The BiVocational Ministers’ Dilemma!!!

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What is the dilemma of the BiVo minister?

You wonder whether to pursue a career in the marketplace or in the ministry. There is always this tension about what to give the most of your energy and time to. This dilemma is not unique to the BiVo minister!

However, for the BiVo minister, you sense a leading not to choose just one. When we all come to the point of making this decision, we must all choose to give our best time to the Kingdom business!

Our King will then teach you how to spend your allotted time! It could be by spending more time within a religious context or in the marketplace or both.

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need. – Matt 6:33

How does this play out?

1. Unite your life – make everything about the kingdom – Don’t look for balance, look rather for unity in your life.
2. Follow the leading of the Holy Spirit to introduce more people to Jesus! Ask God to help you to have the Kingdom of God as the top priority for your life.
3. Love like Jesus Loves.

Resources:

Blue Letter Bible – https://www.blueletterbible.org/

Show Transcript

[Intro Music]

Hello and welcome to the Bivo Podcast – A podcast for pastors, church planters, ministers, anyone who is doing the work of ministry and working in the marketplace at the same time. This is your time of encouragement and I’m your host, Ade Sobanjo.

Hello Everybody! Welcome again to the Bivo Podcast.

Yes, as I usually do, I start with just some personal info about myself so you get to know who I am and why I do what I do. Yeah! We have 2 boys, Demilade and Damilola. We call them Demi and Damilola. Yes! And they are wonderful children. They’ve been going with us into the mission field and into the ministry since they were born. So, they are pastor’s kids and we trust God that God would use them even greater than He has used us. They are in school right now and I’m recording this from Cornwall, Ontario. They are in school right now and I’m going to get them in a couple of hours and we are going to be doing what we normally do – hang out and play on the computer and teach them a few stuff. They are good children. So, that’s that for now.

Let’s get into today’s discussion. Yeah, I forgot to mention that this is the weekend when the women in our church come together and invite other people to enjoy the presence of God. So, Pastor Olu my wife, is busy with all that this weekend. It’s Vessels of Grace Conference. It’s a powerful conference and women all over the world are being blessed by that conference. And also, I know that some of us may not know that my wife, Pastor Olu, is also doing a podcast called Like Jesus – Like Jesus Podcast. Powerful podcast! She started it about a year or more ago – about 13 months now and it’s been going very well. So, if you’ve not checked it out, I want you to head over to your iTunes or whatever podcasting software you use and search for Sobanjo or search for Like Jesus Podcast and you will be blessed. I assure you, you will be blessed. She has some very good people on and she has some very good topics. So, go over to that and be blessed.

Okay! Let’s get into today’s discussion – The Bi-vocational Minister’s Dilemma. I want to discuss it because that’s what I felt before I moved into full-time ministry and then back into BiVo ministry. So, here is it. You’re a minister and you find yourself also working in the marketplace, the question is where do you put all of your energy? Because as human beings, I think somehow, we find ourselves needing to put our energy in one thing and doing it well. So, as Bivo Pastors or Ministers, you don’t want to be ineffective in both. You want to be effective as a minister and effective as a worker in the marketplace. Because if you are ineffective as a worker, then you begin to pull down the effectiveness even of your ministry in the marketplace. So there’s this tension – what do I do? Do I pursue a career and go all out to be the best in my career or do I pursue ministry and put this career on a backburner and leave it and get into the ministry all of the time? So, there’s this tension always there for a Bi-vocational Minister.

