On Being a Bi-Vocational Pastor
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I remember several years ago when I first became aware that celebrity pastors live in a different world than ordinary pastors. They have staffs. They’re better paid. They often have fewer preaching responsibilities. They don’t have to clean the bathrooms. They probably don’t meet with the volunteer janitor on a Saturday morning to install LED bulbs above the platform, so the video livestream can capture a better picture. They’re well-meaning, but they live in a different world. A parallel universe. Only someone disconnected from “normal” ministry could write something like this:1
… the Holy Spirit has commissioned us to be his instruments, and our job is to do everything we can to be sharp instruments in his redemptive hands. I will tell you what this means for me. It means that I can’t have a fresh encounter with the truths I am to communicate from a particular portion of Scripture on the week that they are to be preached. A week does not give me enough content and communication time. I work ahead to prepare to preach wherever I am called. This means that when I prepare the content of a message, it is the message that I’ll be preaching in three or four weeks.
This gives time for truths to marinate in my own heart and become more deeply and practically understood. On the week that the sermon is to be preached, I preach it aloud to myself some fifteen or twenty times. As I do this, both my understanding of the passage and the creative ways it can be communicated deepen and develop.
In this excerpt, Paul Tripp is trying to exhort pastors to dedicate time to studying the Bible and communicating well. He’s trying to help. I never finished his book. I stopped when I read that bit, and never picked the book up again. This is a utopia, a fantasy; a world of make believe. All that’s missing are the unicorns. Who knows, maybe they were on the next page?
In this article, I’ll briefly sketch what my ministry activities were during the past week. It’s representative of what happens most weeks. I don’t intend to hold myself up as a role model; I’m well aware of my shortcomings. I only wish to present a more realistic look at pastoral ministry, from a bi-vocational perspective.
Christmas madness
I did my Christmas sermon this past Sunday (23 December) from Zechariah’s prophesy about his son, John (Luke 1:67-80). I think it went pretty well. My own experience is that Christmas and Easter are not well-attended; people are often away visiting family.
After church, I had very little time to relax. The Christmas Eve service was the next evening, and my sermon was not ready. This isn’t as troubling to me as it once was. The hard reality is that I don’t have time to do what Paul Tripp recommends. I can’t write a sermon weeks in advance, preach it to myself 20 times, and marinate in a Spirit-filled glow. I don’t have time.
For Christmas Eve, I knew I wanted to explain why the virgin conception matters, which meant I knew I wanted the Christmas Eve sermon to be from Luke 1:26-38. I arrived home from church, had lunch, drank a double espresso, then collapsed in my armchair for two hours or so and read a bit of Dallimore’s biography of George Whitefield.
Around 7:00 p.m last Sunday, I sat down and wrote my Christmas Eve sermon. I was done by 9:30 p.m. I was up early the next morning, went for a 30 minute walk while listening to a digital audiobook of Moneyball, then looked over the sermon notes before I got ready for work. I cut a bit from the text, and it was off to work for me.
Few people were at the office on Christmas Eve, which meant I had little to no managerial duties. I took advantage of this by spending most of the day working a fraud case involving title insurance, in which I suspect a title insurer is being quite naughty. “The State of Washington will have its revenge!” I cackled over my coffee.
The Christmas Eve service began at 6:00. I leave work at 5:00. My introduction wasn’t done yet, and I wasn’t happy with the sermon, either. I saved two 15-minute breaks during the day and fired up my nifty tablet at 4:30 to iron things out, once and for all. I succeeded, and was off to church.
I advertised heavily for the Christmas Eve service. I ran Facebook ads within a 10-mile radius for three weeks. I asked people to think about why the virgin birth mattered; why did Jesus have to come that way? We got lots of interest and lots of promises to attend. We had bulletins and Gospel tracts ready to give new visitors. We ended up having no visitors, but about 40 folks from the congregation attended. I was privately disappointed, but we had to try … and we have to keep trying, too!
The sermon was a bit longer than I wanted it to be, at about 25 minutes. It’s very, very strange to shift gears from Investigations Manager to Pastor within a 60-minute timeframe. I didn’t enjoy preaching the sermon and felt out of sorts. I’ll never go straight from work to preaching again, if I can avoid it.
The sermon after Christmas
Tuesday was Christmas, so I didn’t do too much with sermon prep. I’m doing a series through the Gospel of Mark, and I did read the next passage (Mark 8:27-33) several times on Christmas Day.
