Reason number three why we planted a more typical church rather than a house church: I feel called to pastor full time, and subsequently, to earn what living I can as a full time pastor.
I often tell church-planters-to-be that one has to factor this into their sense of call. Do you feel called to be a house church planter? Excellent, but realize that part of your planning has to be figuring out how you will support your family, because you will most likely need another job to pay the bills. For many this is fine. They see being bivocational as an important part of their calling and even an advantage in doing ministry, and many of these have jobs with the kind of flexibility that enables them to connect with people during the course of a work day. Others already have jobs in ministry, are coming from a parachurch background and already have a solid support base to draw on, and a few of the most successful house church guys make their living as they travel as speakers or training others for ministry. For others, the paycheck factor alone can be a deal breaker and send them back in the direction of typical church ministry.
Sometimes there is a tension between full time and bivocational pastors. The full-timers look down on the bivocs as less than real pastors, and the bivocs look down on full-timers as those who have sold out by taking a paycheck. Neither view is appropriate. The New Testament is explicit about the legitimacy of those who earn their living as full time ministers, as well as those like Paul who affirmed this path but felt called himself to be bivocational. And sometimes a community of believers finds that their best ministry investment is to hire one or more of their leaders away from their day jobs so they can give their full attention to leading the congregation.
To me it isn’t a question of which is better – fruitful ministry can happen in either – but a question of call. What kind of church are you called to plant? Both ministry models have their advantages and their drawbacks, and we need to enter either with eyes wide open as to what those are.
