It’s difficult enough balancing one full-time job with a family and social life, but for the pastors of about half of Alabama’s Baptist churches, there’s another layer added on.
“Fifty-four percent of Baptist churches in Alabama are pastored by a bivocational minister,” said Chip Smith, an associate in the office of LeaderCare and church administration with the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions. “That means if these people didn’t do what they do, half the Baptist churches in Alabama would have to close their doors.”
But even though bivocational pastors make up a staggeringly significant portion of the pastoral population in the state, they often feel isolated within their communities, Smith said.
Fortunately Samford University’s Resource Center for Pastoral Excellence recognized their need and created programming specifically aimed at generating networking, support and educational opportunities for pastors who find themselves juggling two jobs.
“Our state convention does what it can but it’s never enough,” said Michael Wilson, the center’s program director. “This group is underresourced more than any group of clergy. What we’re hoping is that most of our programming now goes to the location where these ministers are. When you work full time and then pastor, you don’t have much discretionary time.”
The center’s efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. Started thanks to support from the Lilly Endowment’s Sustaining Pastoral Excellence initiative in 2003, the center reaches out to ministers across the state, Baptist and otherwise. Since 2008, it also has received support from the James E. Davidson Fund for Rural Ministries, which has helped it reach bivocational pastors specifically. It has worked to create networks with other such centers nationwide, and that led to it being named a Regional Resource Center by the Bivocational & Small Church Leadership Network this past spring. It is one of only seven such centers in the United States.
And what does such a designation mean for the center?
“The regional center will allow us to do the same thing we’ve been doing, only enhanced,” Wilson said. “For example, we’ve been wanting to host a computer workshop at Samford. We want to bring a group of bivocational ministers up Friday night and lodge them, and then we’d have the meeting Friday and Saturday. We’d give them software that would be very helpful to them. We’d train them in it and provide them with a copy of the software at no cost to them. What we’re trying to do is provide the next level of resources for those who can take advantage of it.”
Access to such events wouldn’t merely be educational — it also would be immensely encouraging, serving as a chance for bivocational pastors to gather and fellowship.
Tim Fields, who was a bivocational pastor for several years before retiring from BellSouth and moving into full-time ministry at Big Sandy Baptist Church, Tuscaloosa, said the center is helping to fill a gaping hole for bivocational pastors.
“As a bivocational pastor, being able to study [with others] is rare,” Fields said. “It’s good to sit down and read a book or go through a course of study, and you can learn a lot, but to be able to sit down and have somebody lead that and give everyone the opportunity to be involved, you can just learn more, not just from what you’re seeing and reading but also gathering from other people’s experiences. Just the fellowship meant so much. It’s one of those things where you’re out there and thinking you’re an island by yourself and you find out you’re not.”
Expanding that breadth of coverage and reaching out to more bivocational pastors on a more consistent basis is the ultimate goal, Wilson said. “We love to collaborate and are always happy to find partnerships to encourage and strengthen ministers,” he said.
For more information, visit www.samford.edu/rcpe or call 205-726-4064.
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