New Book: Developing Leadership Teams in the Bivocational Church 2

Few resources are available for the bivocational minister.  This is an unfortunate matter, for so many Kingdom servants serve in such roles.  But times are changing.

Dr. Terry Dorsett has written  a new book for the bivocational leader:  Developing Leadership Teams in the Bivocational Church.  I have known Terry for a few years.  He has been involved in pastoral and church planting ministries in different parts of the United States.  Presently, he serves in Vermont, helping plant churches throughout the state.

Bivocational ministers are critical to the birth and growth of churches.  I recently asked Terry a few questions about his new book and wanted to share his responses with you.

Can you give us a brief introduction to your book? My book grew out of my doctoral studies. I had to do a project that met a real need in my ministry area as a Director of Missions. Since 30 out of 37 of the pastors in the association I serve are bivocational, that was an obvious area of need. I wanted something very practical that would provide help to bivocational pastors that were on the edge of burning out. I did not want to write a book that would just “encourage” them but one that would also give pastors practical assistance. I did not want to write a book that would just give them theories but that would show some of the best practices of healthy bivocational ministries.

The first section of the book sets the ground work for why bivocational ministry is both biblical and needed in American church life. I hope this encourages pastors and gives them some concepts to contemplate. The second section of the book gives six practical lessons bivocational pastors can use to train their people to assist them in ministry as a leadership team. This is the part that I hope pastors will use to become more effective in their ministries.

You address how bivocational pastors can avoid burnout. Can you briefly share with us your thoughts on this matter? Though all pastors can become burned out, bivocational pastors often face that danger with less education, fewer support mechanisms, and less help from church members and denominational agencies than their fully-funded colleagues. Though the reasons for burnout are many, in my experience, most pastors burnout because they just try to do too much. They tend to make all the visits, preach all the sermons, teach all the mid-week Bible studies, lead many of the various committee meetings, etc. It is hard for fully-funded pastors to keep up with all those activities and simply impossible for bivocational pastors. Pastors must learn to delegate some of their duties to others. While some pastors are willing to delegate small tasks to others, they are often less willing to delegate larger ministry tasks for fear those tasks will not be done adequately. However, if pastors only delegate menial tasks, it will not relieve enough of the burden to make a long term difference. If pastors want to avoid burnout, they must be willing to delegate high-level ministry to others and trust people to do high-level ministry well.

You do a great deal of work with church planters. What makes this book important for those involved in this type of ministry? In our context, almost all of the new churches we start will eventually end up being served by bivocational pastors. Since that is the case, we are encouraging church planters to be bivocational to begin with, even if they have raised the funds to be fully funded. This encourages church planters to build the concepts of the book into the DNA of the church from the beginning. It is much easier to start a new church with the concepts of team leadership and shared pastoral duties than it is to change the leadership structure and expectations once the congregation becomes more established.

How does this book differ from other books on developing leadership teams? I think there are two main differences in this book from other books about leadership teams. First, this book teaches the pastor to be part of the team instead of “over” the team or “under” the team. In many pastoral leadership models, the pastor is clearly in charge, and everyone works to accomplish his goals. This tends to become a dictatorship over time, even if unintentionally so. In other leadership models, a group (elders, deacons, etc) are in charge, and the pastor “works” for them. That particular model is almost always a disaster. My book promotes the concept that the pastor is part of the leadership team and equal to the others on the team. It is more of shared leadership than anyone being over anyone else. That leadership model does require letting go of our egos and our personal agendas, but shouldn’t Christian leaders be trying to do that anyway?

Second, the pastor allows other people on the team to share the pulpit. In most churches the pastor does all the preaching. This book promotes the idea that other people on the team should also share part of the preaching duties. Obviously the pastor will still probably preach the majority of the time, but the other team members regularly take a turn preaching so that the pastor has some built-in down time to relax with his family, or attend a renewal conference, or just enjoy hearing a good message from one of his fellow partners in ministry. Each church will have to work out the specific details on their own, but the concept of shared leadership works best when the pulpit is shared as well.

For whom is this book written? This book was written for pastors and key lay leaders (such as deacons, elders, or church council members) of small churches. If ONLY the pastor reads the book, it will be much less effective than if the other leaders read it as well. Too often a pastor reads a book or attends a conference and gets all excited about whatever ideas he was exposed to and then tries to “sell” the idea to the rest of the leadership. Since the rest of
the leadership did not share in the experience, they will also not likely share in the excitement. But if they all read the book together and discuss it together, they will have greater unity about how to apply it to the life of the church. That is why the second half of the book is designed to be done as a group, which is part of the overall success of the concept.

Would this book be valuable to pastors who are not bivocational? I wrote this book with bivocational pastors in mind. The first half of the book is clearly designed for them and will address the specific needs of bivocational pastors. But a number of pastors who are fully-funded have told me that the second half of the book, which includes the six training sessions, applies to their ministries just as well as it does to bivocational pastors. I have been surprised how many emails and Facebook messages I’ve gotten from fully-funded pastors who are using the book.

Thank you, Terry, for sharing with us today about your book.

So, now that you know, you need to check out this highly practical resource.