by Thom Rainer
As predicted, this is a trend which those preparing for priesthood should be aware of as Christian exclusion increases.
They are appearing on the scene quietly.
Not many pundits are noticing the emerging trend. They are a different kind of bivocational pastor.
The traditional bivocational pastor, by common definition, serves churches that are unable to compensate a pastor with fulltime pay. These pastors are incredible servants who fill a huge need among American congregations.
The new bivocational pastor is similar to the traditional bivocational pastor with some key differences. To avoid confusion, I refer to this new role as the marketplace pastor. Here, then, are eight characteristics of marketplace pastors:
- The marketplace pastor serves in churches that could offer fulltime compensation to the pastor, but they choose not to do so. This difference is key. Both the pastor and the church have decided that the pastor will be bivocational, even though the church could pay full compensation.
- Marketplace pastors get their name by their desire to stay in the marketplace with one of their vocations. One pastor noted he gets over 20 opportunities each month to share the Gospel because he kept his marketplace vocation.
- Marketplace pastors tend to have extraordinary leadership skills.They utilize those skills effectively in both of their vocations.
- These pastors have a high work capacity. This position is not for everyone. These leaders must take on a huge volume of responsibilities.
- These pastors will have long tenures. They are not financially dependent on the church; they are thus able to lead change and deal with the consequences, resulting in longer tenure.
- Marketplace pastors will be able to deal with critics more freely.Because these pastors are not financially dependent on the church, marketplace pastors have a great deal more freedom dealing with critics and problem church members.
- Marketplace pastors will be serving in a wide range of churches of varying sizes. By definition, the churches will be large enough to compensate a pastor fulltime, even though they choose not to do so. The range of church size by worship attendance will be 300 to 3,000. The greatest concentration of these pastors will be in churches with worship attendance ranging from 1,000 to 1,999.
- Marketplace pastors will get their ministry and theological training online. Bible colleges and seminaries will do well to begin to prepare for this new and growing vocation.
I see the marketplace pastor trend as a very healthy movement in American congregations. We will soon see many attorneys, physicians, and key businesspersons who will continue in their marketplace jobs while serving a church as well.
Let me hear your perspective. Do you see this future in marketplace pastors too?
The idea of a priest holding down a job outside the church makes me cringe.
It makes lots of priests cringe, too, but when the people don’t have enough faith or understanding to given generously and proportionally of their first fruits, the Orthodox priest has a family to support. Be the solution you wish to see. Start exceeding the tithe in your own giving.
Fr. Peck: interesting. Is it even possible for an Orthodox (or Catholic, or conservative Lutheran) priest/minister to “get…ministry and theological training online” however? Or do you think this paradigm only applies to Evangelical Protestants?
Hi Timothy, I know of at least one Orthodox program that offers theological and pastoral training for people in exactly this situation: http://www.orthodoxtheologicalschool.org/
I’m a student in that program, and it’s great. It allows us to study, interact and network, all while holding a crying baby and cooking because Mom is helping with homework.
There are distance and online programs, but it all depends on the bishop as to what he will accept. Remember, necessity is the mother of ordination.
I know that we in the LC-MS we have a a shorter route to ordination via what’s called “Alternate Route to Ministry” often in conjunction with “Specific Ministry Program” which results in, in effect, a man who is ordained but sans MDiv degree. But such a one is constrained in the church jobs he can take.
Father, Bless. Are Roman Catholic priests, who have married after they left the RC church allowed to apply for Orthodox seminary and priesthood. I am hearing that certain bishops are now allowing this? Yet another group comming into ministry?
In Christ, Donald Kelpinski, Reader
Doald, all such cases are up to the bishop. I do know of one such case myself.
I know of one diocese which seems to emulate the pattern already established in ROCOR parishes rendering non-recompense of parish clergy normative. Whereas this pattern in Russian expat communities accrued in emergency circumstances, where parishioners had no reliable income yet desired above all to maintain a spiritual life in Russian Orthodoxy, the new emulation of this unusual pattern is being established in missions peopled largely by converts who are not refugees but natives. Only the small size of congregation (and historically stagnant wages, and high real estate prices) is predicating this shift toward clergy not substantially supported by their flock.
I cannot say that this is a good development, especially since an adequate seminary formation costs upwards of $70,000. If a man chooses priestly vocation and has to pay the cost of education that even partly equips him to function as a pastor, without the hope of even being paid to serve a parish, then we are describing a church that is somehow staffed exclusively by independently wealthy individuals. I do not know where this very select group is supposed to come from.
Online seminary is not seminary. You are positing a revision unprecedented in Christian history. I know not a single bishop who would ordain a virtually-educated man.
It is sad when such an exception becomes the norm. Moreover, the idea of new priest beginning his parish service with debt makes be cringe.
Just some more data on distance learning: there are bishops that use distance learning programs (with residencies and supplemented by local mentoring) to satisfy the educational requirements for ordination. When we compare the results of this approach with full-time seminary with regard to outcome (positive vs. negative), all four quadrants are occupied.
Our current seminary system has not always been the norm for Orthodoxy. Your remark that an isolated vocation would be an innovation is right on the mark! Like you, I do not know of any bishop that would ordain someone they didn’t know and trust, regardless of their academic qualifications. But the distance learning programs I am familiar with (ours at St. Sophia’s and the Antiochian St. Stephen’s program) are not like that.
I don’t think that Mr Hogben’s position is entirely fair. Online seminary is not seminary – agreed. I don’t for a moment think that the education is inherently better, because, pedagogically speaking, not every learner learns the same. Assimilation of information and manipulation of it can be measured in the distance model, it simply has to be more carefully monitored and assessed. If we’re talking about factual intake, they can be equals.
But I think that the seminary experience can be replicated by life experience, since the true education of seminary in this country is living in an environment where the Church is a central feature of the day/week/season/year. A person who is online educated, but is also intimately familiar with life where the Church is the prevailing norm of behaviour would be just as good a priest as one that went back east to a seminary.
I think that the seminaries themselves ought to require a study abroad, and forbid men to go to large cities, like Moscow or Athens. I think a good formation for future priests is to have to milk the cows at a monastery in a village somewhere in remotest Romania/Bulgaria/Moldova/Georgia/whatever, before the major feast day services he has to plan, and the long days of blessing homes, fields, livestock, or fruits that await after the service is over, not to mention that he’ll need to make it home in time to milk again after getting his own cattle into the cowshed for the night and milking again. I think that the deprivations of village life would be good for a priest to encounter, especially the deprivations of village liturgical life. It would be good for a future priest to see a widowed village priest, with kids, also sing in the choir because his 12 year old daughter is the only chanter. Somehow, those services are truly prayerful, and, for my part, they showed me the service of a clergyman in a whole new light. I have appreciation for an established seminary doing the full range of services in proper vestment colors and making full use of the fans, but give me a derelict rural church that has a wood burning stove in it any day.
Kinda like small mission here……..
Milk the cows – I love it!