Six Years On
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[Don Johnson]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
The question is why. Some would answer a lack of spirituality, others would answer that they’re not willing to risk poverty for this kind of service. I wonder how the answers would come out if you polled the two groups of churches Ron delineates. Of course, I don’t think too many church leaders are going to admit that they basically require their pastors to live as paupers, so taking the survey would run into some obvious problems.
Back to the subject, one thing I remember from when I was a young pup in Christ was that being a “tentmaker” was a great way to go undercover behind the Iron Curtain. For that matter, with my working passport visa, I was able to interact with people in Malaysia about the Gospel despite that being officially forbidden. Just couldn’t go as a missionary. The trick, as it seems everybody is noting, is how do you make it work for yourself and your family? Tyler’s notion of multiple elders (you Presbyterian you!) seems about as good as any.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
After 10 years of bi-vocational pastoring, I would put in these considerations:
1. For health care, we have done Christian health-sharing (Samaritan Ministries) and have been very satisfied with it. We get to bless other believers and they have always taken care of us. We could have gone on state health care, but it is matter of principle for us.
2. Someone who has an earned master’s degree, such as you get from a good seminary (Central, in my case) should give you ability to do more than take tests. You can think and you know how to work hard. The Lord can use that. I’ve had some good opportunities for work (started working shipping and receiving at a computer store, and the Lord used that to give me 28 years in IT) and choosing opportunities that have possibility of learning on the job.
3. Still, something has to give. I’ve pastored ultra-small churches (just not big enough to pay full-time) and there’s going to be things you don’t get to. There’s just no way to avoid it. If you invest in your own spiritual life and that of your family, you won’t be able to get to everything for church. Whether it is in areas of discipleship, in-depth study, or just fellowshipping with your people, it just can’t all get done.
As a bi-vocational pastor I appreciated Trueman’s article. I am still in favor of bi-vocational pastorates, but I think it was wise of him to share the challenges so that others go forward with their eyes open.
I also like some of the comments on this post about raising up pastors from people who already have training in the secular world. This makes bi-vocational much more viable. If I had to get half my income working for $14 at Home Depot, then it would not work. Having said that, before coming here and becoming bi-vocational, I was a full time pastor and that $14 an hour would have been a pay raise.
One of the reasons I like Trueman’s article is because I do not think that bi-vocational ministry is for everyone. I was self employed before entering the pastorate and am a self employed contractor now. This gives me flexibility- most of the time. Still there are those times when a customer wants a job done asap but I also have to deal with ministry matters. Most of my customers understand, but still that tension exists. At the same time I can take a whole week off of the secular side for ministry if I need to and then work a couple extra days in the secular field the next week if I have to. Other times, if I am caught up on ministry matters, I can put in extra secular time to bank ministry hours. This also means I have to be disciplined and have the integrity to not steal time. It also means that I discipline myself to take a day off each week, even though I could come up with plenty of work to do.
On an interesting side note, my body is much healthier now than when I was in full time ministry. I am used to doing manual labor (the trades pay well) so when I lost much of that during the full time pastorate, my body suffered.
My hope is that our church plant grows to the place where they can support a full time pastor. At that time I would like to bring on another bi-vocational pastor to increase our staff. If we were both half time instead of one of us full time, we would still have the diversity of different talents and insights as well as more accountability.
Two things:
1) Those who preach the gospel have a right to live of the gospel — The bi-vocational approach to ministry is not always sin and can be necessary in some cases. But fulltime pastoral ministry is the biblical picture. A case can (and should) be made that a church who has the capability to pay their pastor and doesn’t is sinning against God, the church, and him. The idea that bi-vocational ministry is superior does not seem to be grounded in Scripture. The Scripture seems pretty clear on this, and the principles of dual care from 1 Cor 7 seem applicable to more than just marriage. It is true that a pastor could voluntarily give up a salary, but the wisdom of that should be questioned both by the pastor and the church.
2) Bi-vocational ministry often leads to the life of a workaholic. Working a full-time job and then spending the time necessary to pastor can lead to something getting the short-shrift (family, self, job, church, etc.). There are only so many hours and our buckets can only hold so much. To work a full-time job and then try to devote the energy and time necessary to pastoring is challenging and will impinge on other responsibilities.