And today, I want to address that because I felt that. I remember in 2007 when the Lord was guiding me to let go of my business and really put all of my heart into building the church that He has called me to build with my wife. What I felt was that when I meet people, I wouldn’t know what to tell them because if you want to build your business, you will have to have your business cards at hand all time and even in parties, on the way, in the bus. Wherever you meet people, you let them know that I set up computers, I set up websites, I do all that and you give them your card but at the same time, I wanted to build the church. I wanted to let the people know that I am a pastor and I’m interested in the spiritual well-being of people. I want them to know that Jesus is real. God is very real, He loves them and He wants to interact with them. So, when I met people, I had this tension – what do I do? What do I say? I would like to answer that because after growing in this ministry for a while, I have discovered a better way to handle things. Because many people that we deal with, have that question and so, what do you do when you have this dilemma when you have this tension on how do I live my life? I want to use a scripture that has really spoken to my heart and has helped me a lot. That scripture is Matthew 6:33, Seek the Kingdom of God above all else and live righteously and He will give you everything you need. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else and live righteously and He will give you everything you need. That’s the New Living Translation and that’s what I use to answer that question. Seek the kingdom of God above all else. Let it be your driving goal. I know that this is not easy. It’s not what many people would want to hear but for a minister – if you are a minister, if you are called to the work of ministry, then you should seek God’s Kingdom above all else. That’s your life. Your life and my life is the Kingdom of God. And what does that really mean? What that means is that when you wake up in the morning, your goal – you have a goal, your goal should be that the kingdom of God will be advanced in one way or the other. And if that is your goal, then it makes life a little bit easier because now, you have one goal. And what’s that one goal? That the Kingdom of God would be advanced every day of your life. So, the only problem now would be, what tool should I use? Should I use the tool of the marketplace? Or should I use the tool of the vocation of the pastor or minister or evangelist? Or do I use both? Now, once you know what tool to use then problem solved!

But before we go to the tools, we need to determine the goal. Every Christian need to get to a point where they determine in their lives that you know what? I don’t have any personal goal for my life. I’m nothing in the grand scale of things. God is everything. We have to prove that we would live all our lives for His kingdom. We must be able to speak like Paul says, I am the servant of God. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, sent by Jesus, so to say. We must be willing to obey what Jesus says that if anyone would follow me, he must be willing to take up His cross. That means put a hold on your own personal ambitions and your life and follow Him. And so, once you settle this – everyone needs to. I don’t know where you are right now in your journey of ministry. You need to get to a point where you make up your mind and say, You know what? I’m not pursuing no career. I’m just following Jesus. My goal in life is to get as many people into the kingdom of course, myself, to be in that Kingdom and to live fully as Christ wants me to live.

Once that decision is made then you will now ask yourself, what is the best tool to do that? For some, it will be secular ministry – working in the marketplace place. That’s the best way for them to draw others into the Kingdom.  And I know I have met people who are doing very well in the marketplace and they are really drawing people. They attract people to Jesus, bring people to their pastors and to the church and they are ministering, leading people to Christ, getting them saved and baptized.

I don’t know if those people will do as well behind the pulpit, serving in the church. So, some are like that. Some will be better off on the pulpit preaching, doing evangelistic outreaches and ministering to people on the street or music. Whatever God calls you to do, if He wants you to do it full time, you do it because your goal is to build the kingdom not to build a career.

The last set of people are those whom He has called to do both. They will focus on ministry because that’s what every Christian is supposed to focus on but they will be allowed and given the grace to balance it out by being in the marketplace. So whatever He tells you to do, you choose to do that. You follow instruction.

So how do I put this? I put it in 2 points. The first point, Unite your life. Make everything in your life about the kingdom. Don’t look for balance. Don’t say, I spend sometime in the ministry and I’ll spend some time doing my own thing. There’s nothing like that. It’s one thing. Everything is for God so unify your life. Don’t look for balance rather look for unity in your life. That’s the first step.

The second step is follow the leading of the Holy Spirit to introduce you and many people to the kingdom. So, you need to always follow the instructions of the Holy Spirit. Like in my own case, I had to leave the business for a while and spend all my time in the church office praying and then on the street evangelizing, talking to people, connecting with people to build the Kingdom – to build the work of God. In some other people’s cases, that is not what it would require. So we follow. We follow.

