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Chang Patricia M Y & Bompadre Viviana: "Crowded Pulpits: Observations and Explanations of the Clergy Oversupply in the Protestant Churches 1950-1993" in J for Scientific Study of Religion Sep 99 vol 38 Issue 3 pp 398-410
Persistent link to the article: http://search.epnet.com/direct.asp?an=2345791&db=f5h
Deployment concerns itself with Mana Mahi.

This paper examines the supply of clergy relative to 'members' and 'churches' in fourteen American denominations from 1950-1993. It finds that while in general membership is declining and the number of churches is remaining relatively stable the number of clergy continues to increase producing a situation of labour oversupply. One result of this oversupply has been a dramatic increase in the percentage of clergy working in non-parish ministries. Chang & Bompadre quote a rule of thumb that it takes 200 members to financially support a full-time pastor.  They found that in the American denominations that they define as "liberal mainline Protestant" the member-to-clergy ratio declined from 296 to 167 between 1950 and 1993.  Coupled with that they found a sharp increase in the number of clergy involved in non-parish work as institutional chaplains campus ministers social workers ecclesiastical administrators etc. They show via queuing theory how such an oversupply can lead to a decline in the status of clergy occupations. While showing that the entry of women into the ranks of the clergy cannot be adduced as a cause of this situation it is a focus for their study and they consider the implications thereof.

They quote a 1980 survey which predicted that at the rates of entry and exit pertaining between 1950 and 1977 the expected ratio of clergy to members in the Episcopal Church would be 1:1 by the year 2004.
Richard's notes on the above:
There are a number of procedural difficulties with this study which make its statistics unrelaiable even for reporting the American situation let alone the New Zealand one. But it does paint a picture which we could examine for its validity for our environment. That picture is one of - As a scenario for the collapse of the parochial system this is pretty convincing.