BTW, multiple elders is not Presbyterian.
Trueman wrote:
As I look back on the last six years, I am struck at how tiring it became. Three brutal discipline cases took hundreds of hours and a huge toll on energy levels. Few if any Saturdays – or any other day – off was hard on my wife. And even with an excellent part-time co-pastor, a stellar session, and a conscientious diaconate, and a largely supportive, low-maintenance congregation, it was hard to do everything that needed to be done.
And, as usual, it was the miscreants whom we had to discipline who devoured the little spare time that there was, not the people who actually worked hard as volunteers week-by-week to make sure the congregation kept going. The decent people had to settle for whatever time was left over after all the necessary unpleasantness. And slowly but surely I ceased to enjoy those hobbies and casual pleasures of life which used to mean so much. Even writing – a matter which has typically been a weird and pleasurable psychological compulsion for me – became something of a chore. Time was up.
I can resonate with this. This is why I plan to try and find one or two other energetic guys to help. We’ll see how it goes.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
SharperIron ran an article a few months back from SL Potts of BrokePastor; he has written several books on church leader finance and benefits. One of them is called “Benefitting from Obamacare” [sic] and is available at Amazon or through the website.
I think a lot more full time ministers are using state/federal health insurance than we might suspect, because it seems like quite a few people I knew either bought a copy of the book or started following / quoting / referring to him. Several pastors that I know are using Medi-Share or Samaritan Ministries. In any case, I don’t know how many churches pay a full time salary AND provide health benefits through places like Aetna, BCBS, or whoever.
"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells
The challenge comes in how to tell the church about their responsibility to support the pastor and showing them how.
A pastor can accept a position at a church that claims they can’t support him and then hope to lead them into supporting him. If this is the tact, tell them the plan before accepting the position.
A bi-vo pastor can start purposefully leading his church in that direction, understanding that it will be a slow process and there will probably be push-back.
Of course I have stories. Like thee pastor who had his deacons average their yearly salaries with the intent of making that the pastor’s pay and discovering that it would mean doubling his pay.
Or the church that promised their new pastor in a writing that they would pay him a certain amount, allowing him to purchase a home, and then telling the pastor after his arrival that they couldn’t fulfill their obligation.
The bottom line is how to get churches to do right and who gets the job.
"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan
[Jay]SharperIron ran an article a few months back from SL Potts of BrokePastor; he has written several books on church leader finance and benefits. One of them is called “Benefitting from Obamacare” [sic] and is available at Amazon or through the website.
I think a lot more full time ministers are using state/federal health insurance than we might suspect, because it seems like quite a few people I knew either bought a copy of the book or started following / quoting / referring to him. Several pastors that I know are using Medi-Share or Samaritan Ministries. In any case, I don’t know how many churches pay a full time salary AND provide health benefits through places like Aetna, BCBS, or whoever.
Our church has on the order of 70 members, besides 20-30 regular attenders, some of whom are givers. We pay both a full-time salary and health benefits for our pastor, but we are in a high-tech area, so the salaries are probably higher on average here than the national average. I can’t speak for “Benefiting from Obamacare,” but since Obamacare has come into being, our church’s insurance costs for the pastor and his family have more than doubled, and are going up at a pretty high rate year to year. He’s not on the ACA exchanges, but the existence of that program has changed the market in a way that has been only a very large negative for our church’s insurance expenses. Thankfully, God has provided and we have been able to keep up. Not sure that will always be the case. We would certainly hate to have to move the pastor and family to any state or national government program.
Dave Barnhart
If a church has one bi-vocational pastor and nothing else, then they should only have one service a week. There is nothing wrong with having one service a week. My guess is that the congregation can grow better with one quality lesson than two or three lessons slapped together.
I came to my church about a year and a half ago, agreeing to survive on 25k per year, and living in a parsonage. The church has 20 members, most faithful, most givers, but most old and poor. So we budget carefully, and live very simply.
