For a number of years the Association of Theological Schools (ATS), the national accrediting agency for seminaries, has conducted a survey of incoming seminary students. An interesting finding is that about 30% of those students intentionally plan on being bivocational ministers when they graduate. That is a significant number, and it shows the growth of bivocational ministry and the likelihood that it will continue to grow. I'm not aware of studies done prior to when the ATS began their study, but I would guess that back then that number would not have been so high.
Students give a variety of reasons why they plan to pursue bivocational ministry. Some want to be involved in in a career outside the church to give them more opportunities to minister to those who do not attend church. Others believe it will provide a more balanced home-work life. No doubt finances play a part for some of these students, especially those who are incurring a huge student debt load. Students who came out of small church backgrounds may wish to continue to serve in such places and realize these churches are becoming dependent upon bivocational ministers. I'm sure there are many other reasons students have for planning a bivocational ministry career.
This should give pause to those middle-size churches seeking pastoral leadership. Many of these churches are used to having a fully-funded pastor, but they may find it increasingly difficult to find such pastors today. If 30% of seminary students are planning to intentionally pursue bivocational ministry that takes a significant chunk out of the future prospective pool. Other students plan to be Ministers of Education, Ministers of Worship, Youth Ministers, Chaplains, Missionaries, work in Christian non-profit careers, new church planting, professors, counselors, social workers and workers in parachurch ministries. This further reduces the number of persons available to serve as church pastors. Add into the equation the large number of older ministers and those near retirement and the pool becomes even smaller. Many denominations struggle to provide suitable candidates for their mid-size churches seeking pastors, and this is unlikely to improve.
Many smaller mid-size churches will be forced to seek bivocational leadership when they begin to search for a new pastor. Likely, there will be great resistance at first from members of the congregation who are used to having a fully-funded pastor available whenever they wanted him or her, but the reality is that these pastors are unlikely to be available for these churches. The good news is that studies find that bivocational pastors provide quality leadership to their churches at about the same rate as their fully-funded counterparts. In fact, these churches may find they will greatly benefit from having a bivocational pastor.
However, this transition will not come without challenges. Bivocational churches cannot function as fully-funded churches. These churches will have to learn a new way of doing ministry that does not depend on the pastor every moment of the day. Congregational care must replace much of the pastoral care the congregation has grown to expect. Some administrative tasks will have to be assumed by the congregation that they formerly left to the pastor to do. There will be a learning curve for the church, but the transition is possible if the congregation is willing to work through it.
We need to remember that bivocational ministry was the norm for much of our nation's history especially in the Baptist and Methodist traditions. It wasn't until the 1950s that seminary-trained, fully-funded pastors became to be considered the normal expectation for churches. What we are seeing today is a return to the bivocational, tentmaker model that served our churches so well for many years.
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