I don’t preach verse by verse; I do passage by passage. That is, I don’t necessarily dwell on every single verse; I try to communicate the message of the passage. What is the hinge of Mark 8:27-33, when you consider the rest of the book? Clearly, it’s Peter’s confession. Everything else is white noise. Commentators wonder about a “deeper” significance to Jesus’ trek to Caesarea Philippi, or speculate about whether “on the way” (Mk 8:27) is an allusion to the Christian faith (Acts 9:2). That’s not the point! Go write a paper on these alleged “nuggets,” if you wish – just don’t preach on them!
How should I frame Peter’s confession? What should I do with it? I pondered this as my family prepared to head to my sister’s home for Christmas dinner. Then, I did something strange. Even though I’d just read the passage several times on Christmas morning, I conflated Mark’s account with Matthew’s. I decided to frame the sermon around Peter confessing Jesus was the Son of the living God, even though Mark doesn’t record him saying this! I even did a short promo video for it, because I was so excited!
It was Thursday evening before I realized I’d done something terribly wrong. Should I stick with the “what does ‘Son of God’ mean” approach? After all, what’s wrong with bringing in parallel passages to flesh Mark out, right? I decided against it, because throughout the series I’ve been trying to let Mark be Mark. This was too bad, because I had the entire sermon planned out in my mind. I knew exactly where I wanted to go to chat about what “son of …” means in the Bible, and what it means for Jesus.
So, I had to desperately re-calibrate. I got up early to ponder what to do. At about 6:00 on Friday morning, I decided to make the sermon answer “what does ‘Christ’ mean?” I went off to work, listening to Moneyball in the car, while the sermon outline percolated in my mind.
Everyone has a hobby horse. For some folks, it’s being a Baptist fundamentalist. For others, it’s dispensationalism. For some, it’s eschatology. For me, it’s the doctrines of God and Christ. Peter’s confession meant something. It’s the first time in Mark’s Gospel where any disciple makes anything close to an accurate estimation of who Jesus is. So, what should I give the congregation, from this?
I could cram 8:27-9:1 together, and bring discipleship in, too. But, that won’t do. I need to focus on the implications of the confession. So, how can I explain what “Messiah” means? The easiest thing would be to focus on Christ’s three-fold office of prophet, king and priest. I love Millard Erickson’s formulation, where he alters this to Revealer, Ruler and Reconciler. But, I’m actually preaching Mark 8:27-33, not a topical sermon about “Messiah.” So, I need to cover the Mark passage, while leaving enough room for a generous digression about “Messiah” within the sermon.
What Old Testament passages address the prophet, king and priest angle? That’s not too hard; I settled on (respectively), Deuteronomy 18:15-19, 2 Samuel 7:12-16, and Psalm 110. So, what’s the sermon outline?
- Leadup to the confession
- The confession, what it means, and what have you done about it?
- Jesus’ prediction of His death and the full Messianic picture
- Exhortation to repent and believe in the real Jesus
I started the sermon late Saturday morning. I worked for about 90 minutes, then stopped to chat with a prospective associate pastor for about two hours. I returned to it in the afternoon, at about 2:00 p.m. I was done with the rough draft by 4:30 p.m. I left it again, and returned in the evening to finish it off. I printed it, and made some corrections. I was up at 4:30 a.m. to review it one last time, and made some small changes.
At church, I usually spend a great portion of the singing, before the sermon, praying that the sermon would go well. Today, as I was praying, I was suddenly seized with the thought that I didn’t have nearly enough exhortation in the sermon. I was terrified it would come across as an academic lecture, not a sermon. As the congregation sang the last song, I feverishly reviewed my notes and marked perhaps six passages in pen with the word “EXHORT!”
The sermon went very, very well. It was probably one of my better ones, lately. I actually had a visitor come up to me afterwards, in tears. That hadn’t happened to me, before. After church, we went out to lunch with a co-worker of mine who came to church. Then, my wife and I visited a church member in the hospital, and listened as he told us stories of his days as an Air Force fighter pilot in Vietnam.
Summing up
I opened this article with the quotation from Paul Tripp because, for many ordinary pastors like me, his advice is divorced from reality. I’m bi-vocational, which means it’s not possible for me to do what he suggests. I live in the real world:
- I’ve had to get very, very good at doing sermons with shorter prep time.
- I have to be ok with doing sermons on a Saturday.
- I have to be ok with not having time to chase Koine Greek mysteries through a text.
I think this has made me better. I think I’m a much better preacher now than I was several years ago. I think my circumstances have forced me to jettison some of my more academic tendencies, and focus on the essence of a text. I used to spend two days on the Sunday sermon. Now, I’m a better preacher, and I can think about the sermon all week and write it a few hours. This isn’t laziness; it’s efficiency borne out of necessity. My sermons are better, deeper, shorter and more practical.
