Minister's Toolbox

Is Bi-Vocational ministry effective in today's church culture? Is it a viable way for pastors to support their families while doing church ministry?

Today, I share some of my experiences working in bi-vocational ministry and offer some constructive ways to navigate this challenge.

Here is the free download I offered on the show:

Transcript of Today's Show

Carpenter, mason, short-order cook, farm hand, teacher’s aide, insurance salesman, ADT home security salesman, Advertising representative, Registered Investment Advisor. What do all these have in common?

Me. These are all jobs that I have worked through the years doing bi-vocational ministry.

For the uninitiated, bi-vocational ministry (bi-vo for short) is conducting church ministry while working a second job at the same time.

You work the second job because either you are a pioneer church-planter with a dream, or your congregation has not reached a point where they can pay you adequately to meet your financial obligations.

I have been in both of these worlds. During my early years in ministry, I belonged to a ministry that was expanding and my primary job was to pioneer new outreach centers. I would go into a city, find a cheap rent, paint and decorate the environment and start weekly meetings and Bible studies.

That was really tough work, and I am among that small contingent of weirdos that really enjoyed every minute of it. I am a church planter at heart and the idea of creating a congregation out of thin air appeals to me. I think I’ve met about 2 other people in my lifetime that relate to that, but moving on.

The smarter route for church planting is what many others do which is build a team first, create a budget, develop a vision and marketing strategy and then plant. I didn’t say I was smart, I am just telling you what I did.

In any case, money and I didn’t get along in those early years. I’m not sure whether money and I have ever gotten very close, but I have always been passionate about doing ministry work, whatever the cost.

Working a job on the side in some ways made it easier to build a church because the main expense in small churches is salary and facilities. By working on the side, we could always keep our expenses low, which gave us a better chance to get the church up and running; at least that is the way I thought at the time.

If you’ve listened to my first show, you know that Patti and I raised 4 children over the course of our ministry lives. You also know that I am a New Englander. To other Americans, you have dubbed us the land of the frozen chosen; sometimes with good reason. If you are from another part of the world, this region of our country is known as fiercely independent and more often than not, non-Christian.

Getting a church started in these parts is made more difficult by the fact that the culture is not church oriented as it is in the South of our country. If you tell someone that you are bi-vocational and that your main passion is planting churches, the most enthusiastic response you’re likely to get is,

“Ohhhh….that’s nice.” (That is a not-so-subtle way of saying, “How can I get out of this conversation?”) So, as a bi-vo minister, society itself does not really understand your or why you do what you do.

OK, I need to be honest and share a true confession at this point. My topic today is completely misleading. It is supposed to be the joy of serving a church as a bi-vocational minister. I wanted to give you a backdrop of some of my own life so that I would have the credibility to say this:

Do everything in your power to avoid bi-vocational ministry. It is a trap. I will explain that in a moment.

You’ve heard me share the statistics that more than 1500 pastors leave the ministry every month in America. That is startling, but not surprising. You’ve also heard me say that one of the top three reasons is finances. Pastors are paid poorly for what they do.

Because true pastors love people, they are often willing to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to fulfill their call and serve people, even at their own expense. This sounds altruistic and wonderful, but in reality, it seldom ends well.

By and large, people in your congregations don’t understand what you do as a minister. Your job can change every day, sometimes from hour to hour. The typical pastor is ruled by the unexpected, very much like a police officer. An police officer may experience days of boredom and paperwork followed by intense, white knuckle encounters with deadly criminals.

Well, hopefully the similarities to pastors are not quite that dramatic, but what I mean to say is that you will have days when peace and quiet allow you to do the study work necessary to do great ministry and other times when your congregation requires you to be present. Unexpected tragedies or sickness occur.

A key member of your church suddenly needs crisis counseling or a colleague needs help that was not part of your schedule. 101 things come up which can move you in unplanned ways. I am not saying that you should be ruled by the tyranny of the urgent and if you are, we’ll be talking about that in an upcoming episode. My point is however, that as a minister, you must be ready for the unexpected.

