Transcript: How to Get A Ministry Job

How to Get a Ministry Job

Steve Elzinga here. We're in a class on Enterprise, and we've looked at things that relate to your personal finances, how to save money in your personal finances, how to do better in the present job that you may have and how you might get a raise or how you might get more time - all of it designed to give you an opportunity to do more ministry. That's what you want. You want to do ministry. You want to make a difference in your work as well.

Finally, we're going to get more into creating Enterprise. So in the next three sessions, we're going to look at how you might develop a ministry job. Then eventually we're going to look at how you might develop an enterprise thing in your own life. I want to look at five different options. There's probably more but these are sort of a general option in terms of ministry jobs that are out there.

Options for Ministry Jobs

1. First of all, all members are ministers. There's a doctrine in the reformation that was called the priesthood of all believers regardless of pay. In other words, we are all ministers. Every one of us is called by God to a ministry. We're all called to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with the gifts that we have, with our abilities, with our opportunities, the people that we meet. So in some ways, we all already have a ministry job. It's just that most of us do not get paid for our ministry job. So the next four are ministry jobs really that sort of perhaps involve a little bit of pay.

2. Tent-making. Now you are getting paid to do ministry, but you're the one that's doing the paying. So you pay yourself to do your ministry. So it's sort of like getting paid but sort of not. We'll look at tent-making.

3. The third option in terms of pay in the ministry is a love gift. Maybe you've heard of that in your church. Maybe you haven't. A love gift is where we give a certain amount of money to someone who has done some work for the church or the ministry organization, and we just give them a specific amount. It's not related to the hours that they put in. We're not paying somebody so many dollars per hour. We're giving them a token of appreciation. So it's some money. Sometimes it can be considerable money, but it's not tied exactly to the ministry time or what was done. And it's generally a lot less than what you might have been paid if you were hired. A love gift.

4. Part-time ministry. Probably most Christian workers around the world are part-time. In other words, they have a regular job, and then they do their ministry. And the ministry pays them so much per hour. Maybe they work 10 hours or five hours. We have a secretary that works 10 hours a week at our church. We have a janitor that works eight hours a week. We've got several kids that mow the lawn, and they get hired for two or three hours. Most of the staff that we have at church are part-time. They're hired for specific things. They're hired for a specific number of hours.

5. We'll look at full-time ministry. Maybe that's what you're interested ultimately in - full-time ministry.

So we'll look at all these different options and how you might go about trying to find them. I know that many of you at CLI, you've taken these classes. God, for whatever reason, touched your heart in terms of you learning more about God and learning more about doctrine and church history and all these things. And you've enjoyed it, but you ultimately wonder, "Well, what am I going to do with all this? What is God preparing me for?" As you get into it, maybe you become more and more disillusioned with the work of it you do and how much time that you have to put in to supply the money for your family and so on, and you'd love to do more and more ministry. But you don't have enough time or money to do it. This is finally the session where you might learn something about how you might do that.

Disadvantages to Compensation

I want to talk briefly about the disadvantages to compensation. It sounds like a good thing when you're not getting paid, and then you hear that this talk is about getting paid. It's like, "Yeah. This is what I want." But there are certain disadvantages to getting paid.

1. Low wages. In general, people getting paid in the church or a ministry make far less than people doing the same job in some secular business organization. You sort of get stuck in that. Even CEOs in non-profits generally get paid a lot less than they would otherwise.

2. You cater to the hands that feed you. The disadvantage to being in a non-profit is that there are people that have to supply the money. The tendency then in the non-profit is to cater to whoever supplies the money. I've seen this all over the world. A person who loves God is called to be the pastor. He gets paid very little and there are a few people in the church that have a lot of money that actually pay most of it. And they are the ones in charge. You can't afford to go against them and do what you think God is calling you, or you will be out of a job. So the tendency in a non-profit is to cater to whoever pays the bills.

