In today’s episode, we discuss the coming bi-vocational ministry revolution.
Evidence is piling up, showing that more and more pastors are finding work outside of the church to supplement their income.
Scripture teaches us that many leaders in the early church did the same thing.
Join us as we unpack five reasons why being bi-vocational can be a healthy choice for many churches and the pastors that lead them.
We hope this conversation helps your church reach more people and grow.
Five Reasons Churches Should Embrace Bi-vocational Ministry
- Bi-vocational ministry can free pastors from financial stress.
- Bi-vocational ministry requires that pastors build strong teams.
- Bi-vocational ministry allows pastors to better relate to their members.
- Bi-vocational ministry frees up money to invest in other areas.
- Bi-vocational ministry helps pastors learn skills they do not learn in their theological studies.
Transcript
Thomas Costello: 00:00:00 In today’s episode, we discussed the coming by vocational ministry revolution. Evidence is piling up showing that more and more pastors are finding work outside of the church to supplement their income. Scripture teaches us that many leaders in the early church did the same thing. Join us as we unpack five reasons why being by vocational can be a healthy choice for many churches and the pastors that lead them. We hope this conversation helps your church reach more people.
You’re listening to the reach, right podcast, the show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way, hosted by me, Thomas Costello, and with me as always is my cohost Ian Hyatt. We’re here to help your church see more visitors and grow.
Thomas Costello: 00:01:08 Welcome to the REACHRIGHT podcast. Episode number 15, 15 episodes into our podcast here. I’m your host Thomas Costello and my cohost today as always is Ian Hyatt. Hey guys. Hey Thomas. Hey Ian. Thanks for joining me again today. Looking forward to our conversation here, we have a good one. I think today we’re tackling the Bible vocational ministry or revolution, and five reasons why churches should embrace it. we have seen a lot of evidence. It seems like that churches are moving more and more to buy vocational models and pastors are moving more and more to five vocational models. so I think it’s a good conversation for us to have. And, I see it as a net positive. personally, I think some people are kind of afraid of it, but I think it can be good for us. So are you hearing a lot of that from, pastors and people you’re talking to?
Thomas Costello: 00:02:02 Oh yeah. And you know, we’ve been hearing this for years, but I think even more so, in the last, you know, I’d say year and a half or so I th I think we’ve seen a big increase year and a half, two years and, Oh yeah. And I think you’re, you’re you’re right. I think that it should be looked at in a positive light. I do think a little while back years past, you know, it was looked at as, Oh my gosh, if you’re by vocational, that’s bad or it’s just going to be a struggle or something. And I, I think we’re starting to see that, the exact opposite is actually more of the reality. Yeah. I mean, so I say this from experience, um, I, and I know you too, we both kind of served in by vocational capacities. I, I led a church as a Bible pastor for, um, basically all of my ministry career.
Thomas Costello: 00:02:49 I’ve been a fuss. I don’t know how many years now, 17 years in ministry. And every one of them has been in a Bible vocational capacity. and I know that, so a couple of things I’ll say is that for me, I have had opportunities to not be by vocational. And that was originally at a time. That was kind of my goal is that, I, I, the last church that I pastored at Madison, Wisconsin, I took it, it was small and I needed to be by vocational when we started there and my goal among many other things of reaching people for Jesus. But one of my just personal family goals was to grow the church to a place where they could afford a full time pastor and praise God that happened. But I never went full time. I guess I was full time, but I never, I never left my other job in that season there, even though the church could afford to pay me as a full time vocational minister there.
Thomas Costello: 00:03:44 And it really was kind of a shift in my thinking from a Bible locational by necessity to a, by vocational, by choice, kind of an approach to ministry. And it did really well for me. And I think there’s a lot to be gained from pastors. I think more and more church leaders are finally getting this here. and I will say this too, that there was a time where I think these conversations were, were met with, with a little bit of a hostility. A lot of times I’ve heard people talk about this coming revolution, and they’re talking about it in the need to, to move away from vocational ministry. They’ll point to the fact that in scripture, there’s not a lot of evidence that there’s some evidence, certainly that people were paid the workers weren’t their wages. I know that scripture, we see that ministers were paid for what they do, nothing wrong with that, but it seems like most of the people that were in ministry and scripture were people that were having other jobs. We certainly see that in there’s some key people. I mean, you can kind of tackle some of the evidence of that.