The additional challenge is that because people really don’t get what you do, they often conclude you don’t do “real work” like they do. They view pastoral work as a lazy job, sitting around reading the bible all day or goofing off at the golf club. As a result of their perception, many don’t want to see you paid properly. Secretly, they want you to work a secular job so that you can experience what “real” work is all about.

Truthfully, working a second job does in fact give you more compassion for people in the pews. If you have never worked in the secular arena, you can easily become careless with peoples’ time not realizing that they also have families to raise, jobs to do and obligations to fulfill.

Beyond that however, working a secular job is a trap.

Now, I do understand that there are sometimes situations where working another job is necessary. People are quick to remind us that Paul was a tentmaker and did bi-vo himself which is true – on one occasion.

We don’t ever hear him advise Timothy or any other minister to pursue bi-vocational jobs however. Bi-vocational ministry is not the norm but the exception. Paul did tent-making out of necessity in a new church environment. He did not continue throughout his lifetime as a tentmaker, but got himself free of it as quickly as possible.

Bi-Vo is a trap because it is predicated on something that seldom turns out as expected. The concept is that you will work bi-vocationally until the church has enough money to pay you properly. The problem with that thinking is twofold.

First, the church gets used to paying you poorly as a habit. All habits start with a thought, become and action and eventually become a habit. The thought is that the church can save money by not paying you what you’re worthy. The action of not paying you is repeated over and over until it becomes a church habit. As the habit becomes ensconced, it becomes the church’s culture. Not paying the pastor becomes the norm.

Everyone likes saving money, but the vision suffers. If costs are low, people don’t see the necessity of giving, so offerings go down. People give money to what they value. By working bi-vocationally, you have unintentionally communicated that you are not of much value, strange as that may seem. In your heart, you just want to serve God and his people, but by working a secular job, you are really telling them you’re not worth much.

Strange isn’t it? In your effort to serve, you actually have caused yourself great harm.  Without realizing it, you put a price-tag on yourself by working a second job.

Secondly, the obligations of ministry always go up, not down. As a bi-vo, your contribution is basically preaching on Sundays. When do you get the time to do proper study? On the fly. Ultimately, that means your sermons are hurried, not well thought out. Sermons are often pieced together by whatever is on your mind at the time.

Great sermons require reflection, prayer and hearing God. You don’t have time for that. As a result, the flock is not fed well, spiritually speaking.

As a bi-vo, you know in your heart that the sermons are not your best effort. So now you feel guilty for not serving people what they need. You feel exhausted, overworked and distraught, but still must plaster a smile on your face every Sunday and act like everything is just dandy. It’s not though, is it? On the inside, you feel trapped, but then you look at your bills, ignore the guilt and hope things will change in the future.

Here’s a little tip from someone who has been there. It does change, but not for the better.

Because you’re not doing the best job in sermon preparation, your church fails to attract and keep new people. Think about it. If you were a new Christian, which church would you attend: one that has a pastor who preaches sermons that are on target each week or one where everyone is running around with their heads cut off where the pastor is apologizing for everything that isn’t working?

When new people do come to services and learn that you are bi-vocational, they conclude that your church is probably unstable financially. They won’t tell you, but they start looking elsewhere, so bi-vo’s tend to see a lot of people come and go.

Whether you like to hear this or not and your probably won’t, your church is as much as business as any other. You are in the business of changing lives. That means, like any business, you’ll need to invest hours into studying your target market, devising strategies and programs to reach them and managing an organization designed to meet current needs while preparing for future growth. All this takes lots of time which you don’t have as a bi-vo.

The worse thing about bi-vocational ministry is the cost to your family. Working two jobs means your spouse and children suffer. You are never around, and when you are, you are sleeping. Pastor, your first church is your family. They need your care. They need you to be present, not always mentally disengaged thinking about all the stuff you have to get done. They need you to hang out with them, go places together. Your kids need mentoring.

