I need your help. One of the churches I serve will soon be seeking a new pastor. They have just called a search committee, and the chairman called me this evening to talk about what they need to do to find a new pastor. I will meet with their search committee next week to discuss the steps our denomination recommends they take as they begin this process. During the conversation with the chair of this committee we discussed the finances of the church. He and I believe this church will need to look at bivocational ministers, but we both believe this will be difficult for some in the church because they have had a fully-funded pastor for many years. They will not understand how things have changed over the past several years, and they will see this as taking a step backwards.
Have any of you accepted the position of a bivocational minister in a church that had previously been served by a fully-funded person? If so, what kind of problems did you encounter? How did you help the church transition to being bivocational? What things did not go well, and what are some of your success stories?
This will be the scenario in many churches in the near future, and your experiences will help others when they lead their churches in this transition. Your experiences will also help judicatory leaders like myself as we serve churches that will be making these changes. Please share your stories with the rest of us. Thanks.
3 comments:
The only description you did not mention in your opening paragraph was fear. No one wants to be the first at doing anything. Go to a roller coaster ride at an amusment park there is a seperate line for the front car because most people do not want to be the first. Hiring the first Bi-vocational minister should not be a reason to fear the quality of the person that God leads to the church. In God I trust and shall not be afraid (PS 56:4b). My advise for the committee is to seek God's direction and not limit their search to any one criteria for employment. Accepting the gift from God, just as the Hebrews accepted the manna from heaven. DDP
In my experience, the church was without a full-time pastor for 5 years (they did have an interim who preached) before I became their first bivo pastor. That transition time helped/forced them to take on a lot of administrative responsibilities that often get dumped on pastors in small churches (doing the weekly bulletin, etc.). It also helped that I already lived within 30 minutes of the church - I was able to spend a lot of time with the search committee. This allowed them to get to feel comfortable with me and my vision for ministry, as well as the concept of tentmaking.
Good comments. This particular church is in an association with other bivocational ministers, and I plan to point to the successful ministries those churches are having with bivocational leadership and remind this church that they won't be the first in the area to call a bivocational person.
The second pastor was blessed by following an interim in a church that had not had a fully-funded pastor for 5 years. One of the benefits of bivocational ministry is that the members of the church often become more involved in the administrative reponsibilities that the bivocational person doesn't have to handle. Because the church was used to doing those tasks, they did not have the expectation that their new bivocational minister would do them like the fully-funded pastor did.
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