Resources for “The Bivocational Congregation”
This week’s Alban Weekly article (“The Bivocational Congregation“), based on an article by the same name in the Winter 2009 issue of Congregations magazine, offers the “bivocational” congregation as a possible model for church. Not to be confused with the bivocational pastor, a bivocational congregation lives into the two callings of function and mission.
Components of such a congregation include strong team functions, a “commitment to place,” a “willingness to die to self,” a full commitment to its own form of being church, and a profound trust in a higher power.
The authors go on to discuss different forms of a bivocational congregation: the “always-been,” the “rooted-here,” the transitional, the experimental, and the “we-backed-into-it-and-we-want-out-of-it” congregation.
Congregations considering the bivocational callings will want to check out the resources listed at the end of the article. In addition, I invite you to consider resources in these categories of the Congregational Resource Guide: Shared Ministry; Mission and Vision; Declining Congregations; and Rural Congregations.
You might also want to investigate George Bullard’s tutorial, “Spiritual Strategic Journey,”—particularly his section on “choices” for congregations.
What are your thoughts or experiences regarding bivocational congregations? And what resources do you suggest? We look forward to hearing from you!
It does not seem to me that any of the descriptions I read fit the definition of bivocational. These churches are still being church in the traditional manner, they are just finding ways to do it less expensively and more cooperatively, which I applaud. Still, I did not see any new ideas here. Bivocational suggests being traditional “church” half time and finding ways to be non-traditional the other time. We need to move outside the box. Thanks.
Maybe I missed something. What I get is that mission is
what the members do together and under the church’s “banner.”
I don’t pick up awareness of what the members do alone in their
daily places as part of the church’s mission too. In
reality, is this not where the most effective Christian
mission happens?
Having served a small congregational that mirrors your first example, and now serving a mid-sized congregation, I am led to wonder whether size is not a critical factor in this bivocational vision. The small congregation had committed lay people who assumed their leadership within the congregation almost as a second job. About 6 such folks were required to maintain the necessary structure of community while all went about their work of mission
In a mid-sized congregation, the number of heavily commited lay leaders increases expotentially, particularly when a full-time professional staff member is missing.
But since I am here, and I am committed to a vision of worship and service perhaps, together with some wonderful lay leaders, we can build the kind of vision you describe. But don’t underestimate the weight of past practice, church history and the fear of the unknown in this process of change.
For me it is not about enabling the church as I know it to survive, but rather to re-capture the power of being a person of faith. I would like building committee meetings to be quick and unimportant and mission meetings to be filled to overflowing with more work on the agenda then ability to accomplish. But I am not so foolish as to think that the building committee can be eliminated.
I get excited when I read this type of info. I am a lay pastor serving fultime a 2 point parish. The whole issue with these people is the importance of the building, the guarding of funds, the lack of committment of self, stating that we hired the pastor to do the work, and the list goes on.
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I truly feel that when I served them part time they were higher functioning, when I arrived it was almost like a sigh of relief — we have a fultime pastor now we can just relax and be Christians.
I struggle with all of this on a regular bases and have very little idea what to do. All the stuff out there sounds good but implementation without buy-in from the congregation seems almost if not totally impossible.
I hate sounding to much like gloom and doom but from where I set it seems a bit hopeless.
Oops, I forgot something, I forgot about the Holy Spirit and the miraculous workings of God.
WaynO
I was caught by the heading but didn’t find what we are dreaming about. We are a BIG facility with a small declining parish (40-60) trying to find “God’s Way” with our congregation and the facility. An opportunity is beginning to present itself of our city’s largest social service housing and homelessness organization moving in. ( The logistics – legally and financially are secondary at this point for both entities) This would allow us either to stay and interact with them as they go about their daily “work”, having this mission not just at our back door but in our house(!)and/or retaining our need to worship there in a “familiar place and sanctuary or disbanding and going to other church homes. The thought of mixing the outside with the inside is awesome and I wonder if anyone else is doing this around the country. Would love feedback.
I’m one of those former pastors who have been stuck since a teenager with the question and notion of the church going through the pain of becoming more reflective of the way of Jesus and the church Paul sought to organize where the life of the church is created by our relationship with God and reflective of the light of God’s justice and love in the church community and in the larger community. I always run into the wall of the church institutional that reflects the world’s values of organization of success and power and position. I guess I may be expecting too much trust in God and separation from the bondage of socital values in the church’s willingness to be the body of Christ who is able to say “Abba and we are one” and “Not I, but Christ who lives within me.” I guess it out of the question to be God’s salt and light and to see people no longer through human eyes and to fulfill our call to be ministers of reconciliation.