How a part-time pastorate can be practical and life-giving for creative gig workers- 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. I am your host Reverend Jim Latimer and I have with me today, Reverend Jeff McDonald. This is the fourth of our Bits of Wisdom recordings, short podcasts we’ve done today. And they’ve all been really, really rich. And if you’ve listened to some of them so far, you’ll know that Jeff is an accomplished freelance writer, a skilled interim minister, specializing particularly in the part-time space, as well as a church consultant. And in this last segment, he wanted to speak a bit about how a part-time pastorate can be practical and life giving for what he described as “creative gig workers.” And as more pastors are becoming part-time pastors, whether by choice or by circumstance, this is a really relevant topic, Jeff, I’d love to hear you about it.
Jeff MacDonald
Yes, absolutely, Jim, I’m happy to talk about it with you. To give you the context for the approach on this, some of the assumptions that come to us in the church have to do with an idea that a full-time pastor is always the best model if you can afford it; that that every pastor would want to be full-time if they could be. And so, there’s a lot of hand wringing around this trend that has 43% of mainline congregations have part-time clergy. 43%. That’s from the National Congregation Study in 2018-2019. So, by now, after a year and a half of pandemic, it may be closer to 50%. It may be above 50%. And yet, there’s so much hand wringing about how can this possibly work for pastors? How can this possibly work for congregations?
What I want to inject into this are some other ways of thinking about it. And to recognize that for a lot of people, part-time fits in their life. For a lot of congregations, it’s the right size because it’s what they can afford. And it’s empowering for laypeople to be more involved in the ministry. It can be a life-giving play for the congregation, as they become less passive, and more active practitioners of ministry, just like folks who go from being spectators in athletics to being practitioners who put on the cleats and go play a game on the weekends.
Jim Latimer
Let me stop you there, because you just said something that is very counterintuitive. And I want to make sure that the listeners don’t miss it. Because this is a major point in your book, this great book that you wrote: Part-Time Is Plenty: Thriving without Full-Time Clergy. Is it that a part-time pastorate can actually be more enlivening and livelier and life giving for parishioners than a full-time clergy pastorate? Is that what you said?
Jeff MacDonald
Yes, absolutely. Because it asks more of the people. It requires more fulfillment of the biblical vision, which is for the Spirit to be distributed among the entire body. And for most of the history of Christianity, the people have not had a full-time professional clergy person making his or her living from – in most of the cases it was a he – was not making his living from this work. This is a relatively new model that has come only since the 19th century, and it still isn’t affordable in many cases – this full-time concept. And so, there’s a lot of history behind having a bi-vocational pastor or tent making minister in one’s midst. And getting back to that can be life giving for the people because they are ministers – the priesthood of all believers, as Martin Luther would put it. This is being reclaimed in a robust way. And as people discover with joy the way that they can be part of ministering to one another, it really opens up a whole new way of being church that’s less passive, less consumeristic, more hands on, more in the footsteps of Jesus as one who is not just seeking to be fed, but seeking to feed. Not just seeking to be healed, but seeking to heal. This is powerful and biblical ministry in action by the entire community. That’s why it works. That’s why it’s making a difference in so many congregations.
So, that is on the congregation side. On the pastor side of it, the world of work has changed so much that when we talk about these rubrics, we really need to get beyond the idea that everyone in ministry needs to be full-time and be compensated with a full-time salary and a benefits package, because not every congregation can afford this. And what I want to lift up is how this model can be so powerful for the world of creative workers, freelance workers, gig workers.
The freelancer’s union is an organization that represents freelancers like a professional association type of thing. And they count 57 million Americans who work as freelancers. 57 million! In a country of about 330 million. That’s a big slice, but it’s not very well acknowledged. And so, when you think of this, how does ministry fit for people? Rather than looking at part-time ministry as this sort of unfortunate thing that’s not as stable for a pastor as a full-time job, it actually can play a very stabilizing role in the life of creative people who feel called to ministry. Here we may be talking about artists or musicians or actors, or people in the trades who do something with ceramic tile or landscaping. They may have gifts in these different areas, but not enough to necessarily pay all their bills with those trades or crafts or arts that they’re involved in. They may need more stabilizing opportunities in their life.
For those who feel called to ministry, the part-time pastorate can be a perfect opportunity. In my life, it provides me with a spiritual discipline of preparing a word for the people every week, grounding myself. When I’m not writing articles that are read by tens of thousands of people, I’m working on a sermon for a couple dozen people in my small church. And I know them all. And I need to speak to them. It keeps me very grounded. It’s a humbling exercise in some ways, but it also just keeps me grounded. And on the practical level, one doesn’t go into ministry for the money, of course. There’s not great wealth and riches in this. But one does receive a paycheck when you serve part-time in a congregation. And for someone who already has another stream of income from the arts or these other crafts, the ministry can be the piece that makes everything work. You have a part-time paycheck that comes each week, and you add that to what you earn elsewhere. And what you now have is a stable, very fulfilling life, that gives you a lot of flexibility. If you’re an actor or a musician, or a tutor, or someone who needs to be flexible, to be anchored in a Sunday morning ministry that gives you some other time during the week to practice your other work, this comes together to make a very rich and fulfilling life.
It’s not an unfortunate kind of, It’s too bad that we can’t all be full-time in the congregation all week long. Some of us are called to do more things with our lives in addition to the ministry, and we’re gaining more appreciation for the fact that people have multiple facets to their personalities and their lives. And, and so I see us opening a new opportunity with all of this.
Jim Latimer
That’s great. Jeff, as I’m listening to you, I really appreciate how listeners who could especially benefit from this might well be those who feel called by the Spirit to ordained ministry or pastoring in some way, but they framed it as, Oh, if I do that, then I’ve got to quit this other work that I’m doing that actually I love, and it feeds me and this is a good outlet for a number of my talents. I don’t want to have to give that up to serve God. And that’s a false dichotomy is what I’m hearing you saying. It’s a false dichotomy that you can’t do both. And not only can you do both, but the fact that there are more part-time pastoral opportunities is actually in your favor. It’s opening up more. And so, go get training, theological or whatever, and pursue that. And hold on to this other piece that together, they make a great whole. It’s very fulfilling, and satisfying and enriching, personally and professionally, is your personal testimony that I heard loud and clear. I hope others heard it too Jeff. That’s great. Thank you.
Jeff MacDonald
Sure, Jim. Yes. The church has a history of being a patron of the arts. It used to be that the church had so much resource that the church would hire a sculptor like Michelangelo to work for years on a particular fresco or sculpture. Today, the church is still a benefactor of the arts for all these people. When the church gives you a part-time responsibility as a pastor in a local congregation, and then gives you time to go practice your art in the other part of the week, the church is giving you a stabilizing anchor, a spiritual responsibility, a financial stream of support, as well as time to go be your creative self that you are called to be and to serve the world in that way as well. That’s being a patron of the arts in the 21st century! And it’s an incredible blessing.
Jim Latimer
That’s a perfect way to end: the church as a patron of the arts! It’s been that way for almost from the beginning, and it continues that way. We just have to see it a little bit differently, but it’s still there. Jeff, thank you so much for sharing so generously your time and your thoughts. It’s inspiring! I’ve got all kinds of thoughts now in my head. Thank you so much, Jeff.
Jeff MacDonald
It’s been a pleasure, Jim. Thank you.
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