Ian Hyatt: 00:04:42 Yeah. And absolutely. I mean, you know, everyone thinks of Paul first, right. In his tent making obviously, and we use that term, you know, it’s funny as I’ve consulted with pastors over the years, they, they say, when they say they’re by vocational all either say, okay, yeah, what’s your, what’s your tent making? What do you do other than being a pastor? Or they say, that’s my tent making is that I’m in an insurance or whatever. That’s my tent maker, but also equivalent Priscilla’s work as leather crafters while planting churches. And so that’s, that’s, those are a couple other names we maybe don’t think of as much, but yeah, it’s, this has been around since biblical times, and it’s definitely a reality. And it’s funny, you reminded me actually of a conversation when you said that your goal initially was to, you know, not be by, by vocational.
Ian Hyatt: 00:05:31 I remember when you and I, because we’ve shared this on the podcast before you and I started a church together, you planted the church, I joined you after it, of course. And was your associate pastor. And I remember we had these, these big dreams and we were said, you know, I bet we can quickly grow this to like 300, you know, we get up to 300 and both of us will be full time. And then, you know, and then we talked about my wife coming on and full time as treasurer. And it’s a funny, and now look where we are somewhere totally different and valuing being by vocational. So, yeah, it’s pretty interesting. That’s funny though.
Thomas Costello: 00:06:06 Sounds like something I would say back then,
Ian Hyatt: 00:06:09 It was more of a dream to me, I guess, but no, I’m kidding, but no, we did. We did have that talk, but yeah, I hadn’t even thought of that for years. So it just came to mind. So,
Thomas Costello: 00:06:18 So I think what, what I would share though, is that I felt like this conversation, having this, just talking about the, the need for bi-vocational ministry at, there was a time in my life where this conversation scared me, cause it pointed, and, and I don’t want this to come across as devaluing vocational ministry. I think that’s not what this is about at all. I think that there, there are some out there that say that the church will die if they do not fully embrace this and all ministers should be by vocational ministers. And I’m not saying that whatsoever. I think that that is very, very hard in some structures there. I just know that for many church leaders, specifically younger church leaders, I think in a lot of ways, there is a great opportunity and they ought to probably expect or maybe plan for, or maybe embrace the idea that by vocational ministry might be an even better alternative to full time, exclusively vocational ministry as their source of income. And there’s a lot of evidence that seems like to that points to that’s the way that things are going. I know you did some research on that and want to share some of the numbers.
Ian Hyatt: 00:07:25 Yeah. Y’all share some of the statistics out there and that’d be a good catapult into our points of discussion today just because there’s real data out there for, and it’s interesting. So according to all, I guess, to the 2015 faith communities today survey fewer than two thirds. So 62.2% of U S churches have a full time pastor. So fewer than two thirds. So 62.2% again, and that’s down from 71% in 2010.
Thomas Costello: 00:07:54 Yeah. That’s, what’s incredible to me is the way that that’s shrinking so quickly from, you know, it was 70% or 71 down to 62. So at 9% shift in five years, that’s, that’s just incredible to see, um, that kind of a difference. I think that speaks to the fact that so many churches are very small. Also. I think that a lot of times when we think of by vocational ministry, it’s always been a necessity for smaller churches. That seems like when you have 30 or 40 people, it’s hard to support, um, outreach needs and building needs and staff needs and a full time pastor to go with that. But I think what we’re seeing in some of those shifts is that larger churches are starting to look at this model more and more so mid sized churches. It makes more and more sense. It seems like. So that’s interesting.
