Boldy Bi-vocational?

James M Powell, Boldly Bi–Vocational (Christian Focus, 2025) is setting out a vision for bi-vocational church leadership and church planting which is not ‘of necessity’, not embarrassed, not second-rate but chosen, embraced and commended as a biblical, powerful model of ministry with distinct benefits. 

Others have made similar arguments before (refs below) but what adds weight to James Powell’s short book (paricularly when it comes to persuasiveness within the constituency where I find myself) is:

1. He is solidly reformed evangelical – setting out his doctrinal, ecclesiology and ministry convictions at the beginning and running them through everything. Powell has an MDiv from TEDS and Boldly Bi-vocational contains lots that is simply healthy biblical wisdom relevant to every pastor (regardless of ministry model) e.g. on the priority of the church, the priority of careful expository preaching of Christ from all the Scriptures, the importance of good work ethic, clear boundaries, proper financial provision for pastors and shepherding your own family. 
2. He is a ‘successful’ pastor as well as successful in the marketplace. It’s not that he wasn’t doing well at one and has sought to spread his bets or that he’s ‘mid’ at both. Powell has come at bi-vocationalism from the direction of traditional-model pastoral ministry. He has pastored in four PCA churches all of which seem to have experienced growth. One of these he planted and is still thriving 19 years later. He is a gifted preacher (you can listen to his most recent sermon from Hebrew 9 here) as well as serving as an instructor for the Simeon Trust (the US equivalent of Proclamation Trust in the UK). In the marketplace he’s senior in a housing association, leading a large team and pulling off large deals, grants and investments.
3. He is full-time in the church and full-time in the marketplace. Remarkably he isn’t doing two half-time jobs. Powell works 40 hours a week for a housing association but then puts in 4:30-7:00am most mornings on sermon prep, listens to theology on his commute, reads commentaries while he’s waiting for a meeting, attends elders meetings and engages with pastoral care issues in evenings and then preaches almost every Sunday for his church. He’s also raised 6 kids!
4. He is nuanced. This is perhaps the most persuasive thing. He doesn’t over-egg his arguments. He’s not suggesting that bi-vocational is right for everyone. He knows that it is normal and right for ‘those who preach the gospel to receive their living from the gospel’ (1 Cor. 9:14). He knows that many of the arguments for bi-vocational ministry cut both ways – the potential advantages are potential and not automatic. He is realistic about the costs (e.g. the difficulty of maintaining a priority/focus on the local church when you’re not giving the majority of your time to it). He is aware of how the particularities of each context and combination of jobs will make a big difference. He doesn’t use a broad brush or throw out generalities. He’s always careful to caveat without killing the argument with qualifications. Most importantly, he puts the discussion of bi-vocational ministry in its proper place, as a small part of an infinitely bigger and more significant framework of salvation history – Christ, his church, his kingdom.

So what is Powell’s big point?

To work as a pastor, not deriving your living primarily from that work but rather from other work outside the church, is something glorious:

“I have not used any of these rights [to make a living from preaching the gospel]… I would rather die than allow anyone to deprive me of this boast” (1 Cor 9:15)

It is not only biblically permitted but something boast-worthy that Paul chose and that we might chose for good reasons:

1. It can allow the pastor’s gifts and skills to be deployed in both the church and the world – a “diversified kingdom investment” impacting not only God’s people and those who turn up on a Sunday but also people in the community, throughout the week. That impact in the world could involve a) evangelistic opportunities, b) discipling and pastoring opportunities (e.g. applying the gospel to relational issues and trauma among colleagues and clients) and c) cultural transformation and gospel application in the realm of work ethics, leadership practice, justice, mercy and employment provision.
2. It can improve a pastor’s preaching – partly because the time constraints keep you from unhelpful creative flourish and particularly because the bi-vocational pastor has a viceral lived experience of the extremes of success, failure and temptation in the marketplace which will bring a sharpness and reality to his application of the Scriptures.
3. It can be good for the pastor. Counterintuitively, adding another job outside of the church can actually be an antidote to workaholism, unboundedness and pastoral burnout and lead to a more balanced, undivided life. This might sound very hard to believe but Powell’s arguments and experience resonate with me personally (having often had more than one job over the last 20 years) – bi-vocationalism forces you to be careful in accounting for your time and the two jobs ‘push on one another’ in some helpful ways. It also forces a conversation with your employers, colleagues and clients/church about boundaries and expectations. Bi-vocationalism can also be spiritually good for the pastor in a variety of ways – pushing him towards greater degrees of dependence on the Lord, pushing towards a more consistently high work ethic (as high in the church as is demanded in the marketplace) and pushing towards greater repentance and faith as sin is exposed in the intense crucible of church stress and marketplace stress. And at the same time there is more chance that the pastor will be cared for by the church family. Rather than the traditional model that “positioned me as the leader of a community that I was outside of (yet that paid my salary)” (p.15) the bi-vocational model positions the pastor more clearly as part of the body, one of the sheep, who just happens to have leadership responsibilities. 
4. It can be good for the church. While they clearly have less time and energy from the bi-vocational pastor, this model should move a church away from a focus on one star preacher, away from a one-man-band approach to ministry, away from a consumer mentality, away from a church-building-centric approach and towards plural eldership, towards team ministry, towards every member equipped for service inside and away from the church building. 
5. It can be a good use of resources. As Egyptian plunder was used to build the Tabernacle and as Cyrus and Artaxerxes provided gold, silver and timber for the rebuilding of the Temple and walls of Jerusalem, so bi-vocational ministry (specifically tentmaking in a secular organisation) uses resouces from the world (which are actually all God’s resources anway) to cross-subsidise pastoral ministry. In this way the load on church members is lightened / Christian giving can be directed where it is most needed / the church can have more pastors than it would otherwise have been able to sustain.

