It is very common in UK churches now and for many centuries past to expect a church to have a single full time pastor (paid elder/ vicar/ minister). There are good reasons for this, but in this post I suggest that there would be significant gains to moving to a model where pastors work part time for their church and part time for another ministry. This is distinct from more general bi-vocational ministry because the “second job” would be in a related field that uses similar gifts and so enables some useful synergy.
Positive reasons for pastoral staff being full time
The most common model for small to medium size churches in the UK is for the pastor to be the only full time member of staff, with perhaps a part time administrator, youth worker, or a temporary assistant pastor. This has a number of advantages. A) It takes many years for someone to be sufficiently trained and experienced to be a pastor, so fully utilising those gifts as a church is wise. B) Since it is common to recruit a pastor from outside the church, offering a full time role and pay makes it far easier to recruit a pastor. C) And because the pastor has only one organisation and group of people to focus on, he can really get to know and serve his church. The undivided attention is helpful and means he is available for the myriad responsibilities he has within church life.
Problems with pastoral staff being full time
There are some problems with having a single full time pastor. A) As the only member of staff (or only full time or senior member of staff), the pastor is expected to lead and perform roles which are not actually his gifting, simply because he is the paid member of staff and available. Sole pastors often spend more than half their time on things they are not gifted for, while others with the gifts don’t have the time or space to lead in areas they are gifted in. B) Having only one paid pastor, and the pastor having only one source of income, means there is a sort of co-dependency and potential for abuse of power both ways. For the church, losing the single pastor is immensely disruptive as so much of church life depends on the pastor, and this may lead both to over-heavy demands, but also putting up with failures or inappropriate behaviour because the upheaval and uncertainty of losing a pastor and looking for a new pastor is too great. For the pastor, with his whole income (and often family’s housing and sole income) coming from one job, the demands of the church become hard to say ‘no’ to, and there is always more to be done. It can be hard to make the right calls in church life when the risk of being made jobless and homeless looms large. And it can be hard to rightly value time and set limits when the church is your sole employer.
Proposal for part time pastors with secondary ministry roles
My proposal, based in part on my own experience and that of pastors I’ve worked with, is that there are real benefits to a pastor working 1-2 days a week for an organisation/ ministry beyond the church. There are a wide range of possible options, including training, counselling, youth or schools ministry, scholarship, evangelistic ministries, church management advice, mentoring and church leadership advice (bishopping?) and more. What most of these have in common is that the second role uses some of the gifts and skills required in pastoring a local church, and so there are some synergies as well as some time and energy costs from having the two roles. The pastor would end up using roughly 1 day for sermon prep, 1 day for admin, planning and leadership team, and 1 day for pastoral care and mentoring/training ministry leaders in his church, as well as Sundays.
Gains for pastors
Pastors get to use their gifts and passions more, while not being required to take on many areas they are not gifted in within their church. Having two spheres of ministry helps them to see where they are really being useful or not, and also to spot more easily where a church or organisation is functioning unhealthily. Avoiding the silo of one church alone and the total dependence on one job for income helps pastors to keep alert to poor practice in their own ministry or in their setting, and to be willing to risk relationships or job to stand for what is right.
(If a typical pastor is working part time for the local church, the part time training model for church ministry would seem more normal, and that has gains for finances and keeping connected to a local church.)
Gains for churches
With the first employed pastor only working 3/5th-4/5th time (though probably most Sundays), it in theory becomes possible to employ a pastor as a smaller church. As the church grows, the pastor has clear limits, and so growth in ministries requires more people in church to use their time and gifts, spreading the load, and possibly also stopping the pastor overloading the congregation. As the church does not have to pay a full time salary, it becomes easier to employ other staff (or pay for specialist time from other pastors or ministry workers), who bring other specialist skills, especially if they also work part time. As the church spreads the load of the work, and the pastor functions more to equip others for works of service and less to do it all himself, the church is less unhealthily depend on the pastor.
Potential problems
Whenever someone has two part time jobs, it takes real diary discipline to avoid each of them expanding. The risk of overwork is real. It is also often the case that the outside ministry will be local, and so if the pastor has to move church he will leave his second job as well as his church role, reducing the cushioning value of the second job. There may also be issues with oversight of a person with two roles, especially as he interacts with some of the same people in both spheres.
The proposal that the norm for small- medium churches is a pastor working part time would be a shift in mindset and practice. It might not work for everyone. I’ve personally loved being able to have a day a week seconded to run the TEAM course, which plays to my teaching and training strengths. But what do others think, either from a pastor’s perspective or a congregant’s perspective?
Jots and Scribbles 