I work a couple of other jobs outside of being a youth minister. My normal week looks like this: Eminence Speaker, Mon-Thur—Office Work, Fri—Post Office, Saturday. There are some good pros to this and some cons as well. Here are just a few reasons.
Pros:
1. It keeps me plugged into the community. My face is not a strange one at the grocery stores and gas stations of this area. Mainly because I work with many of these people in the local factory or because I deliver their mail.
2. It puts me around lost people on a daily basis. I don’t have to go look for opportunities to evangelize the lost–I work with them. I have shared the gospel more in the last 10 months that I have been at Speaker than I have in the last 3 years. This is invaluable to me.
3. It does remove some of the financial strain at church that would be present if I were full-time. We are relatively small church. They couldn’t pay me full time wages any more than I would want to ask for it. I would much rather work and support my family than to have the church pay me money that they can use in other ways. One day this may change, but right now, it’s not a need.
4. I keeps me from making unrealistic demands on the congregation and youth. Many pastors can throw guilt trips on their congregation about how much time they are spending in the word and how much they are evangelizing the lost. These things are essential to Christianity, but neither of them will save me and guilt doesn’t motivate me to share the gospel. I have known members of congretations to talk about their pastor and say, “It’s easy for a man who gets paid to study the bible to tell us how bad we are at it!” Sometimes that’s a cop-out but sometimes there is a lot of truth in it. Working beside these people helps me see the struggle of prioritizing the day. It’s not as easy as some may think.
5. The gospel cannot just be doctrine, it must be lived out. It is easy to get caught up in conversations with people who are full-time ministers and talk about doctrine and matters of the church without ever living them out. We may know many evangelism methods. But are we doing any of them? Reconciliation may be one of the sweeteset words you know, but are others convinced that it is really that important?
Cons:
1. Time is limited for bible study preparation. Sometimes I will get called into the post office on Fridays which can get me behind on bible study preparation. This means that I usually try to have all of my material done before Friday. I will work on it at night which often takes away from family time–something I do not like to neglect.
2. Most of the day, I am not available for our congregation. As an elder and youth pastor, I would very much like to be ready to go at the drop of a hat. But with this work situation, it is not possible.
3. I can’t spend the time with the youth that I would like. This isn’t too much of an issue during the school year but during the summer, it cuts out “normal” camps and week-long events.
4. It makes it hard to prepare sermons when I am needed to preach. For those of you who are the main teaching elder/pastor of your church, you know how much time it takes to prepare a sermon. If I am not given much notice to at least be thinking about a text, it can be tough to prepare very well. I think that the main teaching elder should be full-time if at all possible.
With all of that said, there is no such thing as a part-time minister. But our responsibilities vary as do our “employment”. There are more pros and cons than I have listed. Do any of you know of any more?