3. You get caught in the struggle between God and money. Because you're sort of mixing the two. You have the money thing, you have the ministry thing, and they're side by side. I think this is one of the issues for Judas. We don't have all the details of why Judas did what he did, but he was the treasurer of Jesus' little band of disciples, and it's interesting that he is the one that betrays Jesus. And in fact, he gets compensated to this betraying. We don't know what all of his motivations were, but it's just very, very difficult.

My brother worked at a non-profit in Kentucky for many years. He was working with a young man that truly loved God, wanted to be used by God. My brother was mentoring him and training him. But in the end, he stole from the little non-profit store that they had. I remember my brother being disillusioned with the whole thing. Here I've been working with this guy for six months, and then he steals from the very people that are trying to help him.

I tried to explain to him, "My guess is his heart was good. He really truly wanted to serve God. But every time he met with you for Bible study, you're talking about the Bible, and God and you had this big bag of gold sitting right next to you."

My brother was in charge of the organization. He was connected to all of the money up north that flowed to this ministry. And my brother has a nice car and all these things. So every time they talked, he wanted to listen about God, but he was blinded by the bag of gold that my brother was sitting next to. So eventually, he just took some of it. Well, you might do the same thing. The temptation, the problem of the money and the non-profit and all those things being sort of together get confusing sometimes.

4. The disadvantage of getting paid to do ministry is you get this hired hand mentality. The idea that the ministry now hires you - we are paying you and so you must do the work. They're the one in charge. As a ministry, you're supposed to have God in charge, and you're following God, and you're mobilizing the people to do the ministry. But a lot of times, when compensation is involved, people have it the other way around. "We're paying your salary. We are your boss."

Advantages to Compensation

There are some advantages to compensation.

1. You have more time for ministry. When you're volunteering and you're doing a little bit here and a little bit there, you don't have time, you can't do big things, you can't follow through. A lot of times you can't do things that take years to build on.

2. You are more focused on ministry. The other way, you're busy trying to make a living, and then with whatever spare time you have, you quickly throw it onto ministry. But you don't really have time to focus on it.

3. There's a more consistent leadership. "I'm running a church and they can count on me. They know that I'm going to be there. They know that if things come up, I'm going to do it because this is my living. This is what I do."

Back to this business of being hired.

A reason for a church to hire

This is very important. The church needs leaders, not doers. It doesn't mean that the church is always aware of this, but ultimately what a church needs in terms of ministry and paying for ministry is leaders, not doers. Ephesians 4:11. "Christ, himself, gave the apostles, the prophecy evangelists, the pastors, and teachers," - these are all the leaders. What is their purpose? To equip his people for works of service. Who is doing the works of service? It's the people.

The mistake in getting hired is to think that they are hiring you to do the ministry. hiring you to do the visiting, hiring you to do all the organization, hiring you to take care of the finances, hiring you to do the music, hiring you to do all the stuff that goes on in a church. They're not hiring you to do all those things. They're hiring you to get other people doing those things. The people have to be doing these things. If they hire you to do all these things, they spend all this money to get one person doing something. What a church really needs is a leader who gets 10, 15, 20 people doing things.  So you're 40 hours becomes 400 hours.

When I planted my church in Vancouver, I had a tough time trying to convince my start-up team that I was called to get them to do stuff. They kept bringing people and they'd find somebody that had all of these needs and then they'd come to me and say, "Here you go. Now you have to take care of them."

I came back to them and I gave them this phrase. It's a fishing phrase. "You catch them, you clean them. In other words, you go fishing and we catch fish. All of you church members go out and you catch all these fish and then you bring them back to the church and then you plop them down on my desk. Now, I have to clean the fish that you caught? My job is to teach you how to fish and to get you motivated to fish. But when you catch a fish, you clean them. When you reach a person, you train them. You reach a person, you help them get closer to Christ or whatever their problem is. I will help you do that. But don't make me the one worker here in the church.