I suspect bi-vocational ministry will increasingly be the realistic future for young preachers. I’ve tried to explain what that looks like, for me. One thing it means is that sometimes you must put away the naïve advice of celebrity preachers, and use your training as best you can with the time you have. God will help you. He might even make you better!
Notes
1 Paul D. Tripp, Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 149.
Tyler Robbins 2016 v2
Tyler Robbins is a bi-vocational pastor at Sleater Kinney Road Baptist Church, in Olympia WA. He also works in State government. He blogs as the Eccentric Fundamentalist.
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[Aaron Blumer]Yes, the “big idea” is not actually reducing the sermon to a single point. What it is, is finding the thematic unity in the text. Depending what sort of text it is (epistle vs. poetry vs narrative etc), there isn’t necessarily going to be anything like what we think of as an “outline” in the text, but there will be a primary theme or primary relevance to the congregation. That becomes the big idea and the other assertions/truths in the text are developments of that idea.
Unfortunately, some of the preachers who write books about “big idea” homiletics (e.g. Andy Stanley) do actually advocate reducing the sermon to a single point.
Not a fan.
That is why I let the text itself determine how many “points” there are to my messages based on the passage under consideration. It’s not always three points and a poem.
Unfortunately, some of the preachers who write books about “big idea” homiletics (e.g. Andy Stanley) do actually advocate reducing the sermon to a single point.
Including Bryan Chappel: “How many things is a sermon about? One thing. Sermons may have many facets, many components, many subsets of a central idea. But essentially, every sermon is about one thing.” (https://www.covenantseminary.edu/resources/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2…). I think Stanley uses the single point idea much in the same way. You make a single point and then everything else supports that. Haddon Robinson was very similar. Essentially it is that the sermon should be able to be capsulized in one statement. Stanley goes for something memorable.
The points are actually supporting point of the big idea. They are not individual messages.
So in short, it seems that you might be using “point” differently than Stanley, Chapell, etc. do.
Larry,
Perhaps you and Aaron are correct that I have misunderstood the point about “big idea” homiletics. :) If what you’ve written above is true, then I have no issues with that. However, having read Stanley’s, Communicating for Change, I’m pretty confident that he is not in the same camp. For Stanley, every sermon only has one point–not one big idea with multiple points supporting it–and that one point is further reduced to a “sticky statement.” If the text has multiple points, he breaks it out into multiple messages. He believes that multiple point preaching is less effective at producing life change in your congregation than single point preaching.
That is the “big idea” preaching model I’m against because it doesn’t allow the text to dictate the message, but rather molds the text and biblical author into your one “sticky statement.”
That being said, I apologize to Tyler for derailing his post about the realities and constraints of bi-vocational preaching into one about homiletic methodology. I appreciate the dilemma Tyler faces. However, I believe that preaching is the number one priority of pastors (bi-vocational or otherwise) and that we do a disserve to our people if we preach our messages with the attitude that everything in the passage other than the big idea is “white noise.”
If there is really only one point to the sermon, you would just say it and you’d be done. It would make for really short sermons. I haven’t read Stanley on this but it sounds like he has overstated his big idea concept or in some other way been unclear about what he means. It would be interesting to see some of his outlines.
From Doug McLachlan, I learned a keyword-list method. I was actually already doing it but not as intentionally, and didn’t have a name for it. It’s so effective for organizing communication of all sorts, because it’s really just an expression of the way language and logic work (categories and items).
Anyway, if I were a betting man, I’d bet a pizza that if I had a few of Stanley’s outlines, I could translate them into keyword lists and show that he actually has subpoints that develop his big idea.
Getting back to Tyler’s topic: they are connected, because the way you structure your message content and delivery has a huge impact on how long it takes to prepare a quality sermon/lesson. We want to get the message of the text right, but at that point we’re only half way to being prepared to communicate a message.
So finding a good approach to structuring messages, and getting good at that approach, is vital if you have tough time constraints.
I was never really “bivocational” but did always have lots of other part time things going on, whether teaching school, or editing, or tech support/database development…or all the above. So I did have to learn an efficient process.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
No worries. The “white noise” remark could have been phrased better. My point was that the essence of the passage isn’t why Jesus headed toward Caeserea Phillipi; it’s the confession. I think the big difference with me in the last few years is that I’ve become much better at distilling things down, and leaving more material on the cutting-room floor.
