Introduction

  In Team 63 at C. E. MacDonald Middle School in East Lansing, Michigan, the sixth-grade math and science teacher was a fellow named Jerry Smith. Mr. Smith lives for me in the category of teachers you remember long after most of the rest of the parade of...

1. The Bivocational Pastor

Mark Wastler gets up most mornings between 5:30 and 6:00. Before doing anything else, he pulls on his work clothes, heads out the kitchen door to the enclosed field behind his house, and checks on a flock of some seventy sheep. Wastler has lived on this farm for just...

2. The Bivocational Congregation

Saint Luke’s in Hastings, Minnesota had come to a crossroads. A major project to improve access to the building for the disabled had taken a significant share of the endowment—and caused a rift in the congregation. Many chose to leave. Dollars left with them. Quickly,...

3. The Bivocational Polity

The e-mail came in the midst of a busy Monday at work. It popped up in my inbox as I was taking notes at a meeting:   Subject: Clericus on Wednesday—advance reading Dear Colleagues, I have heard from some of you regarding your in/ability to be with us on...

4. The Church: A Bivocational Theology of Ministry

Chapter XLII.—The order of ministers in the Church. The apostles have preached the Gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ [has done so] from God. Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the apostles by Christ. Both these appointments, then, were...

5. We Can Get There From Here

I was standin’ outside Sutherland’s IGA store one mornin’ when I heard a flivver approachin’ down the street toward me. “Which way to Millinocket?” “Well, you can go west to the next intersection; get on to the turnpike; go north, through the tollgate at Augusta. When...