Back in the 60s, professor Bill Webber at Union Seminary in NY, offered his 10-10-10 plan for a vital Christian community. In those days a $10,000 salary was a livable wage. He suggested that if you found ten families who had an income of ten thousand dollars and each of them tithed, then you had a salary for the pastor of ten thousand dollars. If s/he tithed that left you one thousand dollars for programing for your community of faith. While the math doesn’t work out today, the point is that the future of the church community and its theological leadership rests on the biblical faithfulness of a small group of disciples, as it did from the beginning.
We are clearly going through a major transformation of the Christian community and it is not clear what form the body of Christ will take in the future. As we consider this, I would like to suggest several models that may be part of what emerges.
The small committed house church, similar to what Dr. Webber suggested, is certainly one model. The pastor of such a church may also supplement his or her income through some “tent making” employment. Many Christian communities are trying this. Some couples are also considering that one of them works in another profession as a legitimate way of supporting the pastoral work of their spouse.
Drawing upon the Methodist experience, we may also have pastors with several churches under their care. In Chiapas, Mexico, they have set up a whole framework of accountability where a church is responsible for several congregations who in turn are responsible for several mission stations. The pastors of the churches have the additional charge of visiting the congregations and mission stations. Such ministries rely even more heavily on lay leadership to care for the congregations and mission stations in between visits of the ordained clergy.
The Presbyterians, and I’m sure others, have had success with an increased use of Certified Lay Pastors (CLP). Here they are benefiting from the skills of lay people who have had careers in other professions and now exercise their sense of call with great devotion to some of the smaller congregations. We may want to look at the collegial relationship between the seminary trained and ordained pastor and their mentor responsibilities with respect to the CLPs.
We will continue to have some of the larger churches who can employ full staffs, etc. We may want to rethink their relationship to the smaller branches of Christianity. When we speak of the one body of Christ, we may need to expand our sense of accountability to each other. In Dr. Webbers suggestion about the small house churches, he also mentioned the need for Christians to gather for festival celebrations at Cathedral like experiences.
These are just some possibilities. What are some ideas that you might have?
