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Revitalization: Church Attendance and Need for Bivocational Ministers

"Part-time" pastors are not second rate, they are normative globally and key to the health of the local church in the West

Ryan M Marks

Nov 18

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Recently, I have found myself in a few conversations online which have organized my thoughts on some matters I have been trying to articulate for sometime. First, I ran across the following:

“Right now, 1 in 8 Kentucky Baptist churches has no pastor. That’s nearly 300 congregations without a shepherd.
But, this gap is actually solvable.
If just 25% of our churches intentionally raised up ONE pastor over the next 10 years, we could fill every vacancy in about five years.
That’s only 60 new pastors per year across 2,400 churches.
If local churches take pastoral formation seriously (because it’s their biblical responsibility), Kentucky churches can have pastors again.
Lord, raise up shepherds.”

Sadly, I think this is the condition of most States in the USA from the stories I hear. While I can’t answer that for KY, I can from being from Missouri--yes many are offering bivocational pay. Reality is ministry full-time is the exception not the norm globally and across this country, especially in conservative denominations like the SBC. It’s time for us to wake up to this reality and prepare and release bivocational ministers--it was the New Testament design. Mergers or adoptions work in some cases but they are not a guarantee of long-term ministry. Bivocational pastors are key. Even in seminary I was told, “don’t expect to fulfill your calling with full time pay.” And I never did. The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few!...