The key reason pastors kids go astray is that they see their father or mother always available to the church but never to them. Leaders, you don’t have a lot of time to raise your kids. It goes very, very fast and you don’t get a second shot. James describes our life as a vapor that appear and vanishes. I could swear I was 12 years old a minute ago.  Don’t waste your years working a second job. Your family needs you. I am pleading with you here.

I cannot tell you how many churches are destroyed by the dysfunction of the pastor’s family. Mom and dad are giving themselves to the church 24/7 and their kids hate church. So many PK’s are living broken lives of promiscuity, drug and alcohol addiction trying to get attention of their parents. This is one unexpected consequence of bi-vocational ministry.

The trap you easily fall into is that if you can just work a few more days, weeks, months or years, that you can go full-time.

I want to tell you folks, only a small percentage of ministers ever succeed at that strategy. In my opinion, you need to get out of Bi-vo ministry as soon as possible. If you are just starting out starting from scratch, 6 mos. to a year should be your aim.

How can you do it? How can you make the change? Well, that is the 64K question. Let me offer three important steps.

First, teach yourself. Don’t be offended, but your theology is all messed up. Somewhere along the line, you’ve accepted the lie that ministry is not really an important job. We probably unconsciously allow the media to frame this idea. Wherever it comes from, it is a lie. As a result, a lot of your church people are misinformed as well. Don’t let their dysfunctions determine your course of action. You are a shepherd, so lead people.

I Corinthians 9:14: In the same way, the Lord ordered that those who preach the Good News should be supported by those who benefit from it. (NLT)  I like the old KJV on this one: Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.

What does ordained mean to you? It means that God already made up his mind and set in stone how he wants his church to operate. God decided that his ministers have value. That means that I am worth every penny for what I do and then some. The church I serve needs to understand that I am critical to it’s survival. I am infinitely more important than facilities, utility bills or mass mailers. If a church does grasp this, it will never success. If a church does not honor its minister financially, it will not grow. (Again)

A Church will grow in direct proportion to how well its minister does.

Let me tell you something you already know. You’ve heard the adage, happy wife, happy life. There is a lot of truth there. If your spouse is always stressed over money and the family is neglected so you can make ends meet, you face a life of constant stress. That is not healthy either for you or your church, so

Second, teach your church and your board about what needs to happen. Be bold. Take the time to share scripture to build a proper biblical foundation about money. Most ministers are afraid to speak about money.

Two things about that: First, Jesus talked about money a lot…a lot. Second, the saying that all the church does is talk about money is actually the opposite. Research has shown that churches seldom if ever talk about money for fear that people will not come back. Pastors cannot train disciples if they don’t speak openly and honestly about how the church is supported and why people need to give as part of their worship.

If a church refuses to change with respect to paying you properly, that church will never will not grow. That is the reality. It is probably time to cut your losses and go elsewhere. A friend of mine has rightly said, go where you are appreciated, not tolerated

If they do respond, make a plan to start paying you better. Perhaps it is over a year, but get to full time status as quickly as possible.

Third, take the plunge. I am going to tell you from experience, it is always a leap of faith. I won’t take more of your time in this podcast, but when I quit my last job, it was never a worse time financially. I won’t go into the details, but for me I just came to the realization that God had not called me to secular work. It wasn’t that I was not good at it, because I was, earning many awards. It was because it did not fit me.

Pastor, church leader: you’re worth it. The Bible says that a laborer is worthy of his hire. That is you. Don’t short-change yourself with years of bi-vocational work. Don’t buy into the lie that it will make you a better pastor. That nonsense is propagated by those who enjoy seeing you poor. Pray on this and take action. God will help you.

I have a free download for you with the main points I have just shared with you. You can download it here.

Today’s quote is from T.D. Jakes:

“Many of us harbor hidden low self-esteem. We deem everything and everyone more important that ourselves and think that meeting their needs is more important than meeting our own. But if you run out of gas, everyone riding with you will be left stranded.”