During the ten years that Beth and I served as Global Instructors with Timothy Two Project International, both of us were bi-vocational. We each had two “jobs.” During that time, we considered that our primary “jobs” were as itinerant missionaries, traveling to various places in Latin America and the Caribbean to train pastors (me) and children’s ministry leaders (Beth).
The missionary work provided no salary, so we had to “raise support” (fund-raise) to pay for various expenses. To do so, we wrote to friends, family members, and churches who had known us for a long time, asking for their prayers and financial support. The money they gave month in and month out, year in and year out, paid for: 1) our travel expenses, 2) the printing of the workbooks we distributed to each of our students, 3) the lunch meals we provided to our students each day of the workshops, and 4) some of our personal living expenses at home.
Our secondary jobs paid for the remainder of our living expenses. My secondary job for the first three years was a part-time small business in which I painted houses – interior and exterior – and I did home repairs for people in our local community. I posted some of the results of my work on a Facebook page so people could see the quality of my work. Most of the referrals I received were from satisfied customers telling their friends and family about the service I provided. For the remaining seven years, I worked part-time for my local church doing pastoral care – visiting church members in the hospital and care facilities, praying with members preparing for surgery, making preparations for and conducting funerals, and coordinating the work of elders and deacons who reached out each week in various ways to contact and pray with church members who had medical concerns or were shut-in.
Beth’s secondary part-time job was companion care for older adults. This included in-home, nonmedical support that provided company, social interaction, and help with everyday tasks for persons who were able to manage some of their personal care but benefited from regular visits, practical assistance, and someone keeping an eye on how they were doing. Most of the referrals she received, like mine, were from satisfied customers telling their friends and family about the service she provided.
One of the the benefits of having secondary jobs was that the money we earned took some of the pressure off the fund-raising for our living expenses. We were totally dependent on fund raising for our missionary work, but we were not totally dependent on fund raising for our living expenses – house payments, insurance, utilities, food, clothing, etc. Those expenses were supplemented by our secondary jobs.
What I’m calling our secondary jobs were actually our primary jobs before we began working as missionaries. By God’s providence, the work we were already doing when our service began, fit nicely with itinerant missionary work. Because our work as missionaries did not require us to be overseas full time, we were able to continue our previous work in between trips that lasted one or two weeks at a time.
Another benefit of retaining our non-missionary jobs, I believe, was that it kept us vitally connected with our local community and church. This became very clear to me during a six month period in which I took a break from my pastoral care work at the church because I was feeling overwhelmed by the responsibilities of the missionary work. In fact, it was not just a break, I actually resigned from the position at the church. But during that time, I felt increasingly disconnected from the people and the church, even though I was still attending the church most weekends. I felt disconnected, I think, because I was not serving the church in any way. I was only receiving financial support from it. I don’t know, but that disconnection may be how some full time missionaries feel when they are on the field. I felt so disconnected after six months that I asked to be re-hired back into that position. And I cut back on some of the work I was doing as a missionary so that I could better balance the two jobs. Because I was not on the field full-time, I seemed to need the job at home also. I imagine if I had not been paid to do pastoral care, I would have found another way to serve at home as a volunteer.
I know other itinerant missionaries who do something similar balancing their work on the field and at home. Some maintain full-time jobs and go overseas on their vacation time. Others serve in their churches and communities in volunteer capacities – as elders, teachers, occasionally preaching, serving on mission committees, and mentoring local missionaries and church leaders.
One final benefit of having served as bi-vocational missionaries that comes to mind is that many of the pastors and ministry leaders we taught in Latin American and the Caribbean were also bi-vocational. After becoming a pastor, they either took on another job or continued in the job they already had when they were called into ministry just to make ends meet. This occurred often because their congregations were too small or too poor to provide all the support they needed for themselves and their families. So, I could understand some of the pressures they experienced trying to balance their work with the church in addition to their other jobs. One pastor in Haiti, for example, balanced work as church pastor, an orphanage administrator, a Christian school administrator and as a taxi driver. A pastor in El Salvador worked full time in the Department of Social Services as a social worker in addition to his responsibilities in the church. A pastor in Belize also worked construction. And a pastor in Mexico also worked as a public school teacher.
Looking back, I’m grateful for the way God provided for us during those ten years—through the generosity of our supporters and through the work we were able to continue doing at home. Balancing those responsibilities was not always easy, and at times we had to make adjustments. But what I thought of as our “secondary” jobs were more than a way to help pay the bills. They gave us opportunities to serve our community, kept us connected to our church, and helped us better understand the lives of the leaders we were teaching. In that sense, our work at home and our work overseas were not two separate callings, but different parts of the same calling to love and serve the people God placed in our lives.
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