Compensation in Ministry

1. Step one to compensation. We're going to look at several steps on how you get to compensation. Step one to compensation is to volunteer. You don't get any compensation for this. Volunteer in the seven connections. First of all, you have to have your own walk of God. We've gone over the seven connections many times. But you need a walk with God. If you don't have a walk with God, there's no point in trying to get a ministry job. Why should a church hire you if you don't even have your own walk with God?

2. And if you're married, a walk with God with your spouse. If you're not walking with God with your spouse, then don't try to get a ministry job.

3. Walk with your family. You've got to have a daily time of praying and reading the bible and singing together as a family if you expect to lead that in the church.

4. Start a small group. If you've never started a small group or led a small group, then why do you think you could be hired to help a church? You have to volunteer first for these jobs.

5. Volunteer in the service. Volunteer to pray, volunteer to do the music, volunteer to do something in the service.

6. Learn from other churches. Talk to other people. What's going on in other churches? Become aware of what's going on in society.

7. Share your walk with God with others.

The seven connections, if you're not doing these things, if you're not living the authentic Christian life in your personal life - your marriage, your family, small groups, the church, the Kingdom, the world, then there's no point in trying to get anyone to hire you to do these things.

2. Step 2 to Compensation in ministry is to get an education. You have to know something. You have to learn something. The Apostle Paul first trained as a Pharisee. He worked at this his whole life and then God converted him. But God still used all the training that he had.

Jesus grew up in a small, rural little town. But every Jewish boy had to go to this synagogue. By age 12, they had the first five books of the bible memorized. You have to have some education if you hope to get hired.

Christian Leaders Institute, that's what it's all about. To help average people, people that don't have enough money, people that don't have time, help them get an education. If you want to get compensated for ministry, you have to have some education. You have to take enough classes. So if you're just starting, keep going. You need more education.

3. Step 3 to Compensation in ministry. Start volunteering. Yeah, but then you don't get paid. Yeah, that's right. But why should someone pay you to do what you have never done before? What experience do you have?

It's that problem. People want you to have experience. You go for a job and they say, "We'd hire you but you don't have experience."

Then you say, "How can I get experience? No one will hire me."

In the church, it's perfect because there's this thing called volunteering. You can't just volunteer at some company, but you can at church. So start by volunteering. Get some experience in the church.

Volunteer

2. On-the-job training. Volunteer to lead a class. When I went to seminary back in the day, one of the first things I did is I volunteered to teach Sunday school for an entire year. Third-grade Sunday school. Never done it before. Then the next year, I volunteered to teach the seventh-grade catechism.

Seventh graders are horrible. You have no idea whether you're doing anything. I remember the whole year thinking, "I am not accomplishing anything. I don't think these kids are getting a thing." Five years later, I did a chapel at the school that I once attended. After the chapel, I was walking in the parking lot, and all these kids that I had taught in seventh grade came running up and they thanked me and told me how great it was back in seventh grade. So you have no clue what you're doing sometimes or how God is using it.

On the Job Training

3. Discover your gifts. How do you know you're given anything? I was not a speaker. I grew up, I had a hard time reading. I was in a special class for the kids that didn't know how to read. In third grade, my teacher told my dad, "Teach your son a trade, because he's never going to go on to any college or anything like that."

I didn't do plays. I didn't like reading aloud. I was not a candidate for speaking or being a minister of any sort in the world.

Then God, through some crazy thing when I was in grade nine, I ended up in some speech contest because no one else would do it, and the teacher made me do it. I didn't want to do it. The night before, I decided I was going to make a total fool of myself, and so I decided, "If I'm going to make a fool of myself, I might as well just go all out." So the next day, I went all out, lost my place three times. But I spoke with passion. And I won. All of a sudden, "Maybe I can do these things."

So you have no idea necessarily what you can do, but you don't know what your gifts are until you start trying them. You need an opportunity to go out and try things. Who knows what you can do or not do? The first time you sing, it might not go that well. It doesn't mean you're not a singer. The first time you speak, it might not go that well but who knows? You have to try these things, and that's what the church is all about. The church has all these things you can volunteer for, and the church is not always that discerning in terms of whether you're good at it or not. "Oh, you volunteer? Well, thank you." It's a beautiful place and people are forgiving. And they're very encouraging. So try everything. Volunteer for everything. You don't know what your gifts are until you actually try it and find out.

