Better start vicar-nicking as preachers peter out

Bernard Salt, Demographer

August 14, 2008

I AM concerned for the spiritual well-being of the Australian nation. New figures extracted from the 2006 census show there are 14,800 ministers of religion in Australia, or about one per 1500 residents.

Most ministers hover around middle-age, although I am pleased to advise that there are 16 Australians aged 15-19 who proudly proclaimed at the census that they were ministers of religion.

I didn’t know there was a Church of Like Whatever?

Middle-aged religious ministers are far more populous.

In fact, 48 per cent are aged 50-plus, which means that within a decade much of this nation’s preaching stock could be either retired or doddering into old age.

And the reason is that the 7100 ministers aged 50-plus are backed-up by just 5300 aged 35-50.

The pipeline of preachers is petering out.

What we need is a 457-visa class designed to snare religious ministers from overseas. This process would be known as vicar-nicking. And this, of course, assumes all religious ministers are complexly interchangeable.

Some religious orders would have far healthier pipelines than others.

The probable outcome is that over the next decade, ministers will not retire en masse (no pun intended). Rather they will soldier on not so much out a sense of duty to the Almighty but because their services will be in hot demand. They will not be allowed to retire by their needy congregation.

As baby boomers descend into the abyss that lies beyond 60, and hurtle towards the blinding light of 70, they will seek out the services of spiritual advisers.

Godlessness was all well and good back at the healthy end of life but now they’re heading towards the business end they will want to shore up their options.

What if there really is a God? Might just start sidling up to the local minister. Damn.

What do you mean there is no local minister?

And there you have the problem. The one service that we can be sure will be in greater demand in the future is one where the supply of recruits has been miserly for decades. It raises the question of whether churches in the future, perhaps even the Church of Like Whatever, will take the hi-tech road to building a congregation. Local sermons might be tele-beamed into homes. This week’s bible class discussion topic: can sacraments be delivered by cyberspace?

And can Pay Pal really replace the passing of the plate?

Will vicars be such rare species that they will be feted at fetes?

Regardless of what happens the fragile balance between the supply of, and demand for ministers of religion, is a tussle to watch. But just as ministers are on the back foot so too are farmers. Or beef cattle farmers to be specific.

Whereas just under half of all religious ministers are aged 50-plus, this proportion among beef cattle farmers is 68 per cent.

I might add that across the Australian workforce this proportion is 26 per cent. There are 26,700 beef cattle farmers in Australia and 18,200 of these are aged over 50. More than 7000 (or 28 per cent) are aged over 65 (barely 9 per cent of ministers hang on this long).

In any other occupation, the market could expect almost two-thirds of this skilled workforce to retire within a decade. But here’s the problem. There are only 6400 beef cattle farmers aged 35-49 ready to step into the shoes of those who should be retiring.

The bottom line is this. If you are a 65-year-old beef cattle farmer looking to get out of the business there’s just not enough buyers in the right age bracket to “take you out”.

With no price tension the 65-year-old beef farmer, who has worked the farm all his life, digs in his heels and soldiers on.

The reality is that many of these farmers will drop dead on the farm rather than “sell down” and “move into a nice unit in town”. But what happens to the family farm? Too many sellers (including deceased estates) and not enough buyers ultimately drops values. Or, farms get bigger and corporatised.

No more beef cattle farmer out in the bush — just a transitory employee for a large-scale agribusiness company. Oh, and no vicar at the local church.

And while this is a sad scenario in some respects I don’t see too many young Australians putting up there hands to take on beef cattle farms or religious ministries for that matter (apart from the 16 teenage ministers from the Church of Like Whatever).

But the pre-retirement skew of the Australian workforce doesn’t end with beef cattle farmers.

More than half the sugar cane growers, sheep farmers and mixed livestock farmers are also aged 50-plus. I’m not sure what the common denominator is between life on the land and a life given to God, but Generation X and Generation Y are not as interested in either as were the baby boomers.

The final occupation in my review of almost extinct occupations is university lecturer.

Some 44 per cent of academics are over 50 and are on the brink of retirement. So there you have it. The most in-demand skills to have over the next decade will be those of a beef-cattle farming preacher with a PhD.

Bernard Salt is a partner with KPMG

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24176218-14741,00.html