Bivocational pastors verses career pastors

The majority of pastor's around the world survive through working another job. The Apostles did the same. It is only in first world Christian nations where pastor's have been become professionals and created comfy PhDs out of going to graduate school. We have pastor's negotiating contracts and benefits. Where do we see that model in scripture?

MennoSota said:

The majority of pastor's around the world survive through working another job. The Apostles did the same. It is only in first world Christian nations where pastor's have been become professionals and created comfy PhDs out of going to graduate school. We have pastor's negotiating contracts and benefits. Where do we see that model in scripture?

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I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. When pastors start negotiating generous salaries with comfortable benefits packages we have to ask whether things are out of hand - if you're doing the job for the money the chances are you're not going to make a good pastor. You might be a great business leader for Megachurch Inc but you're probably not going to be much good at meeting people where they are and, well, pastoring them.

At the same time I think if a church wants their pastor to be available when needed they have to accept that the pastor can either be on hand, or hold down an external job. If you want to be sure your pastor's response isn't going to be "I'd love to come and comfort you in your recent bereavement, I'll be there in seven hours when I get off work" then you have to accept the pastor can't hold down an external job as well as being pastor, which in turn means the church as a whole has to pay the pastor a wage that is liveable. That doesn't mean $860,000 with use of a chauffeur-driven Mercedes S-class, but neither does it mean $5/hour. If the pastor has a famiy it's not realistic to expect them to go out to work a full-time job and then, with what free time they have left, expect them to put in the hours required to preach a sermon every Sunday and hope they still get a few moments here and there to spend with their family, not to mention the additional pastoral needs within a church.

The fact we don't see a particular model in Scripture doesn't mean we can't do it today - I'll bet nobody here can show me a single mention of a church web site in Scripture and yet most churches have them today. So since Scripture neither commands nor forbids a pastor working full time at the church I would say it is something the church and pastor can decide between themselves. Then they just have to strike a happy medium between the idea that "the worker is worthy of his wage" and the church "pastors" who enjoy diamond status on every major airline while their members' needs are ignored.

jsimms435 said:

Do you think it is biblical that some pastors do their job full time and have that as their singular career? Or is it more biblical for those who preach to also have jobs outside of the church? I found that when I have worked inside the church, I have had less of an opportunity to share my faith with nonbelievers as many won't come into a church building.

Would you be open to your church having a bivocational pastor? Meaning, he or she probably wouldn't have regular office hours at the church or that person would have fewer office hours

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IMO, there's nothing in Scripture that prohibits a "bi-vocational" pastor. Nothing that suggests a pastor must have only one source of income and only one job. St. Paul was also a tent-maker, so I think one could even make a case for bi-vocational being okay.


As I understand it, the idea of a pastor having no other vocational responsibility did not exist for the first 1000 years of Christianity. Pastors were typically farmers - just like everyone else. Little of their income came from they being the local priest. But there was a major Reform movement in the West about 1000 years ago and part of it was to make the clergy more "holy" and "religious" and less "worldly" That Reform resulted in the clergy being unmarried, having no other job, being largely void of personal possessions, and always wearing distinctive clothing. BUT it created a whole new reality that the Catholic Church REALLY struggled to meet - it now had to materially support pastors. It also meant a LOT less men were willing to be pastors (a problem the CC still faces today).


Parishes are getting smaller. Pastoral salaries are getting higher. The result is that more and more parishes simply cannot afford a full time pastor. My Lutheran parish, where we worship 50-70 on a typical Sunday, our pastor is full time and serves only our church. But his salary of about $75K and benefits of about $30K totals over $100,000 per year. That's about the minimum our District permits us to pay, we're at the bottom of the "scale." And that's before his car and education allowances, etc. Frankly, it's a lot for our small parish.... doable because we have good givers and our mortgage is very small. But I can easily see how many churches our size simply would not be able to do that. The result of this reality is parishes getting "creative"..... more and more Lutheran parishes are sharing a pastor, bi-parish pastors. And more and more pastors are "bi-vocational" where their remuneration is not meant to be fully supportive but they are expected to serve only 20 hours per week. But even that is sometimes hard. A FEW LCMS parishes are served by licensed Deacons rather than pastors but usually receive no salary AT ALL (just expenses)and some in the LCMS are uncomfortable with this arrangement (eliminating it would mean causing a lot of parishes to no clergy). Reality: With the average church in the USA now worshipping about 60, it's probably not doable to pay a pastor $110,000 a year to be the full time pastor of just that church. We increasingly live in a Post Christian world... and we may need to parishes that have more in common with the pre-Christian world than with parishes of some years ago. We may need to think more in terms of house churches and bi-vocational pastors.




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Lämmchen said:

Pastors in Lutheran churches just don't work on Sundays so having a side job isn't always going to be feasible.

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Not ALWAYS, I agree.... But sometimes.... oft times.... it is.

HALF of the parishes of the LCMS worship less than 133 per Sunday. A lot of them worship less than half that. True - the amount of time preparing the sermon is the same regardless of the parish size, but the rest of the pastors work is largely determined by the size of the church.

