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I do think that funding and sustainability are major issues which we're actively working on in i-church at the moment. I think we need to think in unfamiliar terms like business models and cashflow projections, and maybe a monastery model where the whole community earns its collective living.

And I think all Christians int he workplace should be engaging with those around them.

There are a few things things that always bother me about this tentmaking model though.

One can be summed up as 'Who does the funerals' - if everyone is out earning a living, who does the stuff that no-one has time for that can't be fitted into the time available for unpaid work?

The other is about what sort of witness we are providing in our working life if we are less than engaged with our day job because what really fires us up is our ministry.

If you can fit together a portfolio of flexible and reasonably well paid work with ministry then that would be ideal.

But there isn't a lot of call for bespoke tents nowadays, working in a low committment job just for the pay to support ministry is fairly soul destroying for most of us, and if you are in a committed and engaging job the time and energy available for outside activities will be minimal.

I do think we need to equip people much more for ministry wherever they are, but if we are all out working who does the equipping?

Thanks for the post George.

I love the subtle re-focus of the questions about the function of the tent-making that Paul did. I find myself drawn to the idea that Christians should have something about them that is of inherent value to others, and that we need to make proactive steps into a culture that is not "coming to us" anymore - if it ever truly did.

I also have been thinking about the potential future shapes of Pioneer Ministry, partly as I am 1/3 of the way through training with this destination in mind.

I also think that Pam is right to highlight issues of sustainability and funding: several of my peers are facing uncertain futures as various Diocese face up to the real costs (financial and otherwise) of this new form of ministry.

This is one of the huge problems that the church faces as 'top-down' and 'grass-roots' initiatives meet like mid-Atlantic icebergs; each with the potential to damage the other significantly. I think that we need to be careful not to allow money to be the driver here though. Tent-Making as a missional call is fine, so is tent-making to self-support as appropriate – but not tent-making because it means: “we don’t have to pay any of you…” (Which I’m sure is not what George meant, but some might pick that kernel up and run with it).

Pragmatically, many of us who expect to be Pioneer Ministers have privately resigned ourselves to the probability of serving the church in a part-time and/or voluntary capacity. Small missional communities often need a style of leadership that is fluid and owned by the whole group - many of the 'roles' we have come accustomed to seeing ministers perform can be shared out; others are potentially superfluous or at least don't need a full-time minister to perform them.

Pam’s “who does the funerals” question must not be dodged; but perhaps part of the answer is to be found in a shifting away from a leadership model that requires so much to be done by the ‘professional leader’. Her second concern presupposes that our ‘day job’ and our ‘ministry’ are somehow mutually exclusive – perhaps a reality for many, but surely not the Biblical ideal?

Just to answer your last para Andy

"Pam’s “who does the funerals” question must not be dodged; but perhaps part of the answer is to be found in a shifting away from a leadership model that requires so much to be done by the ‘professional leader’. Her second concern presupposes that our ‘day job’ and our ‘ministry’ are somehow mutually exclusive – perhaps a reality for many, but surely not the Biblical ideal?"

Re funerals, it's a real problem for people who are paid to do something else in the week - not all funeral ministers are clergy but both ordained and lay ministers may have 'day jobs' which make it hard to find time for funerals. When I was a supply teacher, for example, I lost half a day's pay if I took time off to take a funeral, (as a non-stipendiary minister I was not paid for the funeral) and also let down the classes who were expecting me.

So I don't see the issue being primarily about professionalism as much as availability. A stipend is mean to allow you to be freed up from earning a living so you're available.

Although - we wouldn't really advocate 'amateurish' ministry from anyone being the norm would we?

As for the mutual exclusivity of the day job and ministry - as you've said earlier, the tentmaking ideal can very easily lurch over into the hierarchy enthusiastically embracing the idea that someone else should pay for ministry. This can be the minister's family (if I lost pay when I was doing something in the church it was less money available to the family - I don't work for 'pin money') - or the employer who is unwittingly paying for their employee to minister in the workplace rather than do the job they're paid for.

There is a flip side to 'The labourer is worthy of her/his hire' which is 'If you're hired to do a job you need to do it well' surely!

Personally I think this is an issue that is going to have to work through the system in quite a radical way. Dividing ministry into stipendiary - with full time pay plus housing - and non-stipendairy - where in effect you pay for your own ministry - is just not tenable, I think a radical rethink of how people are employed needs to be sought.

I was an NSM curate because there were no full time stipendiary curacies availabe. Had it been possible for me to be paid the fees that came in from the weddings and funerals I did, we could probably have managed without the supply teaching (and no, I did not have any kind of workplace ministry, I was too tired and ground down for that).

Instead, the Diocese pocketed the income from my work and I was left out of pocket because I lost pay in order to conduct funerals.

Maybe 'The labourer is worthy of her/his hire' should be discussed at Synod. But I somehow doubt it will be.

