There is no shortage of career changers in the ministry.
At Duke Divinity School, 20 percent of the 440 students in the three-year program that leads to a Master of Divinity, the entry degree into the ministry, are older than 30, says admissions director McKennon Shea. One student is a 65-year-old cardiologist who plans to become a church pastor.
If you're considering switching careers into the ministry, there are 10 North Carolina schools that offer divinity training, including Duke, Wake Forest, Southeastern Baptist and Campbell universities.
At this time, no seminaries operate in North Carolina to train Roman Catholic priests or Jewish rabbis.
There is no set academic requirement for applicants. Academic backgrounds include history, foreign languages, and science and technology, and past careers are as diverse as science, law and banking.
But the ministry is not recession-proof. Even as some religions have opened new churches in response to increased membership, others have seen declines and closed.
Douglas Hilliard, who comes from a religious family, has thought about doing church-related work ever since he was a student at N.C. State University in the early 1980s.
"I might have gone to seminary when I graduated as an electrical engineer in 1984, but wanting to be an engineer and getting married were at that time higher priorities," said Hilliard, 49, of Green Level. "When I announced my plans a few years ago, nobody in the family was shocked."
After working for 25 years for Johnson Electric and its predecessor companies, Hilliard lost his job when the company relocated its plant to Tennessee.
He is now in his second year at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary at Wake Forest.
Rather than becoming a church pastor, Hilliard now plans to get a doctorate and teach the Old Testament at a college or seminary.
Focusing on the Old Testament means that he plans to take six semesters of Hebrew and four of Greek so he can read biblical writings in their original languages.
At Duke Divinity, Cynthia Spicer, 50, is preparing for a second career as a pastor in the United Methodist Church. Forty-five years ago, all Duke Divinity students were male; currently 40 percent of the students are women. Nationally, women are strongly represented among age 30-plus career changers.
Spicer, a Greensboro native and an English major at UNC Greensboro, worked for BB&T for 25 years. After retiring, Spicer, who says she was never very religious, found herself becoming more involved in her church.
"I made a speech as part of a church conference, and several people said I was gifted in the pulpit," Spicer said.
She entered Duke this past fall and expects to graduate in 2013.
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