THOUGHTS ON PART-TIME PASTORS

Well, I'm back from two weeks at Course of Study at Emory University, the program designed to allow local pastors to meet the educational requirements by the United Methodist Church. After two weeks away from home, church, and work, I have been playing catch-up all week. Too many people to see, e-mails to answer, and phone calls to return. But, now it looks like I am finally starting to find the surface again and hope to return to regular posting by later today or tomorrow.

Thinking back on my experiences over the past three weeks brings to mind, once again, the dilemma of the "part-time" pastor (actually, I prefer "bivocational"). Too often, bivocational pastors find themselves literally overwhelmed with responsibilities on three fronts: home, church, and work. And, if they are not careful, they will find themselves burning out rather quickly.

I know I struggle with this dilemma in my own life. While at work, I worry about my church. When will I get that sermon started? When will I have time to prepare for the two Bible studies I teach? I'm out of vacation time -- how will I make it to the hospital to visit XXX during their surgery? I worry that I'm not doing enough to help my two churches because I don't have the time to lead and direct the activities of the church.

While at church, I think about work, the project that is due on Monday that I didn't have time to finish last week and couldn't work on during the weekend because of church responsibilities. While at Course of Study last week, I literally spent hours on the phone with my secual work office answering questions and handling minor emergencies.

Then, to top it all off, you have all of your home responsibilities. It's hard to explain to your wife and daughter why you just see them 30 minutes in the evening for supper inbetween work and Bible study. You hear the questions, even if they are not verbalized. "What's this meeting about? Why two Bible studies? When can we do something as a family? Why was our rest and vacation cut short by church?"

While I'm not complaining, I am trying to voice the reality for thousands of bivocational pastors throughout America. These men and women work long hours, go without, and suffer stress and burn-out, simply because they love God and have been called by Him to serve His people in small congregations throughout America. We love our jobs. We love our calling as pastors. But we're caught in a tangle between the secular and the sacred and worry that we're not doing either to the best of our ability.

I am concerned, however, that the leadership in the United Methodist Church does not seem to understand this dilemma faced by their bivocational pastors. Let me give you a couple of examples:

1. This past week at Course of Study, one of the professors, an elder in the Methodist Church, made the statement that every pastor should be spending significant amounts of time in study of the Scriptures and should have sermons planned and prepared weeks, if not months, in advance. "You should never write a sermon on the Saturday before the Sunday you give it."

In a perfect world, I would agree with him. But, for those of us who work full-time secular jobs and strive to fit our church responsibilities into the rest of our day, we don't have the time to leisurely set aside an entire morning to study a passage of scripture. When you get home at 5:00 pm and leave for Bible study or hopsital visitation at 6:00, getting home at 9:00 or later several nights a week, you don't have the time to study and plan and prepare sermons. You just do them when you can and pray that God's Word will be clearly heard despite your best efforts.

2. Paperwork in the Methodist Church is burdensome, especially to pastors with several churches. What I think some elders in the church forget, a church of 15 people has to fill out the same paperwork and reports for Charge Conference as a church of 15,000. But, when you have a four-point charge, you have to fill out four sets of each report, usually without any staff or help. I would love to see the District or Conference hire a church administrative assistant (or get a dedicated volunteer) who could travel from church to church assisting pastors without secretaries prepare their reports and fill out the burden of paperwork from the District and Conference level. Thankfully, I had an extremely talented administrative council chair when I started in the ministry who knew how to prepare charge conference reports, otherwise, I would have been dead in the water.

I think there are several things the District and Conference could do to improve the situation for bivocational pastors and to improve the support they offer to local churches. For instance, having monthly pastor meetings in the evenings instead of during the work day would allow local pastors to meet and learn from their full-time peers. Providing administrative support at the District or Conference level on a "call-if-needed" basis would dramatically assist local pastors.

Whew....guess I had a lot bottled up over the past three weeks. Anyway, remember and pray for all of our pastors, and say a special prayer for us bivocational pastors with multi-point charges.