Needed: More Covocational Ministry Mobilizers
People in the Marketplace Need Authentic Christian Witness
In This Edition
Needed: More Covocational Ministry Mobilizers
The Great Work of the Lilly Endowment’s Religion Division
The Prism Process for Churches
Needed: More Covocational Ministry Mobilizers
Christian ministry needs more Covocational Ministry Mobilizers and less Bivocational Ministers.
Last week I sat with a group of pastors and spouses to talk about thriving in ministry. One pastor was bivocational due to the size of his church and their inability to pay him a living wage. His marketplace job? A lumber yard.
I suggested another way to look at his dual roles was to see himself as a Covocational Ministry Mobilizer. This would not involve him changing his marketplace job, but only changing how he understands that job.
He got it. He just needed a name for it and to think about his role through a different framework.
What is the difference between bivocational and covocational ministry?
Oversimplified, bivocational is when a person in ministry works a second job because their primary ministry salary is inadequate. Christian ministry can happen interpersonally in bivocational situations, but the primary driver is economic.
Covocational is when a person in ministry intentionally engages in a marketplace vocation while also serving in a ministry role. A secondary factor can be economics, but the marketplace ministry is intentional in various ways.
Covocational Ministry Mobilizer
What I advocate for is an intentional life strategy of serving as a Covocational Ministry Mobilizer. Consider these ideas:
1. Too many Christian ministers are isolated from life in the real world. They function in an overly churched culture. Their family and friends are churched people.
2. Understanding the life perspectives of preChristians, unchurched, underchurched, and dechurched people is not part of their everyday life. They experience great challenges identifying deeply with non-churched culture people.
3. The people who need the Good News of Jesus Christ do not have deep and abiding spiritual relationships. They do not come to church in large numbers. They are in the marketplace. We need to go to them.
4. The typical Christian minister spends little quality time in the marketplace. They do not understand these peoples’ spiritual and other life needs. They cannot identify with the stories of their own church members who are in the marketplace about the tensions they experience.
5. Many Christian ministers have great gifts, skills, and training which are needed in the marketplace. They can make great contributions to society. Serve there with Christian values. Become equipped in real time to speak into the spiritual and life needs of people.
6. Since the future growth of Christian ministry staffing is likely focused on smaller membership congregations, and specialty roles in larger congregations, covocational ministry is a growing pattern.
7. Of significant importance is the ability to be salt and light in God’s world as the church scattered as much as the church gathered.
Next Time: What are the particulars of how a Covocational Ministry Mobilizer role might work?
The Great Work of the Lilly Endowment’s Religion Division
It has been my pleasure to know of and interact with the Religion Division of The Lilly Endowment for 25 years. My relationship has included assisting their Center for Congregations with various projects, writing some grant requests, directing one grant program the organization to which I was related received, and writing various grant requests for other organizations.
In numerous ways, Lilly’s Religion Division is a great gift to American Christianity. HERE is their website. I urge you to check it out.
They have some wonderful, active initiatives at the current time. I have just finished writing a grant proposal for one denomination on their Christian Parenting and Caregivers Initiative. Now I am writing a renewal grant for a Thriving in Ministry recipient.
One new initiative is on Compelling Preaching. That should be a truly interesting and needed one.
Currently I am excited to see that they are entering a third round of the Thriving Congregations Initiative. This initiative has excited me from the first time I saw it. Check out this new round HERE.
Making a grant proposal to Lilly is challenging and detailed work. You should know from the beginning that only a small percentage of grant requests are funded by Lilly.
This is not because Lilly is stingy. Actually they are very generous. It is just that “The Word” is out. They receive so many grant requests for each initiative that they may be only able to fund around ten percent of them. Even so that can involve granting $75 million or more for each annual initiative.
Wise grant seekers will develop their proposals with questions such as: (1) What can we learn that will assist our ministry by going through the proposal process? (2) What parts of our proposal can we engage in if we do not receive a Lilly grant? (3) What are other sources for funding our proposal? (4) If we do receive a grant, how will we be generous to many people and organizations who need to learn from our grant program? (5) How will we develop capacity and sustain our grant program beyond the years of the grant program?
The Prism Process for Churches
It is my great privilege to be on the team for The Prism Process for Churches with The Reinolds Group. Check them out HERE.
Thanks George. This is a very insightful perspective. In my experience, many bivocational pastors consider their role a step down from what they hoped God would provide. Observers may think of them as qualified or less effective. Good on you for declaring the important value of ministering in all the setting that God opens for you.
Thanks, Sam! Bivocational pastors/minister are the foundation of all we do. Without them we would not have the Christian witness globally that we do have. Reconceptualizing them as covocational ministers is a much more positive approach. We often need more of what they do in the marketplace than we need pastors struggling to keep a remnant church church alive with people who want a chaplain more than they want a proactive missional journey.