Ian Hyatt: 00:08:41 Yeah. And here’s another interesting one. So basically according to the Baptist courier, they report that about 10,000 by vocational ministers were working in Southern Baptist churches in 98, by 2004, that number had doubled to 20,000 and then, and some observers have indicated that as many as 80% of all ministers are by vocational while others kind of fixed the number to 40 to 60%, but that’s still,
Thomas Costello: 00:09:08 Yeah, absolutely no huge, huge numbers there. And I, again, it’s that shift out there. There’s not a ton of data. We did a lot of research on this. There’s not a lot of very recent data on this, but even from 98 to Oh four. So we’re talking 16 years ago here, that number had doubled of by vocational ministers within Baptist circles. So yeah, it’s pretty incredible. If you asked me just to see the, the, the momentum in that. I, I think that we’re in for an eyeopening with the way this whole pandemic plays out. I know we’re, hopefully we’re in the late pandemic season. Maybe we were in mid pandemic right now who really knows, but I think that these numbers are obviously only growing the number of people that are looking at by vocational ministry. So what else you got
Ian Hyatt: 00:09:52 Another one, an article in the Christian century reported that roughly half, I guess some, some say 70% of Presbyterian congregations can no longer afford a full time minister. So there’s kind of going to kind of what this pandemic may do and the financial implications.
Thomas Costello: 00:10:11 Yeah. Huge. Absolutely. I think that that’s something that, I just it’s w we talk to these churches quite a bit, right. And so many churches with building constraints and, you know, maintaining it at oughta Presby Presbyterian churches will have an older building that is kind of a middle of the community, kind of a place, lots of costs and maintaining those kinds of places. So, yeah, I think I’ve seen that too. So, um, yeah,
Ian Hyatt: 00:10:35 Last one, before we tackle some of our points in basically the association of theological schools reports that 30% of graduating summer seminarians anticipate entering into Bible occasional ministry. So that’s something, again, like you said, you’d never thought of that when you were in seminary, right. You damaged it wasn’t on your mind now, 30% of these young kids coming out.
Thomas Costello: 00:11:01 Yeah. And I think probably more should be thinking about it because that’s just the reality of what so many churches and just, I think that we’ll talk a little bit about the reasons why, but I think that that’s something that, that really most seminary students should be thinking about that there’s a high likelihood of, you know, when we have this discrepancy that 71%, or I’m sorry, w well, some of these say like the Presbyterian churches that 70% say they can’t afford a full time pastor, and then you have only 30% of seminary and say, they’re expecting to be by vocational. There’s a 40% disconnect there that we need to overcome. But yeah, I think all the numbers seem to point that, even before coronavirus that these numbers of bi-vocational ministers were skyrocketing. And I think that in this pandemic, I think we’re only going to see that grow as, these roles in churches change and needs change in churches.
Thomas Costello: 00:11:56 I think things are gonna continue to change in this way. So, so let’s kick off some of the ideas that we have. Um, the reasons why I think churches should embrace this by vocational ministry revolution that we’re in the middle of here. The first one is that I think that by vocational ministry can free pastors from financial stresses. Um, I, I talked to so many church leaders, especially younger ones, were, it really is obvious that there is a, there are more financial burdens on young families and young pastors than have ever been there before, especially those that are trying to minister in urban and in city environments where costs of living are much higher than in rural environments. it’s just that, there’s just a lot of stress with that. I mean, you and I both know this, we did ministry when we’ve had young families and, you know, we had to be by vocational because, you know, there’s the, the amount of income that the church could provide.
Thomas Costello: 00:12:52 Just wasn’t something that, that was tenable. and I know that I talked to a lot of young ministers, which breaks my heart. I was talking to a guy just the other day, who had been in ministry, went to a really great seminary. and he was telling me just that, the, this is in Hawaii, of course, and we have really high cost of living, numbers. And so, you know, when the average, average single family home is a million dollars here, that’s how do you, how do you sort these kinds of things out when, when a, a young guy with a financial education, he probably got into some debt from, in school getting his education, which is more expensive than ever. You have million dollar homes. How can a church ever afford to pay someone the amount that it takes to live in a place like this? These are challenges that so many churches are facing. And so, I sadly, you know, I see more and more people like this, man. I was talking to moving into moving out of the ministry. And I think by vocational ministry and allowing for that, could be a better alternative to a lot of these kinds of solutions here. So I don’t know.