Thanks Pam.

I agree that the theory of stipend is as you say, but am not sure that this is how either ministers or their employers really see things.

I agree with David's comments about the fees for funerals and the deeper questions about what 'paid ministers' are being 'paid' for.

This brings me back to your earlier comments about community models where living expenses are contributed by the whole, and working responsibilities divided up appropriate to skill and calling. I wonder if this is one of the few ways forward as we seek to support all kinds of ministry?

It would require both a radical re-think from 'on high' about pay structures/job descriptions, etc; but also an embracing from 'below' of the kind of mutually dependent lifestyles that we in the West seem to find so impossible.

I think you're right - it's how I saw it because I gave up my 'career' such as it was to train, and my 'tentmaking' experience was a thoroughly miserable two years supply teaching, so the stipend really did free me up to think about ministry without the distraction of working outside church.

At the point I was offered a stipend for the rest of my curacy I'd just decided that I couldn't carry on being in a dead end job AND a dead end ministry - because whatever the rhetoric that non-stipendiary ministers are regarded as equal, without the time to attend training and networking events in the week you soon slip off the radar.

So for me the stipendiary bit of my curacy gave me a much needed breathing space.

Unfortunately because churches have been told that their parish share 'pays for' their clergy, being stipendiary is regarded more and more as working for the local church rather than serving via the local church, so as you say in real terms I don't think it gives that sense of freedom long term.

I do think the monastery model has a lot going for it in terms of finance, but it really doesn't map onto the parish system at all.

I do wonder if referring to a mixed system of fresh expressions and trad church as a 'mixed economy' unintentionally shows that one of the major upheavals fresh expressions and pioneer ministry may bring is financial.

Pam only had a problem with funerals because the Church of England has centralised the fees attached to this ‘work’ and scooped it into its central coffers to help keep the Titanic afloat. If it allowed the money to stay where it was earned, the problem would not arise. In fact we could have ‘funeral/bereavement’ ministries that were pretty much self-sustaining on the ground.

George: I think you are right about tent-making giving St Paul some entry into social situations, and having a normal kind of relationship with people he met – rather than the strange business of being paid to preach the gospel. ‘Well, you would say that because you’re paid to say it.’ and so on. But he never draws on tent-making as an analogy in his theology or his writings. I wonder if it just kept his feet on the ground, and made it possible for him to make his preaching ‘free of charge’, as he said himself. That gave him credibility. And that might be an important aspect of the new generation of pioneer ministers.

I do think there is still scope for paid pioneer ministers, and St Paul himself defended the practice although he did not take payment himself. But perhaps we need to be much crisper about what we are paid to do, and what it is not appropriate to pay people to do. In particular I wonder about the ‘paid pastor’ that George refers to. Is it OK to pay people to look after us, to visit us when we are sick, to be our companion in time of need, to offer us encouragement when we are down? Isn’t that what friends (and brothers and sisters in Christ) are for? It’s like the bottom end of Christian ‘counselling’, which is really just supporting people and which (if it does not offer some kind of robust therapy) is not really appropriate to charge people a fee for. Some human realities (friendship, sex, body organs, etc.) should not be for sale and should not be the subject of money transactions. I think there is an important Christian perspective here, which is muddied by the prevalence of ‘pastoral’ ministry.

If the C of E took tithing seriously we'd have more funding than we knew what to do with. If we took ministry seriously then all of us would be ministers of the Gospel wherever we went. For the time being I work as a multi-drop lorry-driver for long hours on low rates but tithing is not a handicap rather a pleasure and a celebration of God's faithfulness. I equally celebrate His faithfulness in the way I do my job and the way I relate to the people I meet, often having conversations and opportunities to minister the Good News of the Life in all it's Fullness. I was comissioned in 1993, worked in Leicester and Texas, and still seek to honour that commission in my current circumstances.

Interesting question. It's certainly true that the history of the church is full of characters who had to work alongside doing ministry but there is always the age-old problem of time.

I'm engaged in Internet ministry but I also have to work to feed the family (as well as devote time and energy to the family). Personally I think this seriously limits what I'm able to do. What may seem good idealistically may not work out in practice.

My understanding of Paul's tent making was that he stopped doing it so he could devote himself to full time ministry supported by the churches.

Most churches don't see what they pay ministers as a salary but as a stipend (e.g. an amount of money to release them from full time employment so they can do ministry).

However, I think its fair to say that sometimes clergy don't have enough experience of life before they become ministers and that many clergy don't engage with the world enough.

I'm self-employed which gives me a lot of contact with businesses. Not tent making but site building. I sometimes think that clergy could join many of the networking organisations that exist and this would give them a real point of contact with a lot of people who have no interest in the church whatsoever.

It's not getting paid that is the problem it's the lack of contact with ordinary people. Of course this is not just a problem associated with clergy.

Also churches will need to learn to release their clergy to be more active in life outside the church.