When Richard Ulrich offered to teach a summertime preaching class, he expected a handful of men in his congregation would be interested. “I thought we’d have five or six.” He almost sounded like Abraham bargaining with God about a minimum number in order to move forward. But he was surprised.
“We had 16 show up the first week, and several more joined later or studied the book along with us.” More than 20 participated. Ulrich’s plan for a short course concluding with a one-night preaching event for the participants turned into two months and three services to give everyone a shot at the pulpit.
One meeting was for half the men to bring devotions and offer critique for each other. Then in two worship services, a total of six more men preached, most for the first time. “I think a lot of them had more gifting and skills than they realized,” the pastor-teacher said.
“One of our men who preaches often in other churches said he had been praying for years for God to raise up more men to preach,” he said.
For Ulrich, who pastors Lincoln Avenue Baptist Church in Jacksonville, response to the preaching lab was confirmation of a need in his local association and beyond. Churches need preachers. There aren’t presently a lot of viable options. And churches like his can train men who will preach, and perhaps become bivocational pastors.
“The result was amazing,” said Brian Kenney, a retired pastor who served as interim AMS for Sandy Creek Association. “The church was so excited to see men being trained and standing in their pulpit.” Incoming AMS Isaac King now has a new list of supply preachers, and as he leans in future pastor searches among his 30 churches, a few possible local candidates.
Serving, but staying put
One of the more enlightening statements at the Associational Roundtable held August 3-4 at the IBSA Building in Springfield was this: Churches need bivocational pastors now and in the future, but the people who can preach and pastor churches while holding another job already have a job.
What does that mean?
They are not likely to give up the job that keeps food on the table and relocate, in order to pastor a church somewhere else part-time. So, the solution for a church needing a bivocational pastor is to look nearby. Very nearby.
The man willing to work another job while pastoring your church already works in your town—or within easy driving distance. But he might be a member of another church. And he might not yet know that he’s pastor material.
That’s where training opportunities such as Ulrich’s preaching lab become crucial.
Jason Lowe of the Kentucky Baptist Convention was the special speaker for the Roundtable. He served as an Associational Mission Strategist in Pike County, Kentucky prior to joining the state convention staff in 2023. As he told Illinois leaders, it was in rural Kentucky where he learned that candidates who could become bivocational pastors generally won’t move. That’s why calling local men to serve locally became a better strategy than trying to advertise more broadly.
In Lowe’s state, with 2,350 SBC churches, some 250-300 are without a pastor at any one time. “We had a crisis of churches without pastors,” he said. So developing the leadership pipeline was urgent. As an AMS, Lowe saw the need for local associations to become the front line in recruitment.
The percentages hold true in Illinois. With over 800 churches in IBSA, more than 10% are without a pastor right now. Most are searching; a few have given up. And the answer for their need needs help recognizing his call to bivocational service.
About half of IBSA churches are led by part-time pastors. Call it bi-vocational, co-vocational, or multi-vocational, it means the pastor works more than one job to make ends meet. Or, with the average age of pastors at 54 and rising, many are retired, drawing a pension, and their benefits are paid by Medicare.
Many normative churches can’t afford a full-time staff position to draw the bright young preacher every church wants; and there’s the issue of supply chain. SBC seminaries train 18,000 students per year, but the majority are headed for churches that can fully support them, to plant new churches, or to international mission fields.
Recent efforts to “call out the called” focused on nudging young people to hear from God and start the training process that produces degreed clergy.
Fresh teaching on “calling” is valuable and urgently needed in younger generations. But it doesn’t meet the need of all churches in all settings in all economic situations.
The man sitting in the pew (or chair) in a small- or medium-size church one town over from a vacant pulpit may not know he’s the solution to the pastor shortage. Unless he’s told.
Lowe urged AMS’s to focus on developing a pipeline for bivocational pastors. Most will not go away to seminary. Even making time for online classes is a challenge. So local training is one solution to empty pulpits.
Lowe told the story of Three Forks Association that made training preachers a priority. “In a rural area with a declining population and nearly 90% of the churches employing bivocational pastors, this association recognized that the next generation of pastors were most likely already sitting in their pews,” Lowe said.
“This program has proven highly effective not only in identifying potential local pastors, but also in equipping them with the basics of sermon preparation and delivery. Without it, many of the association’s pulpits would likely be empty,” he said.
They have trained 135 home-grown church leaders. 20 became local pastors. 35 more are providing pulpit supply. The old Baptist model of farmer-pastors is functioning well in the Bluegrass State.
“Because of this program’s longstanding success, dozens of other churches and associations in Kentucky have started similar programs,” Lowe said. “We continue to hear amazing testimonies of God’s faithfulness in calling out the called throughout our state.”
Gather round
Matt Crain is training a cohort of men. He brings them into his sermon preparation at Harvest Church of Southern Illinois in Anna. On Monday nights, Crain gathers a group who have spent an hour or more studying the text he will preach on Sunday. They discuss it and share their insights.
“As a pastor it allows me to be close to them, 90 minutes a week, interruption free, all in one room,” Crain said. “I get to pour into them as much as they do me, by bringing their study notes.”
Some men are young and exploring ministry. One is a retired missionary to Africa and another is a veteran of biker ministry. Participation is by invitation, but informal. Crain finds the variety in perspectives invigorating.
Crain saw a form of team sermon study while serving as a staff pastor at Cornerstone in Marion. His equipping has expanded into other aspects of pastoral work as well.
“I like that Jason Lowe came in with a kind of framework, because mine is highly relational, because I’m highly relational,” he said. Crain covers some of the same ground as Lowe, with side trips for leadership, question-and-answer sessions on handling conflict and small group ministry, and discerning calling.
“There is no written curriculum,” Crain said, but in the life-on-life discipleship fashion, the men in his group see up close what preaching and pastoring looks like.
Ulrich, likewise, is exploring development of a pastoral skills cohort as a follow-up to his summer preaching lab, with an eye toward pastoral residency.
“Part of it is a stewardship of what the Lord has given us,” Ulrich said. A church of about 300 is well positioned to serve other churches in the association. “There are smaller churches that don’t have the guys to call on. If a larger church has the resources and the capability to do that, then there’s the obligation to put to use the men God has given us,” he said.
And Ulrich will be happy to see men from his church fill other pulpits nearby, if the Lord calls them out. I could see any of the men who preached in this group in our pulpit on a Sunday morning,” he said, but also in many Sandy Creek churches.
“With the Lord blessing and entrusting us with men,” Ulrich said, “we are responsible for blessing other churches that have need.”
Supply chain fixed.