Ian Hyatt: 00:14:01 Yeah, no, I totally agree. And, and I think, you know, definitely it makes sense for pastors to, I mean, I think if you have financial stress, you’re not going to be as effective at leading or leading people to Jesus or leading your, you know, your, your other leadership. And so, no, I couldn’t agree more.
Thomas Costello: 00:14:19 I’ll say this too, is that, um, what I, what I saw in my, in my own family and Bible correctional ministry, now we are, um, my, my wife and I, we both, have bed in ministry together. She ministers alongside being all of my, all the ministry that I do, but we have somewhat traditional roles in the home. I see many pastors that, their wives become the primary breadwinner in their home. And I think there’s nothing wrong with that. We’re not against those kinds of setups or relationships, but wives funding, um, their PR their husband’s, ability to keep doing ministry, less than market rates that churches can afford to pay. That’s kind of a common thing in our family. We just really, um, my wife just felt called to being in a more traditional kind of a sense, being at home with the kids, being able to be there with them.
Thomas Costello: 00:15:08 And so me being bi-vocational, kind of took away some of that stress. There’s no doubt that adding two vocations within a family, both a husband and wife working while nothing wrong with it, it can add stress with how do you raise kids? How do you take care of household needs those kinds of things? So there’s just lots of stress that comes with that. And I think being by vocational, now I will say that there, we probably ought to talk a little bit about some of the challenges of this is that while it does provide from some freedom from financial stress, it can lead to burnout in some ways. So if you’re a pastor who has a hard job, and you know, you’re putting 30 hours a week into the church or 40 hours into the church, you’re putting another 40 hours a week into another full time job that doesn’t leave a lot of time for you to be a great husband or father and the things you need to do. So I don’t know. What do you think about that?
Ian Hyatt: 00:15:57 I think that’s a perfect segue into our second point, because I think that our second point is that by vocational ministry requires pastors to build strong teams around them or strong other leaders. So that’s exactly it. So if a pastor is working full time, he can’t be a one man gang, you know, so he’s going to need to raise up some other leaders around him. And I’ve seen this for years now, and it breaks my heart for a lot of the pastors that I’ve consulted with the ones that are the most burned out and the ones that are, you know, their churches are struggling more or having a hard time with growth or finances and all of those different things. Usually it’s that pastor, that’s the one man gang, he’s doing everything. He’s doing every hospital visit. He’s doing every council he’s doing, he’s praying forever one in a day. Everyone thinks they can only go to him for prayer or all these needs, and they’re the most burned out ever. So, so yeah, I think that to make sure that you have a strong team around you is going to take a lot of that stress off of you and the work that’s required in the ministry.
Thomas Costello: 00:17:00 Yeah. So I, I found this at my ministry time, is that, and really just in any kind of organization leading that, it’s almost always easier to do something yourself, right? It’s, it’s easier just to, to get something done on your own, the way you want it done rather than building a team around yourself. And this is one of those big, I think things that people misunderstand a lot of times is that building a team, it takes a lot of work. Now, the payoff is much better in the future. It doesn’t take as much work going forward, but to actually get it done this time, it’s, it’s easier for you to just do it on your own. And so I think that being bi-vocational, it really is kind of a throw you in the water and see if you can do it or not kind of a thing, because if you don’t, if you don’t build a team around you to get the stuff done within your church, that needs to happen, it’s just, it’s not going to fly.
Thomas Costello: 00:17:51 It’s not going to be able to work for you because no pastor can actually do this all on their own. You can’t pastor a, unless your church has 10 or fewer people. And even that would be hard. But if you’re, if you have a church of 40, 50, 60 people, even a smaller church like that, um, if you’re trying to do everything that these 40 to 60 people, Mead their pastor, and you’re preparing messages and you’re building worship teams, and you’re doing all the pastoral care business, like you’re saying, you will burn out like that. That’s not even a, it’s not, you might burn out that will happen. It may not happen in a week or a month, but it give it a few years and you will, you will be you’ll, you’ll pay the price for that kind of thing. So it really does force your hand at that.
