New Frontiers in Communication

Imagine a church where the pastor can keep up with the daily lives of his or her people without ever leaving their desk or talking on the phone. Where a sick church member can hear the sermon from the last service without the time and expense of cutting and delivering a tape or CD for them. Where the pastor can send a birthday greeting or note of encouragement to someone without using a postage stamp or having a three day lag in delivery. Where a person searching for a church can find information on service times and ministries before ever walking through your door, and you can make an announcement to the entire church or to the prayer chain by sending out a single message! Sound like science fiction? It was until a few years ago.

Talk to any preacher and they will tell you that their primary job is communication. Our job is simply to communicate the Gospel of Jesus Christ in such a manner that the hearer can understand and assimilate the message, which will then be used by the Holy Spirit to change that person’s life through repentance and acceptance of Jesus as their personal Savior. Other jobs within the church also involve communication. Teaching a Sunday School class, one-on-one discipleship, running a board meeting, facilitating communication in counseling, writing copy for ads or newsletters. The pastor is a communicator.

Seeing all the emphasis on communication within the church and specifically within the job description of the pastor, we have to ask ourselves “how can we best communicate to our audience”? The first thing we need to recognize is that our audience is changing. Along with that change comes a shift in the methods of communication our audience prefers. We are accustomed to communicating with our people through the sermon, through the printed word and face-to-face or by phone. But now we can add to the mix several other methods. Television and radio are two familiar technological tools. But how about a church web site, texting, IM services, eGreeting cards, Facebook and other social networking sites, streaming audio and video, church ‘listserv’, YouTube and the classic podcast? It is the rare church that makes full use of even a few of these methods. The irony is that our people, and the people we so desperately want to reach, use these communications media daily.

The church has an unfortunately well-deserved reputation for being ten years behind everyone else on technology issues. We may not be able to affect the whole church, but we can affect the place we serve. We can use the gifts God has given us to reach people through these means.

Here are a few tips:

1. If you don’t know what one of those terms used above means, do a search on the web and find out!
2. You don’t have to use all of these communication techniques, but picking and using two or three should be enough to get you started.
3. It is not necessary to be fancy, spend lots of money or be flashy, just informative and professional. Many of these are actually free or included with other services you already use. A big bang for your budget buck!
4. If you want to get started but don’t know how…find a responsible teenager and ask them to help. They'll be thrilled!
5. Involve various people in your church in administering these ministries…it helps to assimilate people and relieves pressure on you. Do NOT relinquish final authority on any of these media, however.
6. Realize that there is likely to be inertia in your church and on your board.

You can take one of several approaches. The first is to wait on initiating anything until you get approval. The best way is to talk it up until they think it was their idea in the first place. The second way is to simply go ahead and get something simple started and wait until people notice. Or third, you can do nothing and find yourself increasingly handicapped.

When I started the Facebook account for my own church I wasn’t sure of the reaction I was going to get. Within a week I had 8 people listed as members of the group. Not bad, considering we are a small church running in the 20’s. I also noticed another interesting thing…fully 75% of those people were under 30 and most were under 25. This is the demographic our church needs to reach, and I bet your church does too. Now, realize that each of those individuals have literally scores of Facebook ‘Friends’ who therefore can access your group and find out about your church.

There are many new means of communication out there, and one author has suggested that this is just the beginning. So, if you want to be a pastor and lead a church, then please do lead the way and take the good news of the Gospel to new frontiers!

Happy Podcasting!

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Bivo-traps

This posting may come as a surprise to many who have known me over the years, in my career as a minister and as a churchplanter, but it concerns a topic that is at the forefront of ministry today.

In the last thirty years or so there has been an increase in the number of bivocational ministers in many, if not all, faith traditions and the Church of the Nazarene is no different. “Bivocational” is defined as follows: An assigned minister holding one or more secular, non-church-related jobs. I have been a champion of the bivocational minister for many years…at one time I was “quad-vocational”, holding down three secular positions totaling about 70 hours a week in addition to my ministry position.

Many times, but not always, a minister is bivocational because the church is too small to fully fund the minister’s salary and benefits. In other cases a church may have gotten into this mode of dealing with their pastors because they see it as being good stewardship, or simply started out this way and now have grown, but don’t want to devote additional funds to a pastor’s salary and benefits. At the time of this writing a family health insurance policy will be about $1,200 a month in Vermont. The number of pastors in this situation does not take into account the number of pastors who are not fully-funded, but who have a working spouse who provides additional salary and benefits. Many newer churches do not provide a parsonage, either, which increases the burden on the pastor.