IMO, we need to re-examine what is strictly the responsibility of ORDAINED CLERGY, not permitt4ed for lay members. Lamm, in my former Catholic parish, we worshiped 600 every weekend in 5 worship services (1 on Saturday, 3 English on Sunday, 1 Spanish on Sunday). We had a K-8 school of about 500 students. Lots of funerals and weddings. We had ONE pastor. That's it. I doubt he worked 80 hours a week. BUT he had NO administrative responsibilities (we had lay folks to do that), we had Euchristic Ministers and a large group of trained lay "care givers" who generally made the hospital and shut in calls, lay folks taught the Communion, Confirmation and Adult Confirmation (RCIA) classes. Our priest was strictly "Word and Sacrament" - he lead the Mass, he administered the Sacraments, he did counseling IF it was strictly a religious issue (I had appointments with my priest as a kid!) OR was specifically requested, but the office tried to direct folks to one of the lay specially trained counselors. e The priest SUPERVISES teaching and ministry, but he directly serves pretty much only where the administration of the Sacraments is involved... not even always preaching the sermon. IMO, especially in small Lutheran churches, pastors do a LOT of stuff that the laity could do - very likely better. Pastors have ZERO training in administration or education, certainly ZERO in secretarial and janitorial and gardening skills, and maybe 2 courses in counseling. In my parish, the pastor attends EVERYTHING.... and is expected to be a leader and expert in everything. When we are painting, he is there painting.... etc., etc., etc. IMO, if the laity stepped up more - we'd need less time from our clergy and the church would likely be better served? IMO, we could take a lesson from the Catholics. We may HAVE to (checked the enrollment at our two seminaries lately?).



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Lämmchen said:

Pastors in Lutheran churches just don't work on Sundays so having a side job isn't always going to be feasible.

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I suspect most pastors do more than just a couple of hours on Sunday morning. It ultimately goes back to the question that if the church expects enough commitment from the pastor that holding down a secular job isn't a sensible option then they have to regard being a pastor as his job and offer a salary accordingly.

As Josiah mentioned, it's increasingly difficult for a church of maybe 50 people to fund a package of $100,000 - it works out at $2,000 per person, or $40 a week, every week, from every parishioner, just to pay the pastor. In an affluent area it might work. When the cost of keeping a pastor on a livable wage (which obviously varies with area) exceeds what a church can afford the church needs to either release the pastor from full-time employment and let him take secular work, or share him with another church and split the costs.

One thing I remember from the church near where I grew up was that three churches shared one minister. It seemed to work out OK and meant three churches could stay open even though none of them individually could afford a minister.

psalms 91 said:

When a pastor turns it into a career then I dounbt his calling. A true pastor will not worry about 40 hours a week and whether he has a retirement plan since it is God who supplies all we need anyway. The cemetaries (seminaries) turn out a few good ones but for the most part fill them with their doctrine and equip them for a vocation rather than a calling.

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The pastor at my former church, a man I respect immensely, once told me that one hard part of being a pastor was the way you effectively had someone's entire world in your hands and yet you had to pick them up and put them down like marble. One day you might be visiting someone who just got a diagnosis of a terminal illness, then the next day you might be talking with a young couple excited about getting engaged and wanting to arrange a wedding service, and the day after you'd be visiting a family facing an unexpected death. To each of those people their issues are everything to them in that moment, and yet to the pastor they have to be able to just put it down and see what the next person needs. Of course pastoral needs don't neatly align with regular office hours so you may get a call at an odd hour, or have someone who needs pastoral care but can't do much until late in the evening, or whatever else.

Compare and contrast to the "pastor" (I use the term loosely, although he is an internationally known individual) at the church a friend attended for a time. I visited the church out of hours one time when I was visiting my friend and it felt more like a conference center than a church. The pastor had platinum status with all the major airlines because he "flew 25-30 times a month", leaving me wondering when he had time to care for his flock. The answer soon became clear - he didn't. My friend would often give the pastor and his family a ride to the airport or help with this or that need. When my friend needed a ride and put out a request the silence was deafening. When he was sick enough he missed church for nearly a month it seems nobody noticed. From what I could tell (in fairness, as an external observer) that person isn't a pastor whatever his job title might be.

I have mixed views on the value of Bible college. I think it's good to have a well rounded understanding of Scripture and how different groups interpret passages, what other texts they use to support their argument and the like. That said I agree that there is a danger that any form of formal education can focus on just cranking the handle on a proverbial sausage machine rather than encouraging people to read, to understand, and to grow in their own way.

jsimms435 said:

I don't know of any small or middle size Baptist church that pays its pastor that well.

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Josiah's post (#5) talked of a church with 50-75 people and a pastor with a package nudging just into six figures.

jsimms435 said:

Yes, I know. That would be a huge package for a small church like that. When I worked in the church the whole package would have been much smaller even figuring in the parsonage that the church owned but the pastor would be allowed to live in.

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I guess a lot depends on the area too. At my previous church the pastor and his wife got to live in the manse (a three bedroom detached house). The rent on that place alone would probably have been $2500/month or more, so that makes the equivalent of $30,000 in housing allowance before you even talk about how much salary he receives. That said, his salary is probably reduced because his housing is provided. That church was full to overflowing every week so we must have had 200-250 people there, although a good proportion were children.