Following on from the Monks, pastors, webmasters, cultivators etc discussion Steve has written a few of his thoughts about the place of the paid worker in the Em Church.

Here are a few quotes…

If I follow the idea’s that you are suggesting and develop an organic, movement of small responsive missional groups, what do I do for a living?”

As far as my research goes, the first “full time” workers were the apostolic and evangelistic types. You were paid to start new communities, not to maintain them

This gutsy young guy fronted up with the issue. Many people train for their whole lives and consequently gain a series of skills that are virtually useless in any other vocational context. There is a vested interest in maintaining the status quo for a very good reason. Bills need to be paid.

So… the bottom line (so to speak) is that there is no money to be made in the Em Missional Church…

And yet we need to live…

And some of us are called to be missionaries…

So how do we earn the necessary dollars?…

My two bobs worth is that we sometimes need to free people up to do this work. It doesn’t just happen – there is stuff that goes on behind the scenes, particularly in the realm of thinking and dreaming (something that is often underestimated) which means we need to support them.

I find that just teaching on Thursday and Friday seems to cut a swathe thru my week and limits what I can do. It hits me hard to lose those two days … but maybe that is because I have 3 paid roles…

On the other hand I like a stock standard day job, because it reminds me how others feel when they get home from work – tired and maybe not that fired up for a small group meeting or a missional activity.

If someone wanted to throw me another $22K a year I’d quit teaching tomorrow – because I don’t enjoy it. The big issue though would be the sense of identity that goes with work. I have felt that maybe our community would find it hard to grasp this guy who seems to have time on his hands to float around, have coffee, help with patios, go fishing, chat in the street etc.

My heart is in finding ways of connecting in with the community around here and yet it seems I need to do other things to subsidise that.

I have said before that I’m sure Paul didn’t wake up each morning and think ‘you beauty another tent!!’ But he did what he had to do so he could do what he loved to do. If teaching primary kids is my sacrifice then I’ll do it to have time to do the rest of the stuff.