I had to read Stanley’s book in seminary as an example of how NOT to structure a sermon! I might read it again. I just browsed through Robinson yesterday, and hadn’t read him since seminary, either.
I think it would be very hard to teach preaching, because that medium is communication poured through personality. It’s not a hard science. How can you teach that! I was a pastor for a few years before I took my first homeletics class
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
However, having read Stanley’s, Communicating for Change, I’m pretty confident that he is not in the same camp. For Stanley, every sermon only has one point–not one big idea with multiple points supporting it–and that one point is further reduced to a “sticky statement.” If the text has multiple points, he breaks it out into multiple messages. He believes that multiple point preaching is less effective at producing life change in your congregation than single point preaching.
I think Stanley is right on this, and I think it is very similar to Chappel and Robinson. I think the underlying philosophy is different. However, if you can see through the weaknesses of Stanley’s philosophy, there is much help in some of his approach.
In the end it boils down to “here’s your problem, here’s what God says, here’s what you do.” What else if preaching if that’s not it? Virtually every part of the Bible is that. It is virtually all topical (which is why the rejection of topical preaching seems curiously unbiblical … but that’s another issue).
That is the “big idea” preaching model I’m against because it doesn’t allow the text to dictate the message, but rather molds the text and biblical author into your one “sticky statement.”
I don’t think this is true at all. If you were to read these guys, they would not accept this. The big idea comes out of the text. That is where I think Stanley goes too easily off the rails, though I haven’t listened to him much. The big idea has to come out of the text.
For those unfamiliar, here is an excerpt from Communicating for a Change that helps to explain it: https://www.sermoncentral.com/content/andy-stanley-birth-one-point-prea…
The genius of the sticky statement is that it does what sermons are supposed to do: Boil it down to what the passage requires of us in a practical memorable statement. The weakness of it is that it too easily becomes a substitute for the text. I think too many sermons are too abstract. They are exegetical lectures. The sticky statement changes that.
However, I believe that preaching is the number one priority of pastors (bi-vocational or otherwise) and that we do a disserve to our people if we preach our messages with the attitude that everything in the passage other than the big idea is “white noise.”
I am not sure what the “white noise” is about, but if we have properly identified the big idea, everything in teh text should support it. If there is something that doesn’t support it, then perhaps we have a big idea that is too small.
I think it would be fine to preach more than one message from a passage to emphasize different things. I am not sure why that would be a problem. So again, in that sense, Stanley is on to something (at least theoretically though we can reject his application of it).
I had the chance—challenge really—to spend half an hour or more on the phrase “prince of peace” from Isaiah 9:6, and I reckon I violated a lot of what Tyler writes about here because I had to dig deep into just two Hebrew words. It was a lot of fun, but if I had to do it three times a week or so, I definitely wouldn’t have been able to do it. Maybe after a LOT more Hebrew study—say a decade or so.
Which is a long way of saying that I concur with the notion that if we have multiple men qualified to teach, we might well find that (at least if they are industrious) the overall level of teaching goes up markedly. Corollary; a pastor ought to spend a significant portion of his time training his replacements.
Nothing against what Tyler is doing now; it’s where he is and I don’t fault him for doing precisely what I do with Sunday School. But by golly, it was fun tracking down how the word “sar” is used and noting that it corresponds pretty well to how Christ relates to the Father.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
I appreciate all the comments. Here are some remarks on what we have so far:
On bi-vocational ministry
I’ve said many times that I think a dual-pastor model is the best. Because I’m a realist, that means one or more of the pastors need to be bi-vocational. Speaking for myself, my congregation doesn’t have the funds to appropriately support one guy, fulltime. So, I’m bi-vocational. Because of the financial struggles I went through at my last pastorate, I don’t think I’ll ever transition back to being a fulltime pastor until maybe my children are out of the house. I want to be able to provide for my family, and take care of my kids. I anticipate that someone will make a remark about how we need to be sacrificial, trust God, etc.
On the cult of the fulltime pastor
I was hesitant about using that title, but I decided to do it. There is nothing unbiblical about going to bi-vocational route, if it makes sense for your congregation and the people you have. Every situation is different. Don’t think you HAVE to have a fulltime pastor. Speaking for myself, this arrangement allows two men to be paid part time and share teaching responsibilities, and allows funds to do ministry. I’d rather take a part time salary and enjoy the generous benefits of my secular job, then be a fulltime pastor and have little money left over for ministry. But, my church owns its building and has no debt. None. As I said, it all depends!
