There has been a lot of discussion lately about bi-vocational church planting. Jimmy Scroggins and Steve Wright represent many of the arguments for bi-vocational planting in their article, The Math Doesn’t Work: Why the Future of Church Planting is Bi-vocational. It’s a challenging and timely piece. Most pastors and planters consider bi-vocational planting second-class, a stepping stone to full-time ministry. The preferred method of planting remains to raise 3-5 years of funds so that the lead pastor can start full-time from the beginning.
PROBLEMS WITH THE STANDARD MODEL OF PLANTING
The problem with this model, Scroggins and Wright point out, is that it is expensive. Many church plants start with a yearly budget of $200,000 or more, which means that before they’ve even planted the church, they need to grow the church to 200+ just to become self-sustaining. For many planters, especially in difficult contexts, this is simply unrealistic. Unfortunately, most don’t recognize the mistake until year 3 when their funding begins to run out.
Another problem with this approach is the sheer amount of money it will require given the number of churches we need to plant. Southern Baptists have a goal of planting 15,000 churches by 2022. Even if every plant only required $100,000 each, that’s 1.5 billion dollars. That’s a lot of money in a day when many of our churches are plateaued or declining.
Bi-vocational planting addresses some of these problems. There are literally hundreds of people in our churches with good jobs and a calling to ministry. Their jobs grant them access to a mission field that a full-time pastor can’t access, and provide them with the means to support their families without drawing a salary from the church. These men are in our churches, and many of them are waiting to go—all we need to do is give them permission.