Becoming more things to more people? Fall 2000

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The commentator on public radio was complaining about being misunderstood. She had recently moved in with her mother. They liked each other and decided to be housemates.

Unfortunately, none of the commentator's friends could believe the matter was so simple. The only reasons they could imagine for living with one's mother were neurotic dependency or grave financial necessity. Everyone expressed the polite hope that she would soon be able to move out. It was as if her living arrangement, regarded as perfectly normal and healthy for most of human history, had somehow, in one generation become a horrible fate, a last resort for desperate people.

Well, I don't live with my parents, but I understood how the commentator felt: I'm a bivocational minister.

Somehow, true ministry has been defined as a full-time career ("One of our youth, Sammy Smedly, has come forward tonight to give his life to full-time ministry."), and bivocational ministry has been defined as an aberration. When I became bivocational, no less than three other ministers told me how they had to "go bivocational" once. They encouraged me to think that my fall from grace was only temporary. I'd get back on my feet soon and be a full-time (i.e., real) minister again.

But what if I don't want that?

How does a person become a bivocational minister? Not on purpose, usually. Few, if any, young people feel a call to be "a pastor, among other things." Few, if any, seminary students endure three to five years of graduate school in order to moonlight as a minister. It offends our sense of propriety and thrift to think of all that preparation—not to mention that sense of divine calling—being for the sake of a part-time job.

But bivocational ministry happens. It happened ...

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