It’s a Southern Baptist cliche: “We are a convention of small churches.”
We are indeed. The median SBC church will have 70 souls in average weekly worship attendance this coming Sunday which means that around 25,000 SBC churches have a pastor who looks out when he preaches at no more than a few dozen hearers. The pastor almost certainly is the only clergy staff member in the church although he may have a part time paid or volunteer music leader, student or children leader.
This would be the place where there is a church of people who all know each other.
This would be the place where there is a single pastor and no one else who has the title “pastor.”
The Single Staff Pastor…and he is the stalwart hero of Southern Baptist churches and, therefore, of the Southern Baptist Convention. That and five bucks or so will get him a cup of Starbucks.
It’s not that multi-staff, multi-site, multi-millions in budget, megachurch, megapastor, megastaff are unimportant. An increasing share of SBC members and revenues come from such churches.
It’s not that the vast army of lay volunteers who actually run the church and the church ministries are unimportant. We are not sacerdotalists, after all and unpaid volunteers do most of the actual ministry.
The single staff church is the most common type of church in the SBC and the lone clergy staff of that church, The Pastor, is the most common in the SBC.
Sometimes, he is the most underappreciated.
Most of our trained clergy will spend most if not all of their ministry as a single staff pastor. We can’t all be megapastors nor should we aspire to that.
Almost all SBC clergy will have at one time or another served a single staff church.
Almost all SBC denominational leaders will have served in a single staff church, even if only for a short time. If this ever changes it will be for the worse for all of us.
The single staff pastor will likely be paid below what LifeWay says is the average salary for full time SBC pastors and that for his entire ministry. Some will do better. Some will do worse. It’s modest pay.
The single staff pastor will never store up for himself a great accumulation of retirement benefits unless his wife is able to find a good job with benefits.
The single staff pastor has little chance of being elected to any position of prominence in the state conventions or SBC and this mainly, and wrongly, because being seen as single-staff guy or small church guy is code for “not much of an achiever.” The chances are above zero for him but not by much. And being elected second or third VP of anything in the SBC isn’t worth squat.
The single staff pastor likely knows the stress of church finances better than the larger, multi-staff church pastors , since large and megachurches do well in picking up the better giving families who transfer membership from smaller to larger churches. This is a clear trend I’m told.
The single staff pastor likely has to endure more of the petty issues in the church, stuff like the temperature of the sanctuary, height of the grass, and which class gets which room.
The single staff pastor isn’t likely to be asked to preach at conferences, since it’s not much of a draw to have single staff guys at these events.
The single staff pastor is more likely to be forced to resign or be pressured to resign a church probably for no fault of his own. He is not just the biggest target for critics in a church but the only target.
The single staff pastor with sufficient tenure is the key person in setting the attitude and personality of the congregation. Most of the time it is for good, not ill.
The single staff pastor with sufficient tenure will be the one who keeps a church on track with Cooperative Program giving and the mission offerings, even though he isn’t trying to impress the SBC oligarchy and get a job, title, or larger church.
The single staff pastor likely has to address more issues with his spouse and kids and the church than larger church pastors. He learns how to handle this with time. Sometimes it can be ugly for his family.
The single staff pastor doesn’t have a hat rack large enough for all the hats he has to wear as pastor.
The single staff pastor is more likely to declare, “They didn’t tell me in seminary I would be doing this kind of stuff” along with “I wasn’t prepared for this.”
The single staff pastor has to be a generalist and have knowledge, skills, and experience in every area of church life. Sometimes his members presume him to be a specialist in every possible church-related job and ministry.
The single staff pastor gets to see generations of people impacted by his ministry.
The single staff pastor looks at his few dozen congregants on Sunday and knows exactly what issues they are facing as individuals. He doesn’t read reports from church experts to know what his congregation is facing.
The single staff pastor knows his folks well enough to judge by their casual comment when shaking his hand after Sunday worship if there is something afoot in their lives that he might need to ask about or help with.
Anybody can be a single staff pastor…right?
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This is a retread, so sue me.
Thank you so much for this profoundly truthful and heartfelt description of the vast majority of pastors in the SBC of churches. Can this be part of a recurring call for more “single-staff” pastors and “bi-vocational” pastors to hold positions of authority and decision-making in the state and national convention?
