Steeped in the British Methodist tradition of strong lay leadership, Rev. Neil Whitehouse of Montreal's Rosedale-Queen Mary United believes part-time ministry can help encourage similar strengths among Canadian lay people.
At the same time, though, Whitehouse is reminded daily of the limitations of being a part-time pastor. While letting congregations live within smaller budgets, part-time ministry means members' and adherents' pastoral needs are not always met.
Part-time ministers often help congregations survive and are filling more pulpits every year. But ministers who accept part-time positions must then struggle, along with their congregations, to keep working hours down to part-time levels.
It's like "trying to stuff five pounds of Jell-O into a three-pound sack," says Rev. Alex McGilvery, who has been half-time minister at the Dashwood-Zurich (Ont.) charge for three years. If they carefully limit their hours at part-time levels, ministers are often left feeling responsible for work that is left undone. If they just go ahead and do the work when it's needed, they limit their opportunities for other work and risk burnout.
"There's really no such thing as part-time ministry," says Rosanne Judge, a lay pastoral minister-in-training who works half-time in the Walter's Falls charge near Owen Sound, Ont., while holding down another part-time job and completing her training. "I'm always juggling," she says. "I love what I do. I love the ministry. But it's hard for me as an individual."
Moving to part-time ministry often seems the perfect solution to financial shortfalls, but it can keep congregations and pastoral charges from seeking better solutions, say church officials. Shared ministries with other denominations (a growing trend in the West) and larger parish-style ministries (where a couple of pastoral charges work together), for example, allow for full-time ministry.
While part-time ministry saves salary expenses, it usually means ministers don't live in the communities they serve; it's one way part-time ministers limit the time spent on pastoral care. That's just one reason, says General Council local ministries staffperson Rev. Glenn Smith, why "congregations should resist part-time ministry as much as they can. I don't think it's a healthy trend for us."
For starters, says Saskatchewan Conference personnel minister Rev. Pam Thomas, lay people have to understand they "can't have full-time ministry for part-time pay." Rev. Lloyd Smith, London Conference personnel minister and a former part-time pastor, says ministers too often let that happen. "By and large, we attract people into ministry who want to help people," he says. "So they tend to over-extend themselves. It's up to the M&P (ministry and personnel) committee to make sure that doesn't happen."
There are ways to make the best of a part-time ministry move. First, pastoral charges considering part-time ministry should list how lay people will cover the work a part-time pastor must leave undone, Lloyd Smith says. "That is quite often an eye-opener for needs-assessment committees." If the minister always leads worship, for example, much of the administration and pastoral care needs to be handled by lay people or it will be left undone. Charges must plan well in advance, create a lay visiting team and let church folks know lay people, not the minister, will be visiting. Smith also suggests ministers and pastoral charges negotiate hours and expectations up front and have a contract or agreement in writing.
Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario's Cambrian Presbytery recently created and adopted guidelines for "fair and ethical hiring of part-time ministry personnel." While recommending that lay people help with preaching and worship leadership, the guidelines are very clear about how much time preparation and worship take: eight to 12 hours for worship and sermon preparation, and two hours for worship. At a multi-point charge, worship can wind up taking the lion's share of a half-timer's 20 hours.
At the Dashwood-Zurich charge, Alex McGilvery allows only five hours a week for "office work" that includes worship preparation. In fact, he says, most of his sermons are born after the week's Bible readings "rattle around in my head" during his other 15 hours of work "out of the office," which includes four hours of worship, plus visiting, meetings, Bible study, outreach and co-ordinating volunteers.
Pam Thomas suggests ministers with flexible personal schedules could work full-time hours during busier or more significant seasons in the church year and not work at all during quieter times, such as Saskatchewan's harvest season. Glenn Smith suggests cutting down on meetings.
Despite its shortcomings, part-time ministry can play an important role in a growing congregation. More than five years ago, after leaving a two-point pastoral charge to go on its own, South Gloucester United near Ottawa hired Rev. Gordon Roberts for a quarter-time position that soon became half-time. Working other jobs to help pay his bills, Roberts eventually became a three-quarters-time minister. As suburban development brought growth to the area and the congregation began to feel more confident, Roberts' position became full-time over a year ago.
While working part-time, says Roberts, he "had to work hard at intentionally staying within the scheduled hours." Al Arbuckle, an active lay person and member of South Gloucester's Council, says he thinks "we're just now paying him for what he was doing all along."
In the Notre Dame de Grace (NDG) neighbourhood of Montreal, which is not experiencing population growth, Session chair Gillian Davis says she knows Neil Whitehouse, paid a three-quarters-time salary, works way beyond full-time hours. "We're just sorry we can't pay him more."
With another part-time job as a heavy equipment operator and scale-house attendant at a local landfill site, Alex McGilvery says he controls his hours closely but lets local church people decide how they want his time divided. "This is what they can afford, and they have to pick up the slack themselves.... I try to give them fresh-squeezed ministry. They're not getting huge amounts of time. But when I'm working, it's all there. They get all of me, for 20 hours."
Muriel Lush, secretary of the Walters Falls charge, says she and other lay leaders know their minister is "doing more than she's supposed to be doing." Lush is trying to get more laypeople involved in Scripture reading and hymn selection and letting people know that when crises such as funerals leave Judge working way over her scheduled hours one week, she will work fewer hours later.
No amount of flexibility, though, can complete work that's left waiting when a part-time pastor runs out of time. "You can easily feel guilty," says Whitehouse, "because the tasks are always there and often you are the only one who can do them."
When there's a funeral or another pastoral emergency, says Judge, "How are you going to say, `I can't do it?'" She know there are no easy answers and also knows her rural congregations and many like them are struggling hard to keep going.
"We're struggling together."
