship of the moment when someone's heart is open.

An Invitation: Name What You're Already Doing

The most important stewardship conversation your parish can have this season may not be about budgets at all. It may simply be this: Look at what we are already doing together, and call it what it is. Formation. Service. Reconciliation. Scholarship. Hospitality. These are not line items — they are the living expression of a community that believes resurrection is real and that the Spirit is still moving.

The Book of Common Prayer reminds us in the Catechism that the ministers of the Church are lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons — in that order. Stewardship belongs to all of us, not just to the clergy or the finance committee. And when a parish builds the digital infrastructure to tell its story well, to engage its people throughout the week, and to lower every barrier to participation and giving, it is doing exactly what good stewards do: tending what has been entrusted to them with care and creativity.

"The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ." — The Book of Common Prayer, p. 855

This week, we invite you to do three things. First, look at your parish calendar and name one program or gathering that is, at its heart, an act of stewardship. Second, consider whether your parish's digital presence reflects the richness and vitality of what you are actually doing together — and if it doesn't, explore what Digital Faith might make possible. And third, pray the ancient prayer of Pentecost: Come, Holy Spirit. Because a community renewed by the Spirit doesn't shrink from the future. It leans into it, together.