4. Discover your passion. Who knows what you'll like. It's hard to know. Do you like teaching? Who knows? Try it. Do you like preaching? Who knows? Try it. I preached long before I went to seminary. I gave it a shot. Most of it was a disaster, but I told one good story that was effective. Then I thought, "Well, maybe I can do this." What is your passion? You don't know what your passion is until you get out there and do something.

5. Demonstrate your gifts and passions. The church again gives you an opportunity to demonstrate what those things are.

6. Discover the possibilities of God at work in you. God has a plan for your life. Your problem is you don't know exactly what it is. Get out there and volunteer and find out. If you don't do that, why would anyone hire you?

Step 4 to Compensation in Ministry

Try tent-making. Tent-making is what Paul did. He made tents that paid eating and living expenses, then he did ministry. So in other words, you're not getting money from anybody. You're sort of doing it and paying yourself.

The difference between tent-making and volunteering

1. Non-staff vs. staff. When you volunteer at a church, you're not staff. But when you're a tent-maker, you're actually paying yourself and you can get hired as staff. You're actually a staff member, but you pay yourself rather than the church paying you.

2. The difference between volunteering and tent-making. Volunteering is temporary. You volunteer for this little thing or whatever it is. Tent-making can be more permanent. This is now my job. I am a staff person at this church or ministry.

3. Relationship to a job. When you're a volunteer at church, it has no relationship to the job that you do to make money. But when you're tent-making, it does. Because I'm making money here, and this money is the money that is sponsoring me at the church. So there's a closer connection.

How do you approach a tent-making ministry? That's what you want to do. You want sort of a permanent staff position in a ministry or a church. But you’re going to pay your own way. What do you need to do?

How to approach a Tentmaking Ministry

1. Find a job that pays well, that gives you flexible time, gives you free time. Because you want to get paid for whatever it is that you do, but you want to have time to be a staff person in this ministry.

2. Begin looking for existing ministry positions. Are there positions out there? Look in your own church. Maybe your church is already looking for somebody to do something - the youth, or the education, or the visiting, whatever it might be. It might be just the janitor. It might be cutting the lawn. It doesn't matter. Start.

Start with your own church, then in churches within your own denomination. You have a connection. If you're in a denomination, there's a connection between churches. Or in the neighboring churches. Get to know the church scene and what is out there right now. What is the need right now?

3. Prepare to apply for these positions. How do you do that? You pray. Is this what God wants me to do? Get your family supporting you. This is the number one problem. Henry and I, long ago, we were teaching church planters. We had this big church planting thing. Church planters come from all over the country, and they're going to learn how to plant a church. The first part that we taught is you have to have a marriage walk. So we did this whole thing and then the problem was the church planter went home. He was so excited about what he had learned, but his spouse hadn't heard a thing about it. So it just didn't work.

After that, we had our church planting seminars, but we made the spouses come. "You have to come because husband and wife on the same spiritual page are absolutely essential." It's no good to have one who doesn't care and one who's in it. So you need the family support.

3. You need the pastor's support. If you're going to try to tent-make, if you're trying to get a staff position in the ministry or the church, you need the pastor's support. A lot of times, pastors are kept at a distance. Sometimes pastors think you're competing or unhappy with his job. You really need to be walking side by side with your pastor.

Prepare to apply for these positions, finally, with a resume. Give something - this is who you are, this is what you can do. We'll talk about that in a minute.

4. Approach leadership of your church with your desire to do ministry without pay. You want to tent-make and this is your goal.

How to write a resume

1. Your personal information, who you are, how old you are, those kinds of things, your skills.

2. What are you good at? Your past work or your ministry experience.

3. What have you done? That's probably the most important. What things have you done? What have you accomplished that relate to ministry?

