Advantages of NOT Being a Full-Time Church Planter

The advantages of being a full-time church planter are numerous, and well-known. I have recently decided to go a different route, and as with anything I like to do a pro/con list. So here are the 'pros' of finding supplemental full-time income while church planting:

1. Supports my family. This may seem obvious, but I've heard stories of church planters who, in the name of expanding the Gospel and the church, ignored the real needs (financial needs) of their family. In addition to financial support, my family needs me to be present, unstressed, and responsible.

2. Helps us relate to others. Hugh Halter pointed this out to me at a ChurchPlantingBC event. Regular people work full-time, and can't understand when a church planter stays home reading or visiting or blogging all day long.

3. Gives me a platform for encouraging my congregation to be missional in everyday life. It's one thing for me to encourage others to be missional 'like me' when I don't have a regular chlorine job and I can pour myself into it. It's another when my audience knows I have the same demands on my time as they do, yet do my best to set an example for them to follow. If I can tell them how I attempt to follow Jesus on mission through and beyond my regular, full-time job, maybe they will see that they can do the same.

4. Helps me meet people. One of the questions I've faced in ministry is, 'how do I get to know people where I'm at?'. A full-time job gives me an opportunity to rub shoulders with people I wouldn't normally get to know.

5. The work becomes less personality-driven. If I can't spend myself on my church, then others will have to step up too. It becomes less about me and my church plant, and more about what we're doing together.

There are, of course, disadvantages to working full-time while attempting to church plant. It will take longer to achieve, it will take more time, I might look less 'official', it will be hard to gain momentum. I would like to go full-time eventually. But the point is that there ARE reasons, good reasons, for me to find full-time employment as a church planter.

What do you think? What are some other advantages of working full-time while church planting?