On the bad ministry prep paradigm
Young men need to learn marketable skills that will allow them to have something better than a menial, minimum wage job. I just spoke to a wonderful guy the other day, a prospective associate pastor. He’s been in school his entire life, has his MDiv at 28, and wonders how he’d ever be able to find a secular job that can support his family. He’s been in school his whole life.
The path of Christian kid + bible undergrad + seminary degree + “fulltime Christian service” = success is increasingly unrealistic and detrimental. Online and virtual education options are a Godsend to local churches, which can now keep their young men in their home churches while applying theological training in real time and (hopefully) confirming their pastoral gifts and calling among the brothers and sisters who know him best.
On preaching
Everybody has their different approaches, and that’s fine. Speaking for myself, I never preach isolated verses. I always preach passages. Sentences exist in paragraphs, and paragraphs in larger units of thought. Language doesn’t work at the level of the isolated sentence, or even the isolated word. It all comes back to context. Because this is true, why not preach the passage instead of the individual verse? Most people have read Moises Silva’s hilarious discussion about over-interpretation. I did my own version of this phenomenon a while back.
So, I preach passages. I also think it’s fairly uncontroversial to say that passages have a point; they were written to communicate something. Why did Mark write Mark 8:27-33? How does it fit into what came before it (e.g. Mk 8:1-32)? How does it fit with what comes after; especially the discussion about discipleship and Jesus’ transfiguration? How does it fit into the rest of the book?
With narrative, passages (or, perhaps better, coherent thought-units) say many things, but they do have an overarching point. What is that point? This doesn’t mean other things are inherently unimportant, but they may be less important depending on the venue in which you’re teaching. This leads me to another point …
Preaching is not bible study
Everyone with a seminary degree says he understands this, but I don’t think this is true. When you preach, you want to move your audience to do something with the information you’re giving them. It’s an exhortation towards some kind of action. You don’t exhort someone with a shotgun exposition of a passage. You have to give people something to leave with; something the passage impels them to do given what it says.
Bible study is different. Recently, I translated and taught my way through 1 Peter. It was fun. We spent one year on that book. We took rabbit-trails. We pondered words. We chatted about what the “milk of the word” was. We argued about 1 Peter 3:21ff. We did Bible study.
Bible study is not preaching.
I’ve generated enough controversy with these comments, already. I understand if you disagree. That’s ok. I wish you the best. I think we’re each trying our best, with the time we have, given our own circumstances.
I wrote the article to encourage bi-vocational pastors. I didn’t expect it to … evolve into what it now is. But, that’s the risk I took by writing it here, where comments are a part of the game. I hope it encouraged someone.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
My take on you Tyler:
- God has used circumstances to prepare you for bi-vocational ministry:
- Military background
- The mess in Illinois where you were harshly treated
- You seem to operate very efficiently
My take on bi-vocational:
- It’s not the ideal (“the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should live from the gospel” - 1 Corinthians 9:14
- It’s a Biblical option (seems a given w regard to Paul!)
- It’s not sinful to provide for one’s family: “But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” 1 Timothy 5:8
- It’s a reality for many a man, many a church!
- I was bi-vocational for several years myself (they were the happiest years of ministry for a number of reasons). Here’s one:
- I bought a Chevy Geo new when my Pontiac J-2000 (that I got for free) died
- The offerings to our church dropped the month after seemingly as a punishment for my buying a new car
- The church where I am a member has a bi-vocational pastor.
- I was bi-vocational for several years myself (they were the happiest years of ministry for a number of reasons). Here’s one:
[Jim]
- I was bi-vocational for several years myself (they were the happiest years of ministry for a number of reasons). Here’s one:
- I bought a Chevy Geo new when my Pontiac J-2000 (that I got for free) died
- The offerings to our church dropped the month after seemingly as a punishment for my buying a new car
Grrr. Don’t get me started on the similar stupidity I’ve seen in regards to this kind of stuff. Church members who take regular vacations to Disney World, lease new cars every two years, take their boat to the lake twice a month during the summer, and enjoy a 401K, generous employer-sponsored health benefits, etc. have a conniption when their pastor buys a new car and complain that they must be paying him too much. I have no patience for that and that is one of the many reasons I’ve chosen to pursue bi-vocational ministry.
There are 3 categories of pastors financially:
- The adequately supported. [God bless those people who so do!]
- The under-supported. They have a choice:
- Find some sort of a job to provide adequately for their families ELSE
- Grin and suffer in near poverty
- The non-supported
- The non supported know they must labor in society else they will starve
- Probably in most cases their churches are unable to support them (various reasons)
My choice: Got a job in IT (something that surprises me to this day … I could actually do!)
Discussion