Much ink has been spilt and many hands wrung over the pastoral shortage in the LCMS. This impending crisis, ever looming, though never quite arriving, brings to mind the destruction that will assuredly result from the melting of the polar ice caps. Borrowing a page from the playbook of the climate politicians, there are those within our synod who are not about to let a good crisis go to waste. “Certain doom can only be averted by lowering the bar at our seminaries!” “We must provide even more ways for men to circumvent residential seminary training!” After all, what harm could poorly trained pastors possibly cause in the parish?

But it’s not productive to offer solutions without first identifying the root cause of the problem. To that end, I propose that the pastoral shortage—granting that there is one—is caused in its entirety by female acolytes. Ok, to be fair, the girls didn’t cause the problem so much as the men who talked them into donning cassocks. But in the same way that the fall into sin was tied to the first case of women’s ordination, so the falling enrollment at our seminaries is inversely connected to the surging ranks of the acolythae feminae.

I suppose I’ve already given some readers sufficient cause to be offended. One does not simply walk into an LCMS church and poke at a precious tradition, however recently it may have been forged. But for any still reading, I’ll make an honest effort to support my claim. First of all, let me say that I’m only 78% serious about female acolytes being the cause of the pastoral shortage. I’m not planning to die on this hill—no, I’d rather win on it. So, into the thick of it we go.

There were four Minor Orders within the historic Church: Porter, Lector, Exorcist, and Acolyte. Not every source agrees, but generally speaking, Acolyte was the highest rank within the Minor Orders. The ranking had to do, not with age, but with proximity to the altar of Christ. Porters manned the doors. Exorcists assisted with baptisms and kept evil spirits, i.e. the unprepared and unworthy, from approaching the communion rail. Lectors assisted with the readings. Only Acolytes ascended with the priest into the “Holy of Holies,” that is, up the chancel steps to the high altar.

Although the men in the Minor Orders were not ordained, they were, nevertheless, members of the clergy. They wore the robes of the clergy. They processed with the clergy. They trained with the clergy. They were clergy, and therefore were required to be male. Some of these men would continue on through the rank of Subdeacon to ordination, but most would not progress beyond the Minor Orders.

For nearly two millennia, the Minor Orders supplied the Church with the next generation of her pastors. This was so in the Missouri Synod, even though the four ranks of Minor Orders may have been less clearly defined and then with different titles: Ushers as Porters, Communion Assistants as Exorcists, and Readers as Lectors. Only Acolytes retained their historic title.

Isn’t it curious that precisely at the same time when most of mainline Christianity began to disregard God’s Word and ordain women, our own Synod began to enlist girls as acolytes. Why did we do this? Was it the result of careful, biblical study? Did we arrive at the informed conviction that nearly two-thousand years of Christian tradition had been wrong? No. We simply reversed course almost overnight with no rationale. It was a panicked and sad attempt to gain the approval of the surrounding culture. “Hey, don’t accuse us of being fundies—we’re not that bad. True, we don’t have female pastors, but we do have female acolytes.” This concession, and others like it, was supposed to make the church grow, but it did the opposite.

Think about it: every ten-year-old boy wants to impress the girls. What better way to impress than to be in an exclusive, boys-only club? That’s why, like most young men, I used to daydream about becoming a soldier. But my military career ended abruptly at age ten when I realized that, not only could girls join the army, one of them might very well be my superior officer. No, thank you!

Tell the boys that there’s an exclusive, male-only club with rules, ranks, and regulations and they’ll do anything to be part of it (ask Fr. David Petersen), especially if the squad is led by an older boy. (When I was ten, the sixteen-year-olds were the coolest people on the planet.) But add one girl to the mix and watch the club implode. We boys wanted to impress the girls—but from a safe distance. After all, girls have cooties. It is known. Yes, give the ten-year-olds a few more years and they’ll think differently about the fairer sex. But whether by cooties or by distraction, the co-ed club is doomed.

The picture above is telling. Where previous generations would have had seven male acolytes, two or three of whom might have gone on to seek ordination, six of those seven are now girls. Where are the other six boys? As far away from the girls’ club as they can possibly get. Six of seven young men will now never even consider entering the ministry, and we are shocked, shocked to discover that enrollment at our seminaries has declined. What’s more, if we teach our boys from an early age that church is for girls, why should we be surprised a generation later that our parishes are mostly comprised of women?

In my own parish, about 50% of the young men in my all-male acolyte corps express a desire to enter the ministry. Not all of them will pursue this, of course, but a few will. What is it that appeals to them? Most of the time, it’s not the theology—at least, not at first. Initially, they love the formal structure. They love belonging to an order. They love being around older boys and manly men. And even if they don’t go on to become pastors, they will have learned that church is for men. They have a place. They belong.

Here’s a final point to consider. If a large number of young men purpose to become pastors because of their time as acolytes, what sort of turmoil are we sowing in the minds of our female acolytes? Serving in the Minor Orders naturally pulls a young man toward the priesthood. But where does it pull a young woman? At best, toward confusion. And there are worse things than confusion, such as apostasy. According to a recent poll that I can’t cite because I forgot where I saw it, nearly half of the women in the Missouri Synod think favorably of women’s ordination.

Could a male-only acolyte corps really have such a profound impact on young men and their sense of belonging within the Church? I believe so, and I don’t think it will be too difficult to recover. Tell the mothers in your congregation that you want to help raise up godly husbands for their daughters, and pastors for their grandchildren. I don’t think they’ll object. Train the boys and men to serve reverently in the exclusive, male-only, historic Minor Orders. They’ll love it. And by all that’s holy, keep the cooties out of the chancel.