Bi-vocational Ministry
Time is the basis of our resources.
We are all given the same amount of time; twenty-four hours a
day. We are given 168
hours a week, 672 hours a month, give or take, and about 8700 hours a
year. Given a lifetime of
seventy or eighty years, one can see that we have a very limited amount
of time at our disposal.
Moses asked the Lord to help him number his days.
Why was that? It was done to
bring him perspective. Our
time is limited, but we are easily distracted from realizing it.
The pattern of this world dominates the use of time in the
pursuit of attempting to fulfill our needs.
We have an internal need and we seek to solve that need with
external resources.
Entire lives of eighty to ninety years are spent, chronically, in this illusive pursuit.
But the repentant are free from this, since in their union with
God their fulfillment is freely offered. He said, if we
would focus on the priorities of his kingdom and the practicing of his
righteousness, he will meet all our needs.
That’s an amazing bill of credit.
He’ll take care of us as we invest in him and others, all we
need is time.
How shall we use our time?
That’s a good question.
Our old nature has conditioned us to trade our time for money.
It’s predictable.
But this habit is one of down-trading.
In a free market system we are always told to trade-up, meaning,
spend our resources on something that when re-sold gives profit.
So when you trade something, you want to gain.
But by trading time for money we’re down-trading.
How do you know? Because you can’t reverse the trade and spend money to purchase
time. It can’t be done.
The old phrase, ‘buying time’ really isn’t. The phrase simply
means we’re trying to delay the inevitable. Time can not be purchased by
money, therefore money is less valuable in the long run. But everyday
people are on a consuming spree with their time, trading it for one thing:
Money. It’s like
paying only the interest on a high interest loan, you never get anywhere
and someone is exploiting you.
In fact there are renown financial investors out there spending
all their time figuring out how they make as much money as possible. Not too shrewd in the
long run. Our temporal time should be spent on something eternal, now that’s
a good trade.
For the repentant disciple there is the need to down-trade some
time for money, but even this is in
the context of caring for our family and those in need.
Our Father teaches us to live a quiet life, work with our hands and mind
our own business. We’re
instructed to work under a new system.
We don’t work now to pursue our needs, but for the benefit of
others. These others
turn out
practically to be our family and those in need.
We are told to work so that our family is taken care of and make extra for those in need.
That’s simply obedience.
He trains us to see when enough down-trading is enough.
Once we’ve drawn that line we have excess time, time available
for things beyond logistics.
As we learn this, cultural expectations must be dealt with.
Family traditions and conditioning must be addressed.
And as we process this with God we find that we really have two
sacred vocations within the ministry of reconciliation. The first is our being trained in the work of the ministry, our
being able to do acts of kindness and articulate the gospel. The second
involves our ability to manage our logistics as shrewdly as possible,
learning when enough down-trading is enough.
We need to know when to stop trading time for money because
people need us more than they need our money.
These two sacred vocations create the dynamic of bi-vocationalism.
By being a bi-vocational minister it’s now possible to remain among
those who need you even when the economic picture is lacking. Take for
example the poor and the needy.
They can’t afford to pay you to minister to them, only the
affluent can afford to do that.
The bi-vocational in this case is bringing the ministry free of charge, an act
of love.
Bi-vocationalism is not the idea of having a part-time job in the hope
that you can work your way up the ranks and finally land that salaried
position. That’s the
pursuit of career ministry.
Bi-vocationals in fact may not be paid at all.
Or on the other hand, they might be paid part-time salaries or
paid full-time, the monetary arrangement has nothing to do with the definition.
Practicing bi-vocationalism confronts the impulse of following
the pattern of the world, trying to find a career that will
provide security, image and purpose. Our
instinct to climb to the top of our profession or at least find our
niche is residual of our old nature.
Once in the activity of bi-vocational ministry you begin to experience
great benefits. One
is that you are put into the context of the work-a-day world, where your
chances of running across those in need is much greater than in career
ministry. This mundane
context also helps you keep pace with the rest of the folks, knowing
how much everyone can take, coupled with the ability to speak a common
language. Another benefit
is that you are modeling a form of ministry that anyone can follow,
instead of an executive version few can follow.
It also counters the temptation to think that the ministry is a
vehicle for income generation. In
addition you are free from organizational politics and it’s a tangible form of self-sacrifice.
What more could we want?
A bi-vocational minister is forced into becoming a shrewd
manager. One who manages
their time and resources in such a way they so they aren’t entrapped by
inappropriate entanglements.
They often wish they had more time to minister. But this is
really just a voice coming out of their career conditioning.
They can relax and let God lead them in and out of a woven
tapestry of ministry.