Thomas Costello: 00:18:35 But I have found in my experience that there’s a lot of beauty in that it forces you to do it, but it really helps your church move forward and gets you past some of those growth barriers, because you can, you can really invest in other people. It forces you to do that. And it builds up an awesome team. We saw that totally at my church in Wisconsin, that as we continue to invest in those around us, our leadership team was very wide and we had lots and lots of people that were involved. and, and all of us were bi-vocational all of us were working outside of the church still, but it really was a healthy environment when we had lots of people involved.
Ian Hyatt: 00:19:11 Yeah. And I think, I think a full time, pastor, a non by vocational pastor would say the same thing, Hey, even today. So you got to have a strong team around them and other leaders around them or, or the church wouldn’t be where for these very successful men, I’m a part of a very large churches, you know? And I hear my pastor say that all the time, if it weren’t for the leaders that God brought here around me and my wife, we would not have arrived here. So how much more so for the Bible vocational pastor, so
Thomas Costello: 00:19:39 Right with that. So, yeah. Well, third one, let me hit that. Um, by vocational ministry allows pastors to better relate to their members. this is something that I have seen personally, that, I’m a guy that right out of Bible college, I got into the ministry and, I did that almost exclusively. I did a little bit of part time work while I was doing that, but I was an associate pastor at a medium sized church. and I just, until I got out of that, so a few years after you and I planted our church in Austin, Texas, and I got into a full time job. And I, I took me getting into other full time work to really, to really see what it’s like to be, to be a regular guy. I really feel like I was totally blind here. Here’s what I noticed is that I used to have very high expectations for what members of the church should give to their church as far as their time commitment.
Thomas Costello: 00:20:35 So I would, I would have no problem asking someone to come out to the church a few nights a week, come on Sunday mornings to serve in other capacities and to host a home group. And really I had this kind of idea that people within the church that weren’t working full time for the church that they could give as much as I was giving as a full time employee of the church there. And it really took me getting into another job and realizing that after I work a nine or 10 hour shift, I’m pretty tired. Like, I, I it’s, it’s exhausting to do that. Cause I put my mental capacity into something else, completely it’s takes a lot. You’re asking a lot for someone to, to bring people into their home once a week and host a small group or, to, to come in and serve as, as, as on a worship team at your church to give their time to rehearse and play and do all those kinds of things. That’s asking a lot. And I think that until I got into having to have a full time job outside of the church, I didn’t really get that. So I don’t know if you can relate to that at all.
Ian Hyatt: 00:21:34 I can relate now, even though you and I are both kind of different as far as how we came into ministry, as you know, my story, I was unsure. I was saved late in college. you know, and, and so I didn’t go to seminary. You know, I later became licensed, and, but one of the things that I’ve learned, because I did not have a church background, and was saved later on in life and all of that. And then, and went into the workforce, you know, I was always a plan for me to get my college degree and go become a professional. And that’s exactly what I did. but the neat thing about that is that I’ve, I feel like I’ve always been able to relate to people that are, that don’t know Jesus very well. God has used me in that area outside of the four walls of the church to, to lead a lot of, and I can relate with them. So I think it’s, I couldn’t agree more. I’ve experienced that in a little bit of a different capacity, having not been a full time pastor or lead pastor, but I totally agree. I think that it’ll make them relate more to make them better evangelists, which we all know is needed in this more in, in, in this day and age and within the church. So, absolutely
Thomas Costello: 00:22:42 I think just putting church leaders and pastors in relationship with their coworkers, there’s great value in that. I mean, I think so many, so many pastors that I talk to when they are full time, everything in their life and all of their relationships, a lot of times revolve around the church and it doesn’t take too long for all of your relationships to be with Christians and to people that already know about Jesus. And it makes your, it makes you harder. It’s harder and harder for you to understand what the everyday person is going through. I think a lot of ways. So breaking that down and breaking down that barrier, I think is important.
Ian Hyatt: 00:23:18 Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. And another thing, so that, that’s a good, another good segue to our next point, because another thing is, as we move in that as a vocational pastor moves in that direction, it frees up money for them to invest in other areas of ministry like outreach and evangelism, like we’re talking about our marketplace ministry. So yeah, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a good thing in that regard.
