One of my on-going concerns is finding pastors for bivocational churches. The number of such churches continues to grow throughout nearly every denomination, but it is often very hard to find pastors for these churches. Quite frankly, some of the pastors we do find are not the people we need leading these churches. From discussions I've had with leaders of various denominations, none of us really have a plan to effectively address this shortage of bivocational ministers. In his book, Can Mainline Denominations Make a Comeback?, Tony Campolo wrote something that really addressed this problem.
In the New Testament, the church did not let individuals declare themselves
"called"! Instead, the people of God together determined who in their
midst had the gift of God for preaching. When someone in the church
demonstrated that he or she had the communication skills and the "people
skills" that it took to be an effective pastor, the church was proactive.
He explained that the church would begin to pray about this person and once there was an agreement that this person had God's calling on his or her life they challenged him or her to become a pastor. Contrast that to what we do today. We typically wait until someone comes to us and says that they feel God may be calling them into the ministry. Our next step is often to encourage them to go off to seminary for the next three years so they can meet our ordination standards or prepare themselves for ministry.
That is what happened to me. One day my pastor and I were driving to a church convention when I began to share with him an idea I had for a sermon. He asked if I had ever considered that God might be calling me into the ministry. He said he believed I had the gifts that were needed. I admitted to him that I had considered it but had never told anyone until that moment. He was proactive in challenging me to prayerfully consider it. A few months later he left our church, and sometime after our new pastor became settled in I approached him with my belief that God was calling me into the ministry. He recommended to the church that they license me to preach which they did. Interestingly enough, he never allowed me to preach in our church, and 30 years later I still have never preached a sermon in that church. I contacted our judicatory minister and told him the church had licensed me to preach and would appreciate the opportunity to fill the pulpit anytime a pastor might be away. I received a letter from him telling me he would be glad to do that once I completed seminary. I had not even attended college which meant I would have to spend 7 years as a full-time student before he would even recommend me to fill in for a vacationing pastor! I began to preach in independent churches and even one time rented our local fairgrounds to hold a mini-crusade. I had to preach even if I had to rent a building to preach in! Eventually I found a church in a different denomination than the one I belonged who invited me to become their pastor, and I spent the next 20 years leading that church.
We cannot possibly find enough pastors for our bivocational churches if we wait for them to come to us. Pastors and church leaders need to approach individuals who appear to have good pastoral and preaching gifts and encourage them to consider that God may have a call on their lives. We cannot call these individuals into ministry; only God can do that. But, we can tell them that we see potential pastoral gifts in them and encourage them to prayerfully seek God's leadership for their lives. We can give these individuals opportunities to preach in our churches occasionally and let the Holy Spirit speak to them through those experiences. One of my deacons often preached for me when I was away on vacation, and now he is a bivocational pastor of a nearby church. He never thought God would ever call him into pastoral ministry, but He did and all indications are that he is doing a very good job.
We also cannot require these leaders to go off to a seminary and sit in an ivory tower for three years racking up huge student loans before we being using them in our churches. Before anyone begins criticizing me for being anti-education I'm not. If I was I would not be working on my DMin at 60 years of age. But, there are many ways today to get a solid ministry education that doesn't require a person to go the traditional seminary route. By the way, I don't think the traditional seminary MDiv prepares a person for bivocational ministry anyway. It does a great job of preparing someone to go on and earn a PhD and become a research theologian, but it really does not prepare someone to do ministry in a family, bivocational church. That is why many seminaries are now offering MA degrees in various religious studies that does a much better job of preparing someone for actual pastoral ministry.
This is a much longer post than normal for me so let me close with a quick summary. We must become proactive in seeking leaders for our bivocational churches. We need to prayerfully look at our lay leadership and see who might have the gifts and passions that might indicate that God might be calling them to a pastoral role, and then we need to personally talk with them about what we see in them. We need to give these persons opportunities to use those gifts in pastoral situations, and then let the Holy Spirit begin to speak to them to reveal His will for their lives. Only if we do this will we begin finding persons to lead our bivocational churches in the future.
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