4. Your education. This is where it's important that you do. If you're doing CLI, you have all these certificates, degrees, the path that you've taken, you list all those things down.

5. You are most proud of an accomplishment. What have you accomplished? My wife and I went to the Philippines for a year, and we sponsored the first indigenous songbook that they'd ever done. It's now in the eighth edition or something. That's something I put on my resume. We did this long ago. We were young. We tried it. And it's going still to this day.  

6. Your vision for the job. Why do you want this? What do you see in this thing? People need to see what you really dream of and want.

Okay, step 5 to Compensation in ministry. We looked at volunteering, tent-making. Now we're going to look at something where you actually get some money for the ministry that you do.

Work for a love gift. Remember, I explained what a love gift is. It's a church or a ministry just giving you a certain amount of money. It's not tied to hours. It's generally a lot less than what you're worth, but it's a start.

Advantages to a love gift ministry

1. Authentic witness to people inside and outside the church. People know you are not doing this ministry just to get money. Because the money is way less than what you'd get paid otherwise. So people inside the church know that, that your heart is ministry. And the people on the outside of the church, more importantly, they see that too. That you're getting a love gift. It's something that helps free up time so you can do ministry, but it's not what you're worth. You're sacrificing to do this ministry because you really want to do this ministry. That's a powerful witness.

2. It gives you some independence. Because they're not really paying you what you're worth, they don't own you. It's not like you're their employee that they can just push around.

3. Less likely to burn out on both sides, ministry, and business. A lot of times, people go full-time in the ministry and then they burn out in the ministry, because every day is just the stuff, and people, and problems. Maybe God made us do something with our hands too. Or if you're constantly trying to make a living with your work and then you're trying to take your spare time and do ministry, it's like you have no time. But when there's a nice balance, you have some work, and you have a little bit of compensation from the ministry so your finances are taken care of. Maybe it's a nice balanced approach. You can go in with enthusiasm with both.

4. More likely to get hired. You're more likely to get hired if you go to a church and ask just for a love gift than if you ask for a part-time job where they have to pay you what you're worth. Churches are reluctant sometimes to add ministry. They have a budget. "We're behind already. How are we going to add this?"

But when you come and you give them an offer that they can't refuse. "You get all this ministry for this little bit of money." Sometimes, it's hard for churches to resist.

5. With the love gift, you might free up more time for ministry, because you get something. Maybe you can work 10 hours less at your job. Now, you're getting something, so maybe you can afford to do that and now you can plow that into ministry.

How to approach a Ministry with a Love Gift

How do you approach a ministry with the whole love gift idea? It's really the same as doing the tent-making.

1. Find a job that pays well. That's ideal. That gives you flexible time, gives you free time.

2. Begin looking for existing ministry positions in your own church and the churches in your denomination or the neighboring churches.

3. Prepare to apply for these positions. Pray again. Family support, pastor support. Write out a resume. This is who you are.

4. Approach leadership with your desire to do a ministry for a love gift. So ultimately, you come to your own church and say, "This is what my goal is. This is what I'd like to do. What do you think about that?"

Step 6 to Compensation and ministry

Now we move to part-time. We started with volunteering, tent-making where you pay your own way, love gift where you just get a specific amount, not tied to hours and so on. Step 6 is part-time. This is where you're going to get hired for a specific job or specific hours and you're actually getting for what you do.

Advantages to part-time ministry

1. It's an authentic witness to people inside and outside the church. Again, because you're willing to give up yourself and it's not a full-time salary. It's part-time. People realize you have to make a living outside too, and you're giving up time for the church.

2. There is some independence because you're the whole salary's not dependent on the church.

3. Less likely to burn out both sides of ministry and business. Let's say you're half-time in business, half-time at church. It's like you have these two worlds and the one is sort of a break from the other. And you don't burn out from either one.

4. You're more likely to get hired part-time than you are full-time. Again, it's a hard leap to add a whole new ministry to a church. So it's like getting into the water slowly.