A few quibbles

1. The terminology is not always clear – bi-vocational or tentmaking? What does that actually mean? There seems to be a whole range of possible combinations of modes and motivations. This table tries to capture that. What Powell is particularly talking about and commending seems to be the bottom option on this table. One confusing thing about the language ‘bi-vocational’ is that it clearly implies two vocations (as in the subtitle of the book: “Navigating Dual Callings in the Ministry and the Marketplace”) but as you read on you find Powell saying “it does not denote two callings” (p. 35). He argues that he is a full-time pastor and that there is really only one calling, one undivided life, one focus on pastoral ministry, just different sources of finance and different spheres of service.
2. The whole language of ‘vocation’ or ‘calling’, applied to pastoral ministry (or to other workplaces), is, I think, problematic. Apart from OT prophets and NT apostles I don’t see this language used for ministry callings and I’m not convinced that it is necessary for endurance and focus in pastoral ministry.
3. To what extent was the Apostle Paul’s tent-making a consistent practice that he pursued throughout his church planting journeys (as Powell argues) and to what extent was it a contingent missional strategy tailored to the Corinthian context of professional celebrity speakers and a concern to ensure that evangelistic ministry was distinguished from this and the gospel was given free of charge? Paul clearly did receive funding from partners (e.g. Phoebe and the Philippians). Did those gifts provide 100% of his living at those points or 50% or was it just an added extra? Was his housing in Rome (Acts 28:30) self-funded or supported by the believers in the city? We don’t know. Powell probably could have given more weight to the likelihood that Paul is flexing his mode of ministry depending on the situation – that seems to be the whole point of 1 Corinthians 9.
4. Depending on how comfortable you are with a Kuyper-Keller framework – you may or may not find some of the language of ‘cultural redemption’ and ‘being a creational evangelist’ difficult. Yes we should “seek the peace and prosperity of the city” (Jer. 29:7) but it looks to me like the reason given in that Scripture is not so much about ‘cultural mandate’ or ‘establishing the kingdom’ but simply the pragmatic one that “if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
5. James Powell is clearly an exceptional guy with exceptional capacity. Maybe I’m under-estimating what the Spirit’s empowering does but it looks like there is some natural wiring in play too and I’m not sure how many of us would be able to work at the rate and quality that he is – pastoring the church at a very high level and working in a secular organisation at a very high level. 

Takeaway points

1. This is something we need to seriously look at. Bi-vocational ministry isn’t a weird, fringe thing or something just for extreme mission situations. It is clearly something that Paul boasted in and which he pursued not only in Corinth but for 2 years in Ephesus: “You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions” (Acts 20:34) – which he then commends to the Ephesian elders as exemplary: “In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak” (v35).
2. Powell shows how this model can, in counter-intuitive ways, be good for pastors and also good for churches – including and even particularly churches with upper middle class cultures – ironically the churches least likely to consider this model but with the most to gain from bi-vocationalism’s push against an unhealthily professional clergy-versus-laity mindset which burns out and disempowers. 
3. The idea that bi-vocationalism could use the same skillset in different spheres was new to me. I suspect it won’t always (or even often?) be possible to find a perfect fit and two good outlets (in church and world) but it’s a good thing to aim for if you are going down this route. I know some pastors do thrive on having an outlet for their skills which is not their local church. I fear that there are some pastors who try to do a side business but simply don’t have that skillset and it goes badly. On the other hand there are guys in the business world who have got skills that would be massively helpful in the church and maybe they could go half and half, using their skills in both environments and being paid primarily by the secular business.
4. Powell gives some helpful practical pointers for making this model work including the importance of the whole church leadership being really united on the value of one or more of their number being bi-vocational, the importance of clear expectations on all sides especially in terms of availability, and the importance of the fellow leaders publicly endorsing the model in front of the church family and communicating a narrative which is not ‘Sadly pastor X is going down to half-time’ but rather ‘We’re excited that pastor X is going to be taking on assignment Y because…’
5. The team ministry model comes out really strongly. It’s not necessary to go down the bi-vocational route to believe in team ministry (bi-vocational pastors can attempt to be one-man-bands as well) – it’s simply a biblical pattern. What Powell pushes us on a bit in this regard is whether we believe that elderships can be pastoral ministry teams – where they divide shepherding responsibilities amongst them – or whether we think of elderships simply as the ‘board’ which keeps the ‘CEO’ (pastor) accountable. 

This book is not going to turn around our ministry models 180 degrees – and it’s not attempting to – but maybe it should nudge us to consider bi-vocationalism as not always the ‘inferior’ option. E.g. if a guy is training for pastoral ministry at the same time as working a ‘secular’ job – maybe that’s ok sometimes? If a church planting team is led by three pastor-elders who all have other jobs – maybe that’s ok sometimes? Perhaps not often. Bi-vocationalism frequently leads to all the negative possibilities Powell is well aware of. There can be bad reasons not to take the plunge into full-time pastoral ministry. There are jobs that are so distracting and exhausting that they make pastoral ministry impossible. But sometimes…

Other resources on positive bi-vocationalism:

• Sam Whitehawk, Why I Choose to Be a Bivocational Pastor (TGC, 2018)
• Ed Stetzer, Bi-vocational ministry as an evangelism opportunity (Churchleaders, 2017)
• Brad Brisco, Covocational church planting (ebook, SEND, 2018)