Ministry on mission: thriving as a part-time pastor in a full-time world 

Sam Ackerman shares his calling to and advocacy for part-time ministry. Sam is the part-time minister of Horndean Baptist Church, Waterlooville, and also works in the local junior school 

Part-time ministry was raised as being of importance to the future of ministry in the Baptist Union of Great Britain back in the Ignite report in 2015. I've not seen much focus on it since (though was encouraged to see a desire for a greater emphasis on bivocational training and local leader development as presented during a session on ministerial formation at the last Council meeting. 

Since beginning my training and as of last year receiving my handshake as a fully accredited minister, I have learned more about our Union and the churches that make it up. Nothing struck me more than the figure of 58 per cent of our churches having 40 or fewer members - a number that's increasing year on year.

While membership numbers never tell the full story, this trajectory suggests that fewer and fewer churches will be able to afford a full-time minister moving forward, as it is usually the members who provide the most financial support for a church. 

I strongly believe that part-time ministry and training ministers and churches for this is a possible solution. This is not just in terms of providing a minister to churches who would otherwise not have one, but in providing greater support and opportunities for every member ministry.

My own passion for part-time ministry is not something that I gained from watching a part-time minister as a young convert or during my training. I trained in a 400+ member church, with three ministerial members of staff alongside paid administrators and caretaker, where we would have more than that number through the doors on a Sunday across our four services.

Instead, it was a calling from God that struck me just as I was beginning to learn about the financial realities of most Baptist churches in our Union, when I had the privilege to sit on Spurgeon’s College Council.

At the time I was learning about this, I was reading through 1 Corinthians and had reached chapter 9 where Paul lays out his rights, but then reveals he chooses not to insist on them. Most of this passage is concerned with being paid to preach the gospel, making the argument that those who lead churches in some aspect should be paid for their services.

For me, it seemed this passage contained the answer to this lack of finances. But rather than it be just an abstract idea for our Union to implement, God was now calling me to take this and run with it, in much the same way He called me to be a Baptist minister in the first place. 

After receiving this new angle to my calling, I wanted to be a part-time minister to see if I had properly heard God. I wanted to see whether this was a calling for a season, or a defining feature of my ministerial life.

I looked to move on from my training church and in the second round of profiles came a church that, was in my mind, too far away. But when I read the profile more fully, I was blown away with how much of a match there seemed to be. After going through the settlement process, I became the minister of Horndean Baptist Church, Hampshire.

Horndean Baptist is a church that for me, is characterised by their bravery and their community. They were planted in 1984 and within six years, they chose to plant a church. They still have (at the time of writing this article) all their previous and current ministers and members of staff attending the church.

Most pertinently given the call I was sensing, they also chose to move to having a part-time minister voluntarily, rather than having their hand forced. The church was planted amidst the minister from the planting church suffering from burn out that ultimately led him to leave the ministry.

A year after the church was planted, Chris Bowers became the minister of the church in 1985. He served the church for more than 30 years. A major part of his ministry had been spent majoring on every member ministry and helping the congregation understand they all have a part to play in the church and in building the kingdom of God. He helped the church remember it was a small church and that ultimately it should focus on doing a few things well.

In 2008, Chris started receiving his pension from his years spent teaching. He cut his stipend from the church, but kept his full-time hours for the church. This step, alongside his teaching, laid the groundwork for the church to start thinking about part-time ministry.

When the church used the freed-up income to employ a Children and Family Leader, they had firmly started down the path of becoming a church which had chosen part-time ministry. When they appointed my predecessor in 2014, it was to a part-time position.

The adjustment wasn’t simple for the congregation. Some members struggled with the idea of the minister not preaching every week and the knock-on effects in other areas of church life.

But fast forward more than a decade, and I can say that from my perspective as a minister, the church has been very understanding of me being part-time. I think a large part of that is due to the nature of my other job, which is working in the local junior school. Having a job based in the local community opens up all manner of connections and opportunities to share my faith.

Most significantly for the church, it means the minister shares in the experience of the congregation of being a Christian in secular working environments - being a sergeant in the trenches rather than a general in a command centre.

I fully believe the challenge of the adjustment to a part-time minister can be mitigated through appropriate preparation of the congregation. This doesn’t happen when churches are forced into part-time ministry through financial issues. It’s easier to land well when you jump rather than having been pushed.

I would love to encourage other churches to be brave in taking positive steps toward part-time ministry, if they feel that might be where God is leading them.
 

The Revd Sam Ackerman is the part-time minister of Horndean Baptist Church.

Sam has explored his thinking around part-time ministry in articles in the Baptist Ministers' Journal (volumes 362 and 364)  

If you are interested in finding out more of Sam's experiences of part-time ministry, contact him here.  

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