One of the first things that has to change are the expectations that the church and pastor have about ministry. I met with one church whose pastor was moving from being fully-funded to bivocational. We talked about how the congregation would have to step up and assume some of the ministry responsibilities the pastor had been doing. One of the dangers in this transition is that the church begins paying a part-time salary and continues to expect full-time service. If the pastor has begun working another job he or she simply isn't able to continue to provide the hours the church used to expect. Either others in the congregation has to take over some of the ministry responsibilities or they need to be let go. Some churches find this to be very difficult.
Such churches fail to understand the role of the pastor and their own role in ministry. Whether the pastor is fully-funded or bivocational, it is not his or her responsibility to do all the work of ministry anyway. Ephesians 4 makes it clear that the primary responsibility of the pastor is to equip the saints to do the work of ministry. The pastor is not the hired gun of the church expected to do ministry while the congregation sits in the pews and evaluates. The pastor is to train and equip the congregation so that everyone in the church is involved in ministry according to their gifts and ministry passions. That is the only way our churches will ever significantly impact their communities with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Of course, it is not only the churches that struggle with this. Many pastors have a problem of letting go of ministry. Most pastors enter the ministry with a desire to help improve the lives of people. We have a servant's heart. If we've been to seminary we may feel that we have been trained to do ministry so it is our responsibility to do it. Besides, doing it ourselves is often quicker and easier than training others to do it. Even if we do transition to being bivocational we may find it hard to give up some of the ministries we've been doing. We may have started another job that requires 20-40 hours a week, but we will still try to do all the ministry our church needs done if we are not able to accept the role of an equipper. If that happens, our families, our ministries, and our own well-being will suffer.
Although the church I spoke of earlier seemed to understand that they would have to become more involved in ministry if their pastor became bivocational, it didn't work out that way. Problems soon began to surface when the expectations they had of their pastor did not change when he became bivocational. Within a short time he left that church because he could no longer meet their expectations and work another job.
Another pastor in the early stages of making this same transition asked me to coach him. His pastoral studies had trained him to serve as a fully-funded pastor, and he wasn't sure how to function in a bivocational role. He also was not sure what skills he had that might be useful in the public sector. As we talked he identified two potential positions in his community that might be a good fit. He applied for both positions and was selected for one of them. He already had secured the approval of the church board and the congregation to become bivocational so that was not an issue we had to address in our coaching sessions. This transition to bivocational ministry occurred a few years ago and has been very successful for him, his family, and the church. His story if one of the case studies I included in my latest book The Art and Practice of Bivocational Ministry: A Pastor's Guide
.Many churches have successfully transitioned from having a fully-funded pastor to a bivocational pastor, but it does a lot of honest dialogue between the pastor and church and a willingness of both parties to see ministry done in different ways. The pastors have to assume the role of an equipper, and the congregation has to be willing to become personally involved in ministry.
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