Over the last couple of years, in quite different contexts, I have heard the claim that the average length of a Unitarian Universalist ministry is now about seven years. I am not sure where this number comes from, but I have heard from search committee members, members of congregations that I am serving, academics, and UUA staff. My gut has told me that it is a meaningless number. That it might be true that the average length of a ministry is seven years across congregations of all sizes but that the claim would not hold up under a more fine-grained analysis. Comparing congregations of all sizes, I thought, is probably comparing apples to oranges rather than apples to apples. And so, I decided to dig into the data a bit to see what I could come up with. It turns at that the claim that the average length of ministry is seven years across all congregations is a good example of the old truism, “lies, damn lies, and statistics.” It is probably a true statement, but it doesn’t actually give us any useful information.
I am currently serving as the interim senior minister of the First Unitarian Universalist Church, Houston. It is a congregation of, as of today, 449 members. It is a multi-site congregation with 353 members at its largest campus, the Museum District, and 37 and 59 members at each of its smaller two campuses (Tapestry and Thoreau, respectively). So, I thought a good test of the claim that the average ministry lasts seven years could be done by looking at four different data sets. The first was of the ten congregations nearest in size to all of First Church. The second was of the ten congregations nearest in size to the Museum District campus. The third was of the ten congregations nearest in size to Thoreau (the larger of the two smaller campuses). And the last, an additional point of interest, was looking at the ten largest congregations within the Association. Here’s what I found*:
Data Set 1 (Ten Congregations Nearest in Size to First Church)
This data set begins with the First Unitarian Church of Providence and ends with the First Parish Unitarian Universalist of Arlington, MA. The average ministerial tenure for this set of congregations is at least 14 years. The longest tenure of a minister still serving is 35 years (Baton Rouge, LA). The shortest recent tenure of a completed ministry is 4 years (Burlington, VT). The median tenure for a ministry is at least 13 years.
Data Set 2 (Ten Congregations Nearest in Size to the Museum District Campus)
This data set begins with the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Montclair and ends with the Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Santa Rosa. It should end with the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship. However, I wasn’t able to find information on the ministerial tenure of the last minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Buffalo and so I had to expand the data set by one. Three of these congregations are currently being served by developmental ministers. Several of them have also recently undergone ministerial transitions.
Among these congregations the average ministerial tenure is at least 11 years. The longest tenure of a minister of a minister still serving is 13 years (Morristown, NJ). The shortest recent tenure is 5 years (San Francisco and Greenville, SC). The median tenure is at least 11 years.
Data Set 3 (Ten Congregations Nearest in Size to the Thoreau Campus)
This data set begins with the Unitarian Universalist Church in Idaho Falls and ends with the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Norway (Maine). Three of these congregations are lay led. Of the remaining seven, the average ministerial tenure is 9 years and the median tenure is 7 years. Almost all of these congregations have gone through ministerial transitions recently and so the longest serving minister currently at one of them has only been there for six years. The recently retired minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Castine (Maine) left after 22 years.
Data Set 4 (Ten Largest Congregations in the Unitarian Universalist Association)
This data set begins with All Souls, Tulsa and ends with the First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque. Several of these congregations are in the middle of long-term ministries. I decided not to go back and research all of their ministerial histories. When the tenure of the senior was less than ten years I used the tenure of the previous minister instead of the tenure of the current minister.
The average ministerial tenure is 21 years and the median tenure is 19 years. The longest ministry of someone currently serving one of these congregations is 19 years (University Unitarian (Seattle)) although the senior minister of First Madison just retired after 30 years. The shortest recent tenure I could find was 9 years. In addition, the average tenure of ministers in these congregations is almost certainly significantly longer than 21 years since the ministers of two the tenures I included (Tulsa and Washington, DC) are both in their late forties or early fifties.
Conclusion
The only congregations that I looked in which the median ministerial tenure is seven years are those with about 60 members. Congregations of larger sizes all had significantly longer ministerial tenures. This suggests to me that when I am in conversations with people about ministerial tenure I will be careful to suggest they think about the tenure of a ministry at a similarly sized congregation rather than making a more generalized statement. Congregational systems theory has long claimed that congregations of different sizes behavior differently. An examination of ministerial tenure of congregations of different sizes is further evidence for that claim.
*A note on my method
All of my data is derived from the UUA’s list of certified congregations for 2018 and its directory of religious professionals. The exception to this is the membership statistics for First Unitarian Universalist Church, Houston. The length of tenure is for most cases the tenure of either the current minister or, in the case where the congregation is in transition, the tenure of the most recently departed minister. The exception to this is where the current minister has been at the congregation for less than five years. In those instances, I have gone with the tenure of the prior ministry.
