Six Years On

By God’s grace, our church has a full-time senior pastor, myself, and two lay Elders. I pastor part-time and write full-time. Or, rather, I’m supposed to pastor part-time and write full-time. Most weeks, I pastor full-time and write full-time. Many weeks, I don’t have the mental space nor the energy to do much else. Some weeks, I struggle with discouragement as it seems, from my finite and fallen perspective, that I am tilting at windmills. As Trueman pointed out, much of a pastor’s energy and time is devoured by those who are struggling and hurting in the church. I don’t begrudge that, that’s a big part of what we’re called to do. But the reality is that that aspect of ministry is taxing and often discouraging.

I frequently tell my fellow pastors, “I can’t imagine pastoring by myself.” In context of Trueman’s article, I add, “nor can I imagine being the sole (or senior/lead) pastor and be bi-vocational.”

Tyler, (assuming that Tyler reads this), you often comment about how you believe that bi-vocational pastors are the reality of the future. It’s not that I doubt you; I just pray that you’re wrong. Assuming that you’re not wrong, have you ever considered writing down ways in which churches and pastors can help bi-vocational pastors avoid burn-out?

When I started as a pastor there was a mindset implying that pastors/Christian school teachers should be willing to serve the Lord “full-time” and trust Him to provide. I did that for nearly 40 years. Occasionally there was church provided housing but life was paycheck to paycheck with some food bank times thrown in. There was resistance/refusal to me supplementing my income and/or my wife working. The end result was that at 60 years old I found myself leaving full-time Christian service, taking a retail job, and scrambling to try to save something for the time when I couldn’t work. (My retail job had great benefits and a great 401 (k).

In my last search for a pastoral position ALL the churches available were for a bi-vo pastor. (The joke is that the full-time positions are being passed from fathers to their sons.)

If I had Doc Brown’s De Lorean I would have had a trade that provided a steady source of income and maybe benefits and was flexible around my church work,

What can churches do? Give more. If I have a garage full of toys and go on three vacations a year but my pastor is on state medical, my priorities may need evaluation. I start a new job in two weeks and I praise God that my slight increase in offering will go to helping my bi-vocational pastor go full time eventually.

[josh p]

What can churches do? Give more. If I have a garage full of toys and go on three vacations a year but my pastor is on state medical, my priorities may need evaluation. I start a new job in two weeks and I praise God that my slight increase in offering will go to helping my bi-vocational pastor go full time eventually.

Is it commonplace for pastors in Baptist churches to be on medical assistance?

I know a number of pastors who rely on government assistance for the health care of their children.

the current model is for young men to go to college, get a business, engineering, pre-law, or what-have-you degree and not think about the ministry at all

In conversations here at SI, I tried to remember that my context is my context and not necessarily anyone else’s. But I must admit to scratching my head at this:

The current paradigm in the fundamentalist-evangelical sub-culture doesn’t support this model. The current model for many men is “grow up in a church - go to bible college - go into fulltime ministry - nearly starve - have family - nearly starve some more - become senior pastor - burn out.”

In my experience and “circle,” the paradigm is to disciple men in the church, recognize gifting/desire/calling, more intensive mentoring/discipling for that brother, move that mentor/discipleship into a more formal internship-like role (if not a flat out internship), have the church confirm their calling (usually affirm as them as an Elder), and have the man attend seminary while ministering under the continued mentorship of a more mature Elder. Many of the brothers will move into church planting or revitalization. We have a couple of brothers that are in some stage of that within our church. The church pays for their seminary, which is not unusual in my “circle” (it helps that as an SBC church we get steep discounts at seminaries).

As far as expecting pastors to “nearly starve,” that’s not been my experience now. Sadly, I do remember times as a pastor’s kid when my family had to rely on the benevolence of others in order to be able to eat. I also remember times when the deacon board complained because my dad was getting paid too much. While never riding in their car with them, I’m sure that they would also voice those complaints while driving their Lincoln town cars and Caddies. As Josh P. wrote above, some of these congregations need to give more.

This may be a perspective that’s a “luxury” of my own context, but I think that instead of moving to bi-vocational pastors we should be admonishing Christians to give more. If your pastor can’t afford health insurance, maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t spend your money on that Caribbean Cruise.

Our pastors are not on state aid, but we’ve had to give up standard insurance plans for coinsurance cost-sharing plans. I’ve also stood up at a congregational meeting to endorse the notion of the church ponying up for the initial fees because our youth pastor couldn’t get that until a month into the year—and with six kids at the time, that could transform a minor expense for the church of a few hundred bucks into a HUGE expense if an ER visit had been required. Which, knowing and loving those kids, was regrettably likely.

All in all, my take on the issue of underpaying is that it’s simply a matter of priorities. You have dozens of interest groups in churches asking for this, that, and the other thing, and you will simply have trouble figuring out what’s important. Couple that with a general view that the man living in basic poverty is somehow more spiritual—really the inheritance of over two millenia of asceticism, no?—and a general mood of “d**n the torpedoes, full speed ahead” on establishing ministries, and you’re going to miss some of the things that are most important. Like decent medical insurance for pastors.

You wrote:

Churches are increasingly too small to afford basic salaries and benefits. Admonishing congregations to give more is a nice idea in the abstract, but it solves nothing. I think the more basic problem is increasingly smaller congregations as the cultural “Christian” gloss wears off in our society, not stinginess.

You might be right, but I’m not ready to “surrender” to that thought just yet. For one thing, growing up in a specific church culture context, I watched my own parents and pastor families that were friends with my family struggle financially. The thing was, the problem wasn’t the size of the churches. The problem was one, lack of giving, and, two, as Bert pointed out, priorities within the church.

From my perspective there seem to be two kinds of churches in the conservative/fundamental/traditional camp.

There are churches like John cites that take great care in preparing men for ministry and preparing churches to support those men.

There are also churches that either have never been taught or are apathetic to their responsibility to support the pastor.

I recall a young pastor who was asked by the pulpit committee if he could live on X dollars a week. He naively responded, “Could you?”