Granted, there are many pastors who see this as a preferred mode of ministry, giving the pastor unprecedented independence and access to the world of secular work. You can't intimidate a bivo pastor with threats on his paycheck by withdrawing your tithes!

Data quoted by Richard Houseal from the 1993 Annual Reports indicates that at that time there 39% of Nazarene churches reporting 50 or less in average worship attendance and paying salaries below the poverty level. (source: http://www.nazarene.org/files/docs/Picture%20of%20Bivocational%20Pastors%20in%20the%20Church%20of%20the%20Nazarene.pdf) In another report by Ken Crow a survey of the churches in the US revealed that 29% of pastors are either part-time or have other employment outside the church. (source: http://www.nazarene.org/files/docs/factnazarenereport_2005.pdf)

The numbers speak for themselves. What doesn’t appear in the statistics though are the difficulties that being a bivocational pastor present. Our own District is struggling with a number of these issues. For instance, consider the following.

• Denominational or District events and programs scheduled during the work week will not be well attended by bivos.
• Secular work time is prime ministry time (for instance, afterschool programs, Mom’s Bible Studies, etc..)
• Secular work allows limited time off; required ministry events during the year may leave no vacation time for the pastor’s family.
• Secular work and ministry may take up so much time in combination that family life could suffer.
• Secular work schedules may interfere with essential ministry time…for instance, retail work may insist on occasional holiday or weekend work.
• Denominational and District board seats are often not offered to bivocationals because of their real or perceived schedules and many meetings are scheduled during weekday working hours.
• Breaking away from bivocational ministry and into fully-funded ministry can be an economic leap for a church.
• And the final straw for many is that even though the church as a whole has bought into the bivocational model, there are still residual feelings that bivocational ministers are not ‘real’ clergy (by both laity and fully-funded clergy).

To quote Dennis Bickers, "Along with our family and church responsibilities, we have a second job that requires a certain amount of our time. The churches we lead are often smaller churches with few resources. Bivocational ministry is looked at by some as 'second-class' ministry performed by people who don't have the gifts to serve a larger church." (source: http://www.nph.com/nphweb/html/h2ol/articleDisplay.jsp?mediaId=2365220)

Whether or not the church manages to deal effectively with these issues in relation to bivocationals will largely determine the shape of the church in the future. I am now firmly of the opinion that a local church should have at least one fully-funded pastoral position and the bivocational mode should be employed only out of necessity and transitioned into fully-funded as quickly as possible.

Solutions are available, we just need to be creative. In the past, and in some congregations even now (especially ethnic congregations), pastoral sharing is done with a fully-funded pastor handling two or more small congregations. This is only one solution, but at the very least we need to be aware of the special needs, limitations and schedules of our bivocational ministers.

A Life of Significance

There are times in life when you look back and wonder what the significance of it all was, or what you are doing now that will be significant in the future. Then the thought comes, what is ‘significance’? After all, what is ‘significant’ to one person may not be to another person. I have faced this crisis in my own life and have recognized the paradox in it.

We all face choices in our lives. Some of those choices lead to actions that affect a large group of people, while others lead to actions that affect only a small group. Some lead to accolades and others to no public recognition at all. The name of Mordecai Ham probably doesn’t mean much to you, but you have likely been affected in some measure by the work he did. Mordecai Ham was an evangelist and speaker who led a series of meetings in Charlotte, NC in 1934 at the invitation of the Charlotte Businessman’s Club. At one of those meetings a young man was touched by God and was saved. His name was Billy Graham. (source: http://www.wheaton.edu/bgc/archives/faq/13.htm) You may never hear the name of Mordecai Ham mentioned in any other context. Was he significant? To Billy Graham he was. And through Billy Graham his significance was multiplied many times over. God uses even those who are small in the eyes of the world to bring glory to Himself.

If God is calling you to a position with significance in the eyes of many such as a pastor, a denominational office, a political career, or some other such role, then do not shrink from it. Accept His calling and do it as to the Lord, not to men. Be accountable to Him. If He is calling you to a less visible role, then also do it as to the Lord, not to men. If He is calling you to be a good parent, then take joy in your children. If a teacher, then find your joy in the young lives you mold. If He is calling you to be a loving spouse, then take joy in your mate.

Most importantly, be the hands, feet, face and voice of Christ to others and your significance will be complete.