Interesting read

Check out this article at http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=8434. It is an excellent discussion on five types of bivocational churches. If you are in a bivocational church you will probably find your church listed. If not, I would like to know.

Finding pastors for our bivocational churches

Before I address my thoughts on this subject, this is my 200th posting on this blog. I want to thank everyone who reads this blog and those of you who occasionally respond to something I have written. I know I don't always write as often as I probably should, but I try to wait until I actually feel I have something to say. I don't want to be a blogger who feels he has to write something every day and thrills his readers by writing about what he put on his toast that morning. If you are a regular reader, why don't you sign up and join the list you see on the left side? That would certainly encourage me. Also, don't be shy about jumping in and joining in the conversations. This site is intended to created a community of bivocational ministers who can share with one another and assist in one another's growth, and that can only happen when we dialogue about the topics I address. Again, thank each of you for reading this site, and I look forward to another 200 postings.

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.

Ministry challenges

There's no doubt that ministry is tougher now than it was in the early 80's when I began my pastoral ministry. Pastors today face issues that I never had to face, at least not in my small, rural church. We had our issues and challenges but nothing like what ministers must address today. In this posting I want to address just one such issue: what do you do when an admitted pedophile wants to attend your church?

In recent weeks I have become aware of several churches that have faced this issue. A person approaches the pastor asking if he can begin attending the church services and then admits that he is a convicted sex offender. Perhaps he has served time for his offense and is now on probation. His face and personal information are posted on the sex offender web site. What is the pastor and church to do? There's no question that church is where this person needs to be, but there is also the question of how to ensure the church is a safe place for everyone. Like all persons, this individual needs a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but there must also be safeguards in place to protect children and young people from possible harm. There are also legal liability issues to consider.

In the case of a pedophile a part of their probation will normally not allow them contact with children. A church can certainly prevent such people from holding church offices and from working with children and young people, but there is no way to prevent them from having any contact with children in the church. There will be times when children are all over the facility including in the proximity of the offender. How would a church warn their children to avoid this individual without making them frightened of him or other adults? Is such a warning necessary?

Another challenge: is it necessary for the church leadership to let the congregation know they have a sex offender in their services? If so, how can this be done without violating confidentialty? How much of this person's past should be told? Still another issue: what about the person who was charged with a sex offense but allowed to plead down to a lesser offence that resulted in him not being required to register as a sex offender?

Throughout this posting I have used masculine pronouns, but some sex offenders are women. We've all read headlines in recent years about female teachers having relationships with male students. Although most sex offenders are male, there are some female offenders as well. Are they treated the same as male offenders would be?

Although I have not exhausted the subject I'll address just one more area. In some cases, the families of a sex offender have remained with him, and the entire family attends church together. How will the family be received in the church? How will their pain be addressed?

I come to this topic with a lot of questions and few answers. One thing I am certain of is that your church, no matter if it is bivocational or not and regardless of its size, may one day face this issue. It will be much better to have some policies in place before you have to address it than after you are confronted with it. I would like to know if some of our readers have addressed this in their churches and what decisions they made. Your sharing can be a valuable service to all of us.

Background checks

I doubt that many bivocational churches do background checks on volunteers or on pastoral candidates, but such checks are becoming increasingly important. We've all read the headlines in recent years about the number of people who have been victimized by persons in authority in churches. Such stories are tragic for many reasons, and a simple background check may have prevented at least some of these situations.

Last year LifeWay partnered with an agency to offer discounted background checks for churches that wanted such checks for volunteers and potential employees. Since that time about 450 churches have requested more than 5,000 background checks. Eighty of those checks found that the person had committed serious felony offenses, and over 600 people had some type of criminal history that may have prevented them from working in a church. I'm sure some churches make it very clear up front that they do background checks on anyone wanting to work in certain jobs in the church, and this probably prevents some from even applying. Persons wanting to harm other people are not going to stay around in a place that will investigate their past before allowing them access to those people. Unfortunately, they will continue seeking out other churches until they find one that does not do the background checks.