The third thing is live righteously i.e. love like Jesus loves. Live righteously! Love like Jesus loves. So that scripture answers that question – captures this dilemma and solves it. Seek the kingdom of God above all else, that is above having a nice car, above having a beautiful house, above having children that go to the best schools. Seek the Kingdom above your own life, above all else then live righteously. Love like Jesus loves and He will give you everything you need. So, all the other things that others are running after, becomes a responsibility of God for your life. So, He may ask you to continue to lecture for example if you are a lecturer or professor, He will ask you to stay in school and teach because He knows that is the best way to reach out to those children, those young ones that He needs them to work in His Kingdom. So, you don’t just jump out of your work and start doing ministry. No! Or set up a program and start doing it or open up a church… No! You don’t do that. You desire to see God’s kingdom expanded and you ask for the instruction on how to do it.

Then, I’m asking and this whole podcast is about people whom God will ask to do the ministry work and also keep their marketplace work. Because there are so many thousands of people that are doing that now because God is asking them to do it. Some people are in a full-time ministry, behind the pulpit, in the street doing some work, who ought to add some work in the marketplace to their plate. And there are some who are in the marketplace, who ought to be in ministry but they are afraid. They are thinking, if I’m going to do ministry, then I have to get out of the marketplace. So there’s that tension. So I’ve heard people say that when you are called to ministry, that’s your work. You can’t do any other thing, you can’t mix it. You can’t serve God and Mammon, that’s how they put it. But that’s not what that scripture is saying. Working in the secular or in the marketplace is not serving Mammon. That’s just a platform for serving God. You can reach more people in the marketplace sometimes than behind the pulpit.

So, this is just what the Lord has opened my eyes to see as I’ve worked in the ministry for a while now. I’ve discovered that everything in one’s life – your home, the way you love your children, the way you play with them, your community, the way you attend the community event, all of them, all of these things are missional work. They are ministry. You can see everything as one. Going to the grocery, whatever you are doing, everything is ministry. There is nothing… We don’t try to balance things out. I’ll do some when I’m in church. It’s ministry and then every other thing is my stuff. There’s no “your stuff”. Everything of the Christian, of the believer is God’s. So, we must see that and that will help us a lot.

Now, the next thing I will like to talk about is just some steps, some practical steps that I have used over the years, some things that I have learnt over the years that can help either way. Whatever type of minister you are, as long as you love to serve the Lord, if you take some of these points, it will help.

 

1. I read a lot about God’s provision for His servant. That’s what I do. When I didn’t understand how God is going to provide, I began to read books about men of God – George Muller, John G Lake, Bishop TD Jakes, David  Yungi-Choo and different other people. It helped me to have faith to know that God has got my back. He will provide. He will fulfill what He said. He will provide everything you need.
2. I did not do this enough but I know that each time I look back to how God provided, I feel so blessed. Writing down God’s provision. That’s number 2 – to write down. Each time God blesses you, put it down. Record it so that you can go back to look at it and say, my God is a great provider.
3. Remind yourself everyday that your Father owns the earth and you don’t lack. God owns the earth. In serving Him, we cannot lack. So it’s important that we think about these things. Even when you are a Bivo Minister and you are working at an office and you are earning good money, you must remember that sometimes He will demand you to have faith for even more to do the work. So remind yourself everyday that God is a provider.
4. Reject and resist every temptation to complain. So don’t complain that you don’t have time. The people that are Bivo, they don’t have as much time as the people that are working full-time in the ministry, in the church, in the spring context. They don’t have as much time. Don’t complain about time. Those who don’t have as much money, don’t complain. Just believe that Jesus is the owner of your life and that everything is working according to His plans and let’s just listen.
5. Ask for a wisdom to cut down expenses. Be willing to wear used clothes and shoes. Trust God that your equipment at home will not break down, buy some appliances used, do without anything you can do without. You know, my wife, God helped her and she had the grace to manage things. I believe that as Christians, as children of God, God brings us into different situations at different times even as bi-vocational ministers. The Lord may require that you take a chunk of the money that He is giving you to do some ministry and you may have to do without. Learn to do that. That’s what God is training us to do and that’s what God requires from us.
6. If your spouse will be available to work, that’s number 6, let him work. Let her work.
7. Work harder in ministry than you would have worked even in an office. So, if you are in the place where you are working as a minister right now and you are thinking of getting a Bivo job to supplement that, then put a lot of time into the work in the ministry as much as you will put in the work outside. Go in the office… Like that’s what I did. I go in the office, spent time praying, spoke to people and today, I spend a lot of time doing the work of ministry and I spend one or two hours doing the work where God has used to bless the work that we are doing – to provide. I just work one hour or two hours on the computer and some weeks, I don’t touch the computer to do any of my blogging or anything because there is a passion for God’s work.
8. Produce High-quality content. Record your sermons. Whatever you are doing in the ministry, make it very organized so that you can replicate. As BiVo ministers, we don’t have enough time. We don’t have too much time so you need to be able to recycle what you are doing. I didn’t do a lot of this earlier but I’m seeing the importance of this now which is putting things down things. Write down your sermons, prepare them well, record them, use them over and over again as you disciple people.

