Mining For Dreams Through Bivocational Ministry.
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“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you always imagined.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
I was in Africa at the end of last year, working for a humanitarian organization.
It had been about 10 years since the last time I visited the continent. Not much had changed. Poverty is the normative way of life.
Children hound foreigners for money at the airports and marketplaces, but we are encouraged not to give handouts by the host organization because it will throw off the economic system. Go figure.
When I look into the eyes of the people and see the hopelessness and despair, I can’t help but recall those words from Thoreau. They are hanging in my bathroom at home. I see them every day.
I try to live by them in some small way, yet they resonate more clearly when I’m put in a situation outside of the ordinary. Though I believe that all people are created equal, I don’t believe that we are all born into equal opportunities.
Geographical limitations, physical inabilities, economic restrictions, educational imbalances, and intellectual differences all preclude some people from living the dream life, or even the life they dream of having one day.
For a moment, ponder the life of the coal miner in Kentucky. Was that his dream job? Who aspires to mine for fossil fuels as a child? The hard reality is that someone has to do it.
If he doesn’t do it, then you and I will not have the resources to live our dreams.
The child in Uganda, the factory worker in China, and the developmentally disabled person — all would find our notions of imagination beyond their grasp due to the cruel hand that life has dealt them.
Their circumstances prevent reaching for the stars or even seeing the stars in the first place.
So, we must ask the questions: How do we chase our dreams when we don’t have the means? How do we live the life we imagine when reality holds us back? I am a firm believer in hope, but some things will never change.
I do believe we can live above our circumstances. We can choose to approach life not from what we have, but from who we are. It’s about living from the inside out.
Viktor Frankl discussed this ideology when he said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
I was a pastor in traditional churches for 25 years, getting paid to do what I love as well as making a difference in the lives of people. My days were spent mentoring, teaching, and helping people become better versions of themselves.
I loved almost every minute of it.
Without going into the long story, one day God asked if I was willing to give back the gift He gave me. Would I give my job back to Him? I felt like Abraham in the desert with Isaac, except that Abraham had a prior covenant with God.
He was told he would be the father of many nations. God never promised me that I would get to do this forever, and the thought of losing it scared me. Long story short, I left professional ministry almost nine years ago.
I can’t say I never looked back, but I can say that I have not gone back.
So, now I had to decide what to do.
I was faced with the questions: Does not getting paid for being who I was created to be stop me from being who I am? Am I betraying myself by thinking that I can work a regular job rather than be a pastor, or is there a way to still be me and do something else for a living?
I had worked in several different fields prior to becoming a pastor: retail, agriculture, manufacturing, restaurant, and construction. I am good with computers, and I have a degree in communications and marketing.
There has to be something out there for me. Little did I know that finding a job in the midst of a recession would be increasingly difficult.
Eventually I would end up working with a friend in the foreclosure business, which was the only business doing well in a down market. My wife is an administrator in a hospital. We joke that we have jobs that do well when people aren’t.
Bottom line: my job involves repossessing people’s homes and evicting them. It’s not exactly my dream job , nor is it a compassionate job.
In the middle of this job change and new revenue stream, I am still longing to make a difference in the lives of people, so I started a home church that pays diddly squat, but it is something that I absolutely love.
I volunteer as a mentor to underprivileged students in a neighboring community. I joined a writing group to practice my creative expression as well as find inspiration in fellow artists.
All of this is apart from financial remuneration because I realize that money doesn’t have to define who I am or what I do. I may not get to do it full-time, but not everyone can or does, and that’s okay.
I have been a bivocational pastor for the last eight years. It is challenging and rewarding at the same time.
One of the benefits of not being paid for the work that I do with the church is that it affords me a level of freedom to speak without worrying about whether I will defend someone’s pocketbook.
I do struggle with finding the time to meet with people between work and life’s responsibilities, but I do.
The foreclosure business is a thankless job, but I can choose to be a person of compassion and grace in the midst of one of the most difficult times in a person’s life.
My son once said to me, “Dad, if I ever have to lose my house, I hope you would be the one to tell me.” I think I wept for an hour.
Mentoring is my way of changing the future. My church feeds my soul as much, if not more, than I feed them. I write to live my dream of making a difference. Maybe one day one of these will pay, but maybe they won’t.
Maybe I’m supposed to mine the coal of hearts so others can live the dream.
We all have dreams, but life can impede them. That doesn’t mean that we stop being who we are. Great change often starts with little steps, and those little steps begin within the heart.
We are creatives because we create. Consequently, we need to create a space to be creative. Make room in your life to be who you are apart from your job, even if the means are not there to make a living at it.
Vocation is more about a calling than a salary. A profession is what I am paid to do. A vocation is about doing what we love. It comes from the Latin — to call, as in from God or what we were created for.
What are you called to do apart from a salary or along with a salary?
Maybe I wasn’t born to be the pastor of a megachurch. And speaking of megachurch, talk about a misunderstood dream job. You are more a CEO than a shepherd of people. It is not my idea of a dream job.
Maybe I was born to give people wings. I would be happy with that — money or not. Sign me up, Red Bull. As hard as it is, don’t let money be your motivation. Write, paint, sing, photograph, carve, or sculpt, and share it with the world.
The ability to create was given to us freely. Freely give its products back.
If by some stroke of wonderful luck or divine blessing, you get paid for what you love to do, use your blessing to empower others to live their dreams or help those who can’t do it to find their dreams in everyday life regardless of the circumstances.
If Viktor Frankl could find joy in a Nazi concentration camp, I can still be me punching out at an 8 to 5 job and still do what I love. I don’t have it all figured out, and some days are better than others, but this is me living my dream.
What will you do to live yours?
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Jim Wern is a renaissance man in a modern world; a spiritual traveler, searching for vestiges of the divine in humanity and imparting seeds of hope in a desolate world. He is a husband, father, friend, mentor, creative, tech geek, amateur writer, photographer and chef. His ramblings can be found at his website. He lives in sunny Southern California with his beautiful wife of 31 years.
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