The Future of Ministry

I had the opportunity to attend Collaborate, the NADCE Conference, last week.  It was a reality check in terms of how times have changed.  While it was great to see some old friends, there were a lot of young faces.  In fact, I was led to believe I was the oldest DCE present.  I was honored to receive the award for Master DCE in 1995.  It is an award presented annually.  The tradition was initiated in 1988.  This time when the role call was made I was the first to stand.  Then came the realization that many of the winners who preceded me are in heaven. Two of those were my good friends and mentors Larry Brandt and Jack Giles.

DCE ministry has changed too.  I don't think any of my young colleagues depend on telephone trees to get the word out; today they use text or social media.  I doubt if any contemporary DCE's know what a filmstrip is, or how to thread a 16 mm movie projector.  Today's Directors of Christian Education are better trained and have many more resources.  But they are also, I fear, a dying breed. One of the mini-talk session at the conference was The Bi-Vocational Present-Future.  In this case, bi-vocational means church professionals who hold another job to subsidize their church salary.  One of the realities is that many professional church educators are finding their positions eliminated as churches face declining memberships and shrinking budgets.  Some of them cannot find another full-time position, so they are forced to seek other employment,  Hopefully, the desire to continue to serve the church is still there.  In such cases, Bi-Vocational ministry becomes an option.

It's not just happening to church educators and youth workers.  I mentioned the issue to a pastor friend of mine.  His response surprised me, "It's not just DCE's.  Twenty years from now most pastors will be bi-vocational."  The typical Lutheran Church has less than two hundred members and the numbers are declining.  At that rate in ten to twenty years many churches will not be able to afford even a sole pastor.  It does not mean the total end of the professional church worker.  There will always be mega-churches that can afford to employ a large and diverse staff, but there are only so many of those, and most are in large metropolitan areas.

My initial reaction to this possibility was sadness, then I got to thinking.  The Bible is full of example of bi-vocational ministers.  Some of the disciples were fisherman, Paul was a tent maker.  Bi-vocational ministry has been a reality for many smaller churches for years.  As I think this through, I can see some real upsides to bi-vocational ministry.  It takes pastors, DCE's and other professional church workers outside the walls of the church building and in the real world.  In some ways it is the reverse of what we have been asking our lay leaders and other church volunteers to do for years. Most of them hold full-time jobs and then spend time involved in church activities after hours. Sometimes there is a small stipend attached but most of the time their work is gratis.  And then... We are all called to be Christ in the world.