This year marks my eighth year as pastor of Christ Community church, and all told my 16Th year of part-time/bi-vocational pastoral ministry, but I was a part time youth minister for a couple years, and a chaplain at a nursing home prior to that. When you add it all up it comes to nearly 20 years that I have served as a minister at a part time or volunteer level. This fact could be interpreted a number of different ways. It could mean that I am simply lazy and inept. It might mean that I just don't have enough faith to trust God to supply our needs through the ministry. But there is a third possibility, that I believe resonates within the hearts of most men who serve bi-vocationally: Devotion the Christ, and His Church. Throughout my adult life, service has always been about others. When I took my first pastorate in 1992, I was just thrilled to be able to serve the Lord in his church. I remain thrilled to serve the Lord. It is such a privilege, most of us would do it for free. It is not what we do but who we are. Ministry is what flows out of us where ever we are. We don't stop serving others if we don't get paid.
I further believe that bi vocational ministry holds a great deal of promise in the post modern milieu. It provides ministers for smaller parishes, it keeps us in touch with our world in an important way. It gives us contacts and opportunities to share the gospel with people. But as I hinted in the title it is a knife that cuts two ways.
After all these years I still believe in the value and virtues of bi-vocational ministry but with reserve. One of the primary reasons many cite for doing ministry in this way is the very reason perhaps we should not. In the post modern world, it is said that the professional clergyman has lost his niche. It is no longer one of the more respected careers. To the secular person he is less and less needed. We now have doctors and medicine, psychiatrists, and psychologists, we have public education. To many the role of a pastor has paled and is no longer significant, except in religious matters. Ministry is not a "real" job, but a kind of parasite that lives off needy people. In this view full-time ministers live a sheltered life, and cannot possibly have relevance for people who work 50-60 hours or more a week, who struggle to make ends meet and whose only day off is Sunday. Much that is written on bi-vocational ministry trumpets this ability to be relevant and to connect with people in the "real" world. But is this true? Does bi-vocational ministry do all that? Or does it rather concede the point that Ministry is not a real job, so much so that a person can adequately pastor and grow a church on a part time basis? And if this is true what need is there of any "full-time" ministers? It makes you think doesn't it? However the proof is in the pudding as they say and anyone considering bi vocational ministry needs to be aware of the facts. There are few, very few bi-vocational ministers who can do an adequate job of pastoral care and ministry. Through out the history of the Church, bi vocational ministers are the exception not the rule. Even in the New Testament, where the whole idea of tent making originated, it was the exception not the rule. The Apostle Paul did it himself, but counseled Timothy the very opposite. In the Apostle Paul, we have a precedent. The over-whelming weight of scripture points the other direction.
My point is simply this, bi-vocational ministry is not the panacea that will cure the ills of the modern church. It is a "stop-gap" measure today just as it was for St. Paul. It is in many instances a doorway into community. But we must not kid ourselves about the quality of our ministry at the part time level. The apostles themselves did not feel it right to give up preaching the word and prayer for the sake of "serving tables." Neither should we.
