I spent the weekend in Indiana going to a Dave Fitch http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/ "conversation" on the Missional Church that was attended by 70ish people from the MidWest. I had read Dave's book The Great Giveaway. Now in Year three of my odyessy of Seminary Education and Pastoral Contemplation/Practice my disquiet when I entered has only grown, and my opinions are "hardening" as iron sharpens iron.
The missional effort whether in plants or recasting can only be done through BiVocation. After looking at some of the data on personality types and what dominates the evangelical churches it is clear (to me at least), that my experience of very narrow types is universal, and the personality types to "missionalize" the church don't exist in the pastoral ministry, they exist in the engineers, lawyers, carpet layers, foreman, and truck drivers of the church. My personal opinion is that this has been an institutionalization of 1 Corinthians 12. One part of the body (by personality type or disposition) feeling privelaged over the others.
While BiVocational-ism is within the living memory of the traditions of my family and area (Wesleyan and Ana-Baptist), it has fallen away in the overall consumerism/professionalism ways of life that have trumped wisdom, fidelity, and a real review of utility (ie, has consumerism and professionalism REALLY worked for our society?)
What I fear in the resurrection of bi-vocationalism is it being cast/visioned as a solution to financial issues (it's cost effective!), or it's 2nd best (this is the best we can do), or it's transitional (when we get enough people/money, we can move them to "full time").
What I'd like to propose here is that this is the BEST way, as those who SHOULD be recruited into pastoral ministry are COMPLETEY missing (personality type wise), but they are the BEST because they can communicate through the portals of society which are neither theological or cultic (they have nothing to do with what goes on Sunday mornings). These portals are books, music, theater, sports, gardening, etc., and the conversations eventually lead to a dialog which is a mixture of philosophical, relational, and practical ("does it work?") light years before it becomes theological.
This proposition - bivocational as the BEST, is a hard concept to digest by the institutional biases now in place, but once upon a time in America, this would have been a mainstream thought for both similiar and additional reasons.
I'll attempt to post shortly some thoughts on the "educational" implications of this leadership.
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8 comments:
provocative. that's a new concept for you ;-)
I agree that often when we hear talk of bi-vocational pastors it is in churches that don't have money etc.
I don't think I've ever seen it as a first choice.
In reality, there is even a sense of social evangelical shame if you have only one full time paid pastor. We hear a lot of talk about 'your staff.'
It seems to me that there could be a compromise of some church paid, some outside employment. i.e. - work 20 hours outside, paid 20 by the church. Otherwise if leadership was more legitimately shared, a true bi-vocational situation would be possible.
There is a lot to think about here. I'm not ready to get fully on board with you here, but I am sympathetic.
Thanks for responding. I see the bivocational opportunity for senior pastors, for assistant pastors, and for transitional pastors. There is nothing new there in various traditions. Looking forward I really believe that a huge bang for the buck is the assistant pastor in a church that has missional objectives, even if they are circumscribed.
Dave Dunbar (prez of Biblical) annointed me with "provacateur" which I will wear with pride on my chest under "hello my name is".
Marty - great thoughts. I would only ask: since Jesus' training of missional leadership was not BiVocational, why can we do that today? He spent 1095 days with 12 men, in and around the portals of society. As people did in His day, why can't a group of people agree to provide for a man to have the time to study, pray, disciple, teach, interact with community leadership etc full time? Would that be a blessing to them, provided this man be a man of maturity and appropriate personality type, as you put it?
I think it is great when a congregation steps up to support a man or woman in the ministry of the gospel. In fact I'll go one more step and say that it is great when one person or one family supports that person. They are all part of the ecosystem and are neither better nor worse then bivocational.
I see in Paul's story everything from individual/family support (Priscilla) to bivocationalism (making tents), admittedly he was a bit unique as an Apostle, like your citation of Jesus and the twelve. Based on the centricism of Peter's house "downtown", i'll betcha he was fairly well off, and one does wonder what Jesus did for 30 years, my guess is that it wasn't secluded away working on his MDIV and PHD. Both of them represent a slightly different concept then the "order of preachers" (dominican friars).
Given that there are lots of niches of the ecology essentially unfilled today, we're not going to fill them with the model you have described.
Talk more about the associate pastor thing.
and no, bi-vocation isn't necessarily new, but I believe that it is viewed differently.
There is an opportunity to start missional churches two by two, if you don't insist that either you can only start a church with one person, or if two, that they must be full time to succeed.
Outside of missional startups it is really hard to see in most established churches the talent languishing around and not wondering what is going on. I think the relegation to "volunteer" places many of them into "non player status", so the thinking is "what's the point?".
Even more interesting is when the church decides to do something new when the full time staff has never, and has no desire to do anything new. Their principle personality types are "maintenance oriented", doing something new (and potentially failing) actually puts their sinecure in jeopardy.
The most entertaining/depressing combos are the motivated parishoner starter who endeavors to work with the duly authorized pastoral leader maintainer.
So, instead of those people being bivocational inside the church they become bivocational for the paras. I find them all the time in the field and stateside.
My old business partner used to tell me "follow the money", I'd love to see the data for say the last 40 years of the aggregate para
$'s vs aggregate church $'s.
I see much of your personal experience coming through here - and I think that you are often right.
A big issue is that we have failed to give much weight to the Ephesians 4 designiations - Apostle, Prophet, Evengelist, Shepherd, Teacher.
Most of our pastors are shepherds. The situation you speak of is a church that lacks apostolic leadership.
Whomever the 'pastor' is needs to make sure that other giftings are represented and allowed the freedom to express their giftings - so that the whole church is built up.
In the situation you discuss, I think it would be essential that one of the two be apostolic/prophetic and the other be more of a shepherd.
I think the opposite might be true though. If one person is full time, it should be the apostolic, kingdom-minded person. I believe that more people would readily fill in the shepherding duties than many of the other ministry objectives
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