I believe, at a minimum, that every church should do background checks on every person who will work with persons eighteen years old and younger and anyone who will handle any aspect of church finance. The best case scenario is for churches to do such checks on every volunteer and employee of the church. I'm sure some long-term workers in the church will object to being checked, but hopefully they will agree to a background check when it is explained that every person, including the pastor, will undergo the same check and that the purpose of the background check is to ensure the safety of every person in the church.

When churches are seeking a new pastor or staff person a background check should be part of the search process, and any applicant who refuses to give permission for such a check should be eliminated as a candidate. Churches should be committed to provide a safe environment for every person, and background checks are one way to help ensure such an environment. These checks are relatively inexpensive, and if they prevent even one person from being harmed in the church they are well worth the expense.

Workshops

On September 9 and 10 I will be presenting "The Healthy Small Church" workshop for the American Baptist Churches of the Great Rivers Region in Illinois. On September 9 I will be at the Lake Springfield Camp near Chatham, IL, and on September 10 I will be at First Baptist Church Mount Vernon, IL. Information and registration forms are available at the Great Rivers Region website. I encourage all bivocational and small church leaders in that Region to plan to attend one of these opportunities.

Your church in five years

Have you given much thought to what your church will look like in five years. In the not so distant past organizations used to talk about doing a twenty year plan, but things are changing too quickly to try to think twenty years ahead. We can think out about five years . What will your church look like five years from today? Approximately how many people will be attending your services? What services will you offer five years from now? What will the immediate community around your church look like in five years? Who will you be reaching? The list of questions could go on and on, but are you asking these kinds of questions?

In my workshops I often tell the participants that their churches are today what they decided five years ago, ten years ago, and even twenty years ago what they would be. It may not have been an intentional plan that people had for their churches, but they made decisions years ago that continues to impact their churches today. I then tell them that their churches will be five years from now, ten years from now, and even twenty years from now what they decide today that they will be.

Unfortunately, my experience has been that most smaller, bivocational churches have little vision for their future. They are focused on surviving today and most aren't interested in thinking too far ahead into their future. The result of such thinking is that five years from now those churches will look very much like they do today only they will be a little greyer and there will be fewer people. Is that really God's plan for His church?

Of course, having a vision isn't enough. There must be action on the part of the church to make that vision come to pass. There has to be some intentionality on the part of church leaders to set and reach achievable goals. There also has to be widespread agreement from most of the congregation that these are the right goals. Such agreement will make it more likely that a majority of the church will get behind them.

Let me ask again, what will your church look like in five years?

Reflections from a Goldwing

This morning I took a ride on my Goldwing. Sometimes I just need to feel the wind in my face, and this was one of those mornings. I only rode for about an hour, but it was time well spent as I prayed and worshipped God. Things often take on a different perspective on a bike than they do when riding in a car.

I noticed a home sitting back in the woods and couldn't help but think how peaceful a setting they lived in. Then I wondered how peaceful is it inside that home. As a friend once said to me, "We often never know what happens when someone closes the door behind them," and I have found that to be true. I prayed for the family who lived at the end of that lane cutting through the woods and asked God to help them experience peace in their lives.

I passed fields of corn and soybeans and thought of the farmers who would begin harvesting those crops. I prayed they would get a good return for their efforts. I passed some other fields that would obviously produce little if any crop. Both small and large fields had been flooded with all the rain we've had lately. The investment of time and money spent on those fields is lost for this year, and I prayed for those farmers and their families.

I noticed the woods that I passed and thought how in a few weeks the leaves will begin to change color adding beauty to those woods. I then began to thank God for His creation.

I passed a church with a sign that read, "God is good. God is just." I thought how true that is. I began to think of how many times God has reached into my life and worked things out that I wasn't sure could be worked out. I thought about His grace and how much I appreciate receiving that grace every single day. I began to thank and praise Him for who He is and for all He has done in my life and in the lives of my family.

Too soon I was pulling back in my driveway, but it was a great time of worship.