In sports, typically youth is preferred over maturity. If you are looking to win a sports competition, it makes sense to have youth on your side. This is especially true in the world of thoroughbred horse racing, physical youth is much favored over age. Beginning at the age of 2 until they are about 5 is the typical useful racing life of a thoroughbred horse, whose life expectancy is 25 years.

Similarly in human sport, a post adolescent, young adult athlete is typically preferred to mid-life adults–PGA Senior tour notwithstanding. However, while youth may be beneficial in some cases, it is not in cases where maturity of thought, life experience and a settled mind are an advantage.

Thoroughbred Pastors

Somewhere along the way to modern times someone(s) decided it wise that the path to being a “Christian” pastor should resemble that to becoming a doctor or a lawyer; meaning, give them the right schooling and they will be suitably qualified, not typically ignoring the requirement of gifting, devotion to God and pursuit of holiness. This formally educated theologian as pastor concept is not a biblical one. You will find nothing in the Judeo-Christian scriptures describing our current college to seminary to pastor path. You only need examine western education ideals to see its source.

Now don’t get me wrong here. I am not suggesting that a pastor not be a learned person; in fact, the scriptures call for constant study, submission to elders and abiding presence of God in its leaders. What is at question here is the concept that young adults are the most effective pastors for the truly Christ following flock. Young adult pastors are probably well suited for years of mentoring under the guidance of elder God honoring pastors.

For the spiritually dead, socially focused church that doesn’t care so much about honoring the God and Christ depicted in the reading of the Judeo-Christian scriptures, a freshly minted theologian may be just the ticket. When it is a career, an income to be earned, a vacancy to be filled, a letter from an instructor, a background check and a sample preaching may be just the tryout this religious athlete needs.

Examining in England the centuries of spiritual erosion of the Church–the collection of Christ following, bible honoring, Holy Spirit convicted believers–leads one to seek to understand why? One reason is in historical England, the concept of primogeniture left younger sons of the gentry with a predicament where their livelihood was dependent upon finding acceptable gentleman careers or marrying into more land/wealth. Their choices to stay in respectable positions that worked well with their landed gentry class were limited primarily to purchased military commissions, positions in government, the legal profession, marriage to well douweried daughters of other gentry or the church (of England).

To understand this non-spiritual journey to ecleisatical position requires a quick sprint across the landscape of the landed gentry. Landed gentry is a largely historical privileged British social class, consisting of land owners who could live entirely off rental income.