— a fellow ‘single-staff’/’bi-vocational’ pastor
Thank you. I’d love to see more elected and appointed to SBC positions.
I’m a single pastor who is also Bivocational. Have been since I started. I love my ministry but it can be frustrating when I get treated like the red headed step child by multi staffed pastors. God is always so good!
I was a single staff pastor at my first church after graduating from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. I like so many, did a variety of activities that were never mentioned in pastoral ministry classes. However, I knew every church member by name. There was a Baptist and Methodist church in the Georgia town of 600. The Methodist pastor was my age with a new born son Our only son was born during this time. He and I became close friends. We baptized 12 each of the years I was privileged to be pastor. Years later as an IMB Missionary and as an Association Director of Missions, I remembered the blessings and challenges of being a single staff pastor. Now retired. After 47 years of full time vocational ministry, I realize that my years as a single pastor prepared me for everything that followed. They were also some of the most rewarding. Your evaluation of the significance of the single staff pastor is spot on. Thank you for expressing the appreciation many of us feel for the single staff pastor. They are truly unsung heroes.
I read this with the eyes (now dimming) of an old seminary professor. When I was a student at Southwestern Seminary, it seemed the professors were preparing us to serve as pastors of county seat First Baptist Churches. Most of those churches have several staff members. For example, in our required church music class, we learned how to write a job description for a full-time minister of music. As you point out, most seminary graduates begin their ministries in a single-pastor church. If they do well in that small church, then they can begin to climb the ladder of “success.” My point is that our seminaries should prepare students for their first pastorate, not their last.
I am a single staff pastor. I wish I could say I believed that the SBC truly appreciated us, but they don’t. What they say and what they do when it comes to small church pastors displays they truly do not appreciate small church pastors and single staff pastors
Thanks for the post — it has certainly been my experience as well — all aspects, whether LifeWay, local association, SBC — oh the stories I could tell of what I have overheard (especially as others talk about my church) — small churches just not seen as equal partners in kingdom work — wish there were some rules in place that service in the SBC boards and committees were proportioned as per the church populace/makeup.
I believe the biggest crisis facing our convention is the following quote:
The single staff pastor has little chance of being elected to any position of prominence in the state conventions or SBC and this mainly, and wrongly, because being seen as single-staff guy or small church guy is code for not much of an achiever.
The only time in our lives that we ever left a church to join another one that wasn’t because we were relocating, we left a First Baptist Church with about 700 in attendance in a mid-sized community to join a smaller church just outside the city limits. It was single staff and the pastor was also bi-vocational. He had a seminary degree and was a really good preacher. We were more active and engaged there than almost anywhere we have been. He’d been there eight years when we joined and had that church organized for ministry. He was the finance officer at the local chevy dealer, so he had an eight hour a day job, but still managed to serve the church well. I don’t know how he did it, but he really pastored that church. Having members who did everything from taking turns cleaning the building to the older ladies who kept the office open eight hours a day, helped. When we joined, attendance was that median 70, but we had eight or ten baptisms every year and when we moved, after eight years, it was up around 100.
One misconception about us single staff tiny churches is that we are all rural. There are a plethora of these churches in major metropolitan areas. We are in the shadows of the biggies watching people drive 40 minutes past us to get to the big names. That can be frustrating until I remember that there are lost people in my community who would never go to a large church but might be open to sitting down with a small church pastor over coffee and hear the gospel.
Your comment on speaking at conferences…I was so glad when Dave Miller was President of the Preacher’s Conference. Recall he had pastors of smaller congregations. It was a wonderful breath of fresh air.
Thanks for sharing this message. Every point that you made I have experienced or currently experiencing. It is always encouraging to be reminded that the challenges that I face is a common challenge for many fellow servants of God in ministry.
God bless you for sharing this simple truths that many pastors face.
I also pastor a small, rural church in the high desert of California. We have around 25 folks. I have been blessed to pastor for almost two years here. I’ve been so encouraged by the sincere fellowship and hunger for studying the Word which they have.
Thank you for this encouraging word.