On Sunday I had the real joy of being with one of our church plants, both to meet with their leadership and then to teach at their worship gathering. What a great church – young, vibrant, loving, missional. But like so many smaller churches, they are struggling with financial sustainability.
The previous day I was at a conference and ran into a church planter friend who is pursuing a highly incarnational model in an urban area. They serve well and have a tangible impact in their community. And they gather to worship, but in more of a house-church sort of way. Similarly, one of their big questions is how to sustain this ministry financially.
One answer in both cases is for the pastor to be either unpaid or bivocational. And this isn’t a bad option per se, especially if it facilitates a model of ministry that the leadership really believes in (and for churches that don’t see a larger worship gathering as part of their model of ministry, I’d say it’s almost imperative that they approach the pastoral role with this in mind). The drawback to this approach is obvious though – an unpaid or bivocational pastor has far less time and energy to devote to the work of ministry than a pastor who is fortunate enough to be full time.
More and more of our young-adult churches are small – some as a result of a strong value on mission and/or community, others simply because they are operating in a post-Christian mission field where the soil is hard and the work difficult.
In either case, are we moving into an era where bivocational pastors will be increasingly common?
My first church had a bivocational pastor (Mark from b2x) and while Paul wasn’t a pastor in the modern sense, he was bivocational (tentmaker and apostle!).
It seems that to make a church successful with a bivocational teaching pastor then I think its probably necessary to have 1) A congregation committed to the vision of the church, 2) A congregation willing to serve the church community with their gifts, 3) A teaching pastor who is well-supported by other leaders in the church, 4) a teaching pastor who is able to delegate responsibilities.
House churches tend to focus on the concept that more than one person in the church is gifted with teaching and pastoring, so those duties are often shared. I think this is true.
If a church can’t afford a full-time teaching pastor, it might make sense for a pastor to be bivocational, but the rest of the church should then step up and take over some responsibilities and the teaching pastor must be willing to share his responsibilities with others.
This could mean that others also teach on Sundays, others also handle administrative issues, others also pastor the congregation, etc. Which might not be a bad things — the modern church seems to have thrown too many responsibilities at the lead pastor anyway.
Just my two cents.
-Kenny