I hadn't graduated from seminary intent on being a bi-vocational pastor, and for the first nearly seven years of my career, I wasn't as I worked full time up in Longview. But I stepped down from that position after Easter this year, around the time that Carrie and I learned that we were pregnant again, and I thought that perhaps my immediate future would be balancing my nascent writing career with being a stay-at-home dad for a year or two.
Then Josh approached me about serving as his interim youth, children, and families minister while his congregation searched for a permanent associate pastor. After gaming out the position's responsibilities with him and Carrie, we decided that I could fulfill those responsibilities while still having a couple of weekdays at home to focus on my writing and soon-arriving child.
After a couple of months on the job, I’m rapidly learning that being a full time parish pastor and being a bi-vocational parish pastor who balances part-time ministry work with part-time outside work are very different beasts to master. I’m committed to an average of 20-25 hours per week at my current parish position while other bi-vocational pastors may be committed to 15-20 or 25-30 hours per week at their congregations, so please don’t take my experience as universal.
However, bi-vocational is already the present for this pastor , and will be the future for many other parish pastors for better or for worse. The majority of congregations in the United States now have less than 100 attendees on an average Sunday, and the median congregation may have only 75-80 regular participants. Unless one of those regular participants is Scrooge McDuck or Uncle Moneybags from Monopoly, that usually is not a deep enough bench to sustainably support a full time pastor on a fair salary and benefits package. So I imagine bi-vocational positions are only going to become more, not less, common.
As I transitioned from a full-time call to a part-time call balanced with outside writing, I realized that a deeper understanding of what it looks like on a daily or weekly basis might be helpful for others, whether pastors looking at bi-vocational work, or laypeople wondering what pastors, including bi-vocational ones, even do all week. Additionally, Josh so happens to be preaching today on how we steward our time, and so seeing my weekly routine as a resource seems to be an apt theme for me today. So, here is a thumbnail sketch of how I do it, along with a few reflections on the importance of how a bi-vocational pastor goes about scheduling his workweek:
Monday: Our lead pastor Josh takes a Monday sabbath, but my weekly rhythm since seminary is to take a Friday sabbath. So, Monday tends to be a day that I devote to my writing—in this case, for a book that is not yet announced, but that I hope will be soon. I’m usually working from home on Mondays unless I need a change of scenery or the dogs insist on not letting me work, in which case Black Rock Coffee is just a ten-minute walk from the house. This also means that I can usually cook dinner in time for Carrie’s arrival home in the evening, and I love getting to do some work with my hands after a day that is mostly spent inside my own headspace.
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays each have different meetings on different weeks of the month, and I try to combine those meetings with office hours so that I’m keeping office hours for most of those three afternoons. I definitely get more drop-in visitors than I did in Longview, so I try to limit office hours to more business-y things like meeting preparation and report-writing, and leave my creative work for hours in which I’m working remotely. Including office hours, I usually get in several hours a day on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays for my parish position and another couple of hours for my outside writing. They tend to break down like this:
Tuesday: Tuesday evenings are for committee meetings, and I report to the Christian Education committee, which meets one Tuesday each month. On those days, I’m in the office all afternoon preparing for those, plus doing long-term planning and scheduling for the children and youth ministries. Other Tuesdays, I may be doing more creative work for those ministries, or meeting with different congregants and families as a part of my ministry to them.
Wednesday: One Wednesday afternoon each month is blocked off for the monthly all-church staff meeting, which is me, Josh, a semi-retired associate pastor, and the office administrator, bookkeeper, custodian, preschool director, and music director. I keep a few office hours both before and after those to prepare for the meeting and then work on action items from the meeting. In the evening is the congregation’s weekly church meal and educational program.
Thursday: Twice a month on Thursday evenings is one of my favorite programs—TheoPub, which is a book study group that meets at a rotating set of local bars and restaurants. We’ve started reading and studying OTT and listening to other folks dig into and dissect my writing is a (good!) experience to which I am rapidly having to become accustomed. Office hours that day are usually devoted to planning that Sunday’s youth group meeting and any children’s sermon/church material that I’m responsible for.
Friday: I’m getting back into the routine of keeping Friday as a complete Sabbath—no email, no returning direct messages on social media or text messages, etc.—after a few months of having my Sabbath day move around from week to week due to writing and guest preaching obligations.
Saturday: Unless the church is having a special event, Saturday, like Friday, is a full day off.
Sunday: This is, unsurprisingly, the longest day, even with an afternoon break. Sunday School is at 9:00 am, which I have started leading about once a month, followed by worship at 10:00, during which time I could be doing one of several things—teaching the children’s sermon or children’s church, leading worship, or occasionally preaching. I return home after post-worship coffee hour for a late lunch and the sacred Sunday afternoon nap, and then it’s back to the church by 6:00 pm to set up for youth group, which meets from 6:30-8:00.
Combined with my Tuesday and Thursday commitments, my Sunday schedule means that I’m working two evenings a week most weeks. I firmly believe that limiting the number of evening commitments is a critical factor in preventing clergy burnout (although if you do your best work in the evening, you are a far better person than I), and any work-related evening commitment that requires me going above three for that week is met with a polite, but automatic, “No, thank you.”
This “typical week” also doesn’t include big annual events—I know, for instance, that during Vacation Bible School next summer my life will be a complete slapstick comedy of nonstop proportions—or the sorts of things like emergencies and unanticipated interruptions that will always keep parish ministry from ever being a punch-the-clock, nine-to-five gig.
There are also some dimensions here that need to be addressed someday in another post--namely, the economics of bi-vocational work in a field that traditionally requires a master's degree. A big reason I can do this right now is because I'm part of a two-income household, and I know that with the interim tag, this is a temporary rather than permanent arrangement. Pastors who are not may not be able to sustainably minister bi-vocationally, especially if they have substantial student loan debt from their undergraduate or seminary degrees. Churches and denominations need to be addressing this financial reality with more urgency than they have been.
Temporally, though, the good thing about not being full-time, is that I always have at least one Sunday morning off per month so that Carrie and I can just sit together in worship, or even have a quiet morning at home if we want. And after all is said and done, I usually get in the equivalent of two full workdays to spend on my writing, which is similar to when I wrote Oregon Trail Theology, except that one of those days spent on OTT was almost always one of my “days off” rather than during a workday like Monday. In essence, I’ve gone from working full time-plus to working just full time. This has been a vital change over the past couple of months for Carrie and me, especially after having heard so many stories of pain and hurt from pastors’ spouses and pastors’ kids who understandably resented the church for taking away so much quality time with their spouse/parent.
And because of that, I wouldn't apologize for not working beyond my stated average of 20-25 hours per week, just as I didn't apologize for not working more than 45 or so hours most weeks at Longview. I’m still only 32, and ordained ministry is a marathon, not a sprint. I want to still be writing, preaching, and teaching 30 years from now, and how I schedule my week can help me to do that—or not. I still get to choose whether or not to fall into the trap of fetishizing busyness and burnout.
All that said, I also imagine that I’ll need to keep tweaking this system in the future—I’ve got a kid on the way any day now after all—but part of the appeal of this position was its flexibility to allow me to be a stay-at-home dad for a couple of weekdays each week. I think that quality time with one’s children and spouse is so vital, and I think this schedule will help me meet that need.