Becoming a pastor Youth and social aspirations in Ghana

Ghana, like a number of other African countries, witnesses an increasing number of smaller independent Pentecostal churches founded by young pastors. These young pastors engage in pastoral careers as a way to achieve social mobility. It is an attractive career path for many young people as it offers opportunities of ascending religious and social hierarchies in a situation where the more conventional modes of achieving success, through education and employment as civil servant, are decreasing. By exploring the careers of young pastors, the article discusses how this particular group of youth are innovative and entrepreneurial in the sense that they create spaces, where they can build up status and where this status is socially recognized. At the same time the young pastors are dependent on more senior pastors in order to make a career. This points to the importance of approaching youth from the perspective of generational dynamics. The argument is that in order to become successful pastors, young people have to engage in complex relations of dependency and at the same time be innovative. A religious setting, like the small independent Pentecostal churches, enables young people to be involved in and transcend these generational relations by drawing on powerful religious repertoires of invoking and claiming access to divine powers.