However, we live in a century old parsonage, that has had its problems and maintenance more covered up than actually done - and has a list of problems pages long, and needs repairs costing nearly the value of the home. And my son has contracted lead poisoning from the home, and at the age of 3 and a half, doesn’t speak, and has behavioral problems. And we just brought our third child home from the hospital - realizing that we need to be out of the house by the time this child is mobile. But we live in a small town. To purchase a home that would be suitable for our family would cost more than 120k - and we are in no position to purchase. There are no rentals available, and to rent, we would have to live 25 miles away, and pay far more than we could possibly afford.
I did work a night/evening warehouse job for a few months, while trying to watch the children by day (my wife was doing a paid-volunteer position with the school). It didn’t work. I learned that I couldn’t do anything well when doing that much. I was working, not sleeping, caring for the children, and not preaching well.
Then another church in another state called, and thus I will be candidating in a couple of weeks. It is still a small church (70 members) in a small town, but it can actually afford to take care of our family. It has a good parsonage, in much better condition, with a far higher salary - and the possibility of health insurance. If a call is not extended, I have not thought that far ahead on what I will do. When I announced my candidacy to the church, the conversation instantly turned to closing the church. In six months, it is possible that I will be jobless and homeless. But God is still sovereign.
Concerning insurance, if my salary remains below 40k (for a family of 5), we are still eligible for state health insurance. I think that in my 13-years-of-work-post-college, I have only made 40k per year once. There is a fine line to walk, where if I make a thousand extra dollars, it could cost us several thousand in health care/insurance costs.
Your story, and mine from 2013 - 2016, is why I think the “one fulltime pastor alone” model is deader than a doornail.
We escaped from Illinois with no money, no job, no home and only one small car. From when we made the decision to resign, we’d packed and loaded a trailer within 18 days. My sister said our family of five could live in her loft attic, across the country in Tacoma, WA. So, we made arrangements for the trailer to be shipped across the country even though we had no home. Our minivan was hit and destroyed by an uninsured 19-yr old two days before we left. We pulled onto I-55 and left with our little PT Cruiser loaded with essentials, with no job, no home, no money and no place to put our household goods that would be in Tacoma in a few weeks.
We survived. It makes me so sad to hear about pastors who go through this.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
CW, just letting you know publicly that I wish you well in your interviews. Not the way we ought to be treating shepherds….
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
It’s paying him as much as they can afford!
An overlooked resource: Retired pastors would be good for rural churches. For example:
- I personally could afford to live in the town where CW pastors
- I don’t need much by way of income (retired with a pension & social security)
- I could probably afford to renovate the parsonage and remediate the lead paint issue
Not pitching myself but I think of our MBA rep that just lost his job (b/c MBA can’t afford to pay him) or dozens of other men at 4th with seminary degrees in the 66+ age group. But churches want young guys (can’t blame ‘em) and as long as there is a young guy willing to work for peanuts they will get the call!
Jim,
I love the church. I love the people. We have no interpersonal conflicts with any members right now. But a year ago when we brought up all of the problems to the people, they looked at the checkbook and froze. They could have done a number of things - but their action was inaction. The balance of the checking account had stayed rather still since I came (which is good - it wasn’t going too far in the red!), but the risk was spending so much on the house that they couldn’t pay me a salary anymore. My wife and I talked through all of the possible solutions - and nothing seemed to work for us to stay. We would sit up late at night talking about the problems of the house. Then the night before the baby came, the church called and offered for us to candidate.
I believe that the church can stay open and survive - if there is someone like Jim who would be willing to come, and live, and work for about a decade to stabilize the church - especially if he can afford his own housing, or afford to fix the housing that is here. I don’t know if the people in the church are willing to fight to keep it open, though.
This topic probably deserves a new thread.
How do you know a church can support a full-time pastor?
How do you get a church that can support a pastor to actually do it?
What does full-time support look like?
I was recently part of a church that was planted in an affluent suburb of a major city. The church started with pastoral support supplied by the church that planted us. It took 5 years but we got to the point where we could support the pastor with a salary that was comparable to other “professionals” (I don’t like that word) in the area with full benefits (housing, insurance, disability, retirement). We were blessed with what I would call an unusually sensitive and knowledgeable financial committee.
"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan
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