Start a family business if God allows you to do that. Be joyful in everything. And lastly, this is a journey. It always gets better. It always gets better. I’m a testimony to that. Our family is a testimony to that. Our lives are always getting better and we are always getting better at doing things in the ministry. Why? Because we are learning more. We are getting closer to God. We have more faith in the fact that our Father knows what concerns us and what’s best to move His kingdom forward.

If you decide to go on a ride with Jesus on the BiVo ministry or full-time [it depends on what God tells you to do at different points in your life], I want to assure you that once you decide that God’s call for your life is the most important thing, the Kingdom of God is your highest priority, it’d only get better.

The biggest problem that many of the children of God have is trying to struggle between their own life and God’s life. They begin to say, what about me? What about me? In the Kingdom, once you are in the Kingdom, God takes care of you. God’s got your back. He will provide everything you need. That’s His own responsibility and your responsibility, your call is to listen and say, Lord, what do you want me to do this week? How do you want to move. I know people have looked at our lives and they don’t understand how we live our lives. Because when we listen, when you listen to God, sometimes He’d ask you to do something that may not be rationally the best. In other words, you may look like… You know you have this job and the job pays so much – say 100,000 a year and the Lord who is calling you to ministry may say, you know what? You need to take a job of 50,000 so that you can have more time. How are you going to respond to that? When you tell your friends that or family that, they think you are foolish. I know the Kingdom needs money but maybe that’s not what God needs from you. He needs your time.

In other case, God may ask you to change jobs or change cities because He wants to give you a job that demands less of your time but pays more so that you can have more money to do the work of God. But you don’t know that at the moment so it looks as if it’s not the right thing to do. How do we know what’s right to do? We wait on God. We let Him guide us.

I want to say this to wrap up this session. There are no fixed answers when working with God. Nobody can tell you exactly what you should do. Each person must receive direction from the Holy Spirit. You need to receive direction from the Holy Spirit for your life, for your ministry and know that those directions will be within biblical parameters. He’s not going to tell you to do something that is not biblical but when you follow, your joy will be full. You will have peace in your heart and you will have fruit in your ministry.

Thank you. That’s where I’m going to stop for now. And in the next session where I talk about resources,

Resources Segment

I will like to mention that the resource I want to leave with you this week is a website called the Blue Letter Bible. So you just go on Google and type Blue Letter Bible. It’s a website that I have used since when I was in theological school. It gives you an interlinear Bible ie it shows you the Greek and the Hebrew words for each of the words that you read in the Bible. And it’s very helpful. I’ve found it very helpful so I encourage you to go to Blue Letter Bible and it has several commentaries and comments. It’s a very useful resource. I used it and I encourage you to use it as well. So thank you very much.

