The future of the church?

What do you believe will be the future of pastors in the SBC? Recently I found out that 53% of SBC Churches in Alabama have bi-vocational pastors. What is a bi-vocational pastor? A bi-vocational pastor is a pastor that has a secular job and pastors a church in addition to their secular responsibilities. That 53% doesn't include pastors that rely upon a pension, disability or their wife's salary. A fully funded pastor is really a recent trend. I have read it wasn't until around the 1940's that we began to have fully funded pastors. This was at the encouragement of our denomination.

There are a lot of bi-vocational pastors and ministers in ministry. The model that was used for years was farmer/pastor or teacher/pastor. Of course, there were plenty of opportunities for both as the frontier was being forged.

So, where do we find ourselves today? We find ourselves with churches that depend on a paid clergy for almost everything. We find our churches filled with fearful pastors that are unwilling to preach the Bible or lead with authority and boldness because their livelihood depends upon the local church. We find ourselves with churches that have never heard of the Eph. 4 principle of equipping the members for the work of ministry.

What next? Well, I don't have an answer. But, I believe that with a declining denomination and a need to plant more churches we are going to see a revival of bi-vocational pastors. We are going to see God raise an entire generation of business man/pastor to revive and plant new churches.