Thinking realistically about part-time ministry – Transcript

Jim Latimer
Welcome to Coaching for Interims. We are about empowerment for interim ministers: best practices and quick help from interims for interims – wisdom from the field. My name is Reverend Jim Latimer. I am your host today and I have the good fortune of having with me – with us – the Reverend Quentin Chin. Quentin is a long experienced interim minister. And so Quentin, what would you like to speak with us about in this segment?

Quentin Chin
First of all, thanks, Jim, for having me on. What really sits with me is this idea of part-time ministry. I’ve been doing part-time ministry in most of the churches I’ve served. It might be three-quarter time, or half-time. But I think for many of our churches, particularly as they’re moving from full-time to part-time, this is a big shift for them. How do they figure this out? I think one of the things is what can be expected from a part-time pastor? I look at it not so much as, “What’s this pastor not going to do?” But rather, “What is it that we really need our pastor to do?”

Quentin Chin
And so when we think about the essential tasks of ministry, we need to do the basic work of the church. It’s leading worship, preaching, doing the funerals, the counseling, pastoral care, that sort of stuff. We can’t overlook that there’s administration, right? We look at this list, and as clergy, we go, “Oh, my gosh! What gets cut out here?” But I think we need to think about what essentially is it about leading worship? What is essentially is it about preaching? And so for part-time clergy, one fundamental question is, does the pastor need to preach and lead worship four out of four Sundays? I know that’s a heretical sort of thing. And whether people like that or not, it needs to be acknowledged as a big part of the pastor’s portfolio. And it takes up a lot of time during the week. We know from Fred Craddock, one hour of prep for every minute of preaching, right? That old rule of thumb. And so if you think about, it could easily be 12, 14, or 15 hours. And if you’re a half-time pastor at maybe 20 to 24 hours a week, that’s not a lot of time for anything else. So what if the pastor didn’t preach four out of four? What if a three-quarter time pastor preached three out of four Sundays? So now the question for the congregation is, “Who’s going to do the other week?” And it might be well, you could have laity do it. You could also hire another pastor to do it, and just pay that person on a supply basis.

And what about the Christian Ed program? I remember one church I was serving as part-time, and we had to do Confirmation. Now Confirmation, when we really think about it, is maybe 10 to 12 weeks, pretty much at the max. What if the congregation hired a retired pastor to lead to that confirmation class? It takes that off the the interim pastor’s plate, or even the called pastor, or the settled pastor, for that matter. And it’s just for a short time, right? Another way to think about this work is to look at meetings, which for some churches is like every week for the pastor. And first, does the pastor have to be at the meeting? That’s a really good question.

Jim Latimer
Yes, it is.

Quentin Chin
Can we have multiple committees meet on the same night? Because the pastor may not actually have to be in the entire meeting. And so one of the things we’ve done in Southampton, where I’m currently serving, we now have all our ministry teams meeting on the same night. And essentially, I will pop in as I can to be part of those meetings. So it means that in the other weeks, I don’t use up time in meetings. I think the other thing for our churches to recognize is church suppers. Really. I mean, they’re fun. They’re good fellowship. Do you really want to pay the pastor to be there? I tell congregations that, “If I show up at the church supper, you know I’m working, right?” They kind of look at me like, “Oh!” The other one is I sing. And I actually sing pretty well. And, so usually after the first service people will ask, “So can you be in the choir?” And I tell them, “If I go to choir practice, I’m working.” In essence, anytime I’m with the congregation. I’m working.

Jim Latimer
So what I’m hearing you say, Quentin, and what I think is so helpful here, is that you’re giving the laity a pretty good peek into what life is like for us ministers that they may not otherwise see. And they’re probably not going to see unless we teach them and help them to see it. So that’s incumbent on us – as the settled minister or the interim minister – to help them understand. We’ve got it be proactive in helping them understand this. And what I’m imagining here is sort of like a buffet: these are all the things that pastors can potentially do. There’s maybe 10 or 15 things, everything from from being in the choir, which is a pastoral care piece and a worship piece, to visiting sick, to preaching, to administration…it’s all of these things. And then once you have them all out in front of you, you can begin to see and to plan. “Okay, this is our budget” – maybe 30 hours a week, for example. Now let’s talk together with the pastor, ideally in the contracting stage, before you actually start working together. However, even after you’re already working together, you can probably do this if some things are getting pretty anxious. And then you can allocate, “Well, how much is it?” and teach each other. And then you make an agreement – an actual agreement – rather than just expectations of each other.

Quentin Chin
That’s right. And I think we should not overlook that the congregation can take responsibility as well. So we have an excellent lay care program in the United Church of Christ – “Called to Care.” Maybe it would be getting someone to come in to train people in Called to Care. It’s a seven session program. But in a way, it’s like a triage, right? Some pastoral calls require a pastor to be present and some may not. For example, responding to a family in the wake of death. That’s a pretty heavy thing. On the other hand, popping in to visit someone who’s been in the nursing home for the last two years – it would be really good for that nursing home patient or member to get a visit every couple of weeks from someone from the congregation. And it’s not going to be the pastor every time if the pastor is part-time.

Honestly for laity, it would feel so good for them to feel that. So ways for us to consider realistic expectations of part-time ministry, I think is important. And I like your suggestion that this is in the negotiation process at the very beginning.

Jim Latimer
I want to hear you speak more about part-time ministry in our next segment. You just gave us a peek here that if the pastor isn’t doing something, whether it’s visiting people in a nursing home or wherever, and lay people do it, then they’re growing! It creates a space for laity to actually grow as they serve. That’s a beautiful place to pause right now. We’ll take that up in the next segment. I can see the big smile on your face! Thank you, Quentin.

Quentin Chin
Oh, you’re welcome!

More Bits Of Wisdom from Rev. Quentin Chin
< < < Back to Rev. Quentin Chin’s Biography