Thomas Costello: 00:23:40 Yeah, I totally agree. Um, at our church in Wisconsin, I know was something that was fantastic for us. As I, as I said before, we, we grew to a place where I could have easily come on full time. and most churches that size have full time pastors, if not a few full time pastors that they have on the staff there. But because we stayed by vocational because I kept doing retried and other jobs that I had before reach, right. When we started that church, or started working at that church there, we, we were able to continue to invest in other people, which was really awesome to see that happen. So we built a very wide staff of paid employees at the church. So a church that should have had maybe one or two full time pastors, we had seven or eight people that were, on staff part time and just a really wide kind of a church that we were able to build there.
Thomas Costello: 00:24:33 So it really helped us to do that. And here’s something else that I find is that I don’t know about all denominations and backgrounds. I know in my background, I’m part of a Foursquare church. we have kind of a rule that generally speaking, it’s not enforced, but generally speaking, a church’s budget should be divided into three parts. It shouldn’t be divided. One-third into staff, one-third into building and facilities and one third and two mission and outreach and every single church that I have ever encountered, always struggles with getting money out of the first two staff and building and getting it into outreach so much so that most churches are more like 50 staff, 40 building, 10 outreach. That’s kind of how things are set up for most of them. So, um, what this does is it really helps you move some of that money out of the staff category and get it into outreach categories that giving back to your community and seeing more people come to faith in Jesus. And I know that that really helped us at, at the journey and Madison there, we really saw a lot more, we could invest in outreach as a church because we were able to limit our staffing budget through bi-vocational ministry.
Ian Hyatt: 00:25:42 Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve seen this over the years in consulting with pastors too. As a matter of fact, I’ve seen both sides of this churches that are bogged down with having to pay staff. They can’t move forward with our services here at reach, right. Which we consider church growth and outreach and being very missional things. When it comes to web and search engine marketing, that’s leading people to Jesus that’s outreach. And so on a lot of churches that they’ve, they’ve told me that very thing, we really want to work with you guys, Ian, but we can’t because, you know, we, we are our budget’s tight. We brought on a new staff member and we’re paying them now. And then on the flip side, some of these churches that had Bova by vocational pastors, those pastors have told me, you know, what’s great about me being by vocationals. It’s freed up the money for us to work with you guys and do outreach and to grow the church. So, so agreed. Totally.
Thomas Costello: 00:26:35 Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. That’s a good point. So a fifth and final, let me share this one by vocational ministry helps pastors learn skills that they do not learn in their theological studies, whatever level of theological studies, whether it’s a seminary or Bible college, whatever someone winds up doing as a Bible college graduate. I can tell you that while I love my Alma mater of life Pacific college and Sandy, miss California. I can tell you that I was, I was well prepared for theological topics and from preaching and for studying the word all very valuable things. So this is not a knock on that, but I was woefully prepared for leading an organization, time management skills, leading people in general, a lot of those kinds of skills. They’re just not very well taught, but in the business world, those skills are certainly learned.
Thomas Costello: 00:27:30 when you have to, if you’re working in a, in a thriving or a fast paced business, you pick up a lot of that stuff. I know for me. and I have repented to the pastor that hired me when I first got out of Bible college, is that I wasted so much time when I was there just doing, twiddling my thumbs and not actually working and not until I got into like a fast paced. I worked in a sales job shortly after that, that I really learned what it meant to actually work, to actually get down. And, and I started to really incorporate some of these things. And I’m not one of those people that says that churches should be running exactly like businesses. But I think that there’s a lot to be learned from the way that businesses handle their affairs, that healthy churches really need to look at and embraced. So I dunno, what do you think
Ian Hyatt: 00:28:16 Can totally agree? You know, you and I haven’t worked and start before, you know, we launched reach right. And everything with our sales background, we used to always joke with each other and it’s talking about how much sales helped us become better evangelists. And we were more persuasive to be an in, again, not we’re not pushing a product in ministry, but in a sense, we are persuading people to follow Jesus and explaining the benefits of doing so. And also just from learning, you know, from going through leader, you learn leadership out in the marketplace, too. You learn leadership hands on. And, and so, yeah, I think it, I think it could be a very healthy thing.