Question and Answer Segment

Now, let’s get into the question and answer time. Today, I don’t have a lot of time to answer questions. I have one question that I want to answer in today’s segment and that is something someone asked me a few weeks ago that I’d like to talk about – love. She says she doesn’t really know how to express love and I think that’s a big question. Any Bivo pastor, any minister actually, our work is loving like Jesus loves. So, the call for a pastor is to love exactly and allow love to flow from their heart to the other person. And this sister says, I don’t know how to express the love especially to my family members. I don’t know how to express love.

I’m going to answer that question briefly today and the next week, I’ll answer it more. I’ll take more time to talk about how to express the love of Christ. How to love like Jesus does. In answering that question briefly, I would say this.

To love is to respond the move of the Holy Spirit in your heart. The way to love is to respond to the move of the Holy Spirit in your heart. Because we are filled with the love of God even those who are shy, find themselves taking the right action. If you find a woman who is so shy or a man who is so shy, doesn’t really like to talk in public or does not really like to act out in public and you set their car or their home or their dogs, (God forbid ) even something very precious to them on fire, you will see them act.

Why did they act? Because they love that stuff and that stuff means a lot to them so you’d see them act. Something they live is being destroyed then you will see them act. At that point, nobody is thinking about, “Oh what would people say about me, the way I’m running to pick my phone out of the fire or the way I’m trying to rescue my dogs from the fire or the way I’m trying to rescue my child from the fire [God forbid]?” Now, why am I saying this? I’m saying that when the live of God fills our heart, we find ourselves responding the way Jesus will respond.

So what do we do? We allow the love of God fill our hearts. How do we allow the love of God to fill our hearts? By faith. Everything in the Kingdom is done by faith. We got born again by faith. We simply believed the Word that God made real to us and we started acting on it. So how do we respond in love?

How do we act in love? First thing we do, you believe that the love of God is in your heart. I think for that sister, she knew that… She says, “I know that I love people in my heart but I don’t know how to act, I don’t know how to respond…”You don’t need to think about how to respond for now. You just think about what’s best for this person and as you meditate on what’s best for this person and you meditate on Lord, how do I express this thing that is the best for this person in the capacity that I have? And the you act. Some people would respond by giving. Some would respond by praying. Some would respond by talking to the person. Some would respond by sharing. Some are very touchy-feely, they hug and they touch. What matters is that you move that person from where they are to the better position that is within your power as the Holy Spirit walks with you. As you do that, you are loving. You know, there is no fixed way of loving.

Every person will love in a different way. That’s why we are unique. So that’s the answer to that question. As BiVo Ministers, that’s our big work because you bring in love to the workplace. It’s not the same as in the church where the people are expected to love, there is an expectation. But you are in a place where there is no boundary. In short, you are not expected to act in love. You are expected to work and find a way to outsmart the other person. Sometimes, the environment that we work in, you are trying to be the better person and to rise up beyond the other person but we are called to love within that context.

 

So, I encourage you. Next week, I’m going to talk more about that – how to really love like Jesus loves. God bless you. Thank you for listening. Don’t forget to head over to adesobanjo.com and leave your questions. This segment is for questions and answers and I will like to share the recordings with people. So go to the website, click on that red button and record the question. It’s only 90 seconds so make it sharp and make it fast and concise. I’m going to be willing to share some of it with us and answer them. God bless you.

 

Father, we thank you for everyone that has listened to this. We pray that your blessing will rest on this and the words will impact everyone that is listening. Faith will rise in our hearts and we will take actions and live for you and build this kingdom that you have given to us. You brought us into this kingdom and we appreciate it and we pray that many more will be brought into this kingdom this week, in Jesus name, Amen.

 

God bless you. Bye Bye!