Thomas Costello: 00:28:54 Yeah. And so many of the systems that businesses tend to healthy businesses tend to figure out. Um, so, how do you take someone from someone who is just interested to someone who’s a client? How do you care for your clients? Um, a lot of those kinds of things, the systems, at least they can translate pretty well into ministry. How do you take someone who’s just curious about things of faith or Jesus, or they have a major need in their life. How do you help them down that path and build a system that helps them get down that path of building a relationship with Jesus. And then once they’ve made that decision, how do you continue to move them along and, and disciple them? A lot of times, businesses are good at that. How do they take their people from being, people that are interested in turning have a problem and turn them into customers and how do they turn them into people that are longterm customers that continue to work with the business?
Thomas Costello: 00:29:48 I think a lot of those skills I learned in business, and I think they really apply well to ministry and the modern church, especially this church, we’re talking about where digital is the new default. I think they really need to understand these principles that we are not teaching and Bible call. I had one class in Bible college, it was called bath for ministers. That was the one Bible class that I had that was kind of in that vein. and you know, people joke like what is math for ministers? It’s like, is it just like figuring out 10% of everything? Is that what bathroom minister this or my favorite joke was, is it just counting something and then increasing it by 50% kind of the evangelistic count for how many people showed up on a Sunday, but, you know, they, they taught me personal finance skills and those kinds of things, but really everything else is surrounded around theological and Bible study topics. And there’s so much growth that I think we can gain from bi-vocational ministry by being out in the business world. so I think that’s important to people.
Ian Hyatt: 00:30:51 I think a lot of what you just touched on speaks to assimilation and as you and I both know, that’s like the one area, I think we just mentioned it briefly in our last podcast, that that’s the one area. We hear a lot of churches struggling in. As a matter of fact, that’s probably the area that I, other than them needing to have their members of. Angela’s more, maybe that’s the next thing is that, Hey, our assimilation process is it’s in the works, so we need to get better at that. And like you just talked about when you can, you can learn in the business world strategies and systems that allow you to become better at your assimilate assimilation program at your church. So I think that’s a big benefit and that’s a big gap in a lot of churches that, that, you know, is causing people to slip out the back door.
Thomas Costello: 00:31:36 Yeah, that’s it. That’s good. Well, let me leave our audience with this here. I just want to be an encouragement to you. If you are a Bible occational minister that listens to this podcast, maybe while you’re doing your Bible vocational work, you have it on, on your phone or something to that effect. Um, I just want to encourage you. I know that it, that can be challenging the, the time constraint of doing ministry. I want to encourage you to continue in your call. don’t, don’t give up on what God has for you. I think that, as I have found that there couldn’t be great joy in, by vocational ministry and doing both ministry and having a business or working in a business that could be a source of great joy. And I just want to encourage, churches and maybe church leaders or elder boards or church councils or deacons that are listening to this.
Thomas Costello: 00:32:24 I want to encourage you folks to just to be open minded to these kinds of things, to these kinds of arrangements. I think we have a, a coming shift that we are going to see where more and more pastors will want to or desire to, or need to be by vocational. And I think the more opportunity that we make within churches to make this work and to build structures around that, I think the healthier churches can be for these five reasons we talked to again. So I hope it’s an encouragement to you guys. Any final thoughts, even amen. Hey, that’s good. Totally agree. That’s good. Well, let me just leave our audience with this too. If this has been helpful to you, what we really thrive on your ratings reviews, your subscriptions, your likes, your shares, those kinds of things. So if you would do those kinds of things for us, if this has been helpful, if not, just be quiet about it, if you don’t like it, then just don’t listen anymore. And you don’t have to, you don’t have to share this and tell people you don’t like it, but if you do it doesn’t mean a lot to us. So please do subscribe rate use, like us. And thanks for listening guys. We’ll catch you again next week.
Thomas Costello: 00:33:31 Thanks for listening to the reach right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way, looking for more resources for your church. Check us out [email protected]. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would be the world to us. If you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. And we’ll see you next week.
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