Generational and Systemic Barriers
The ATS Black Student Debt Project
When I was a seminarian, I worked multiple jobs. Seminary was expensive. I worked multiple student jobs through work study programs, but this was also when I discovered teaching piano was both more directly targeted to my gifts and also more lucrative.
But I don’t think I really thought I would be taking this multiple job approach into my ministry. I didn’t have any bivocational role models. I had a sense that my jobs might be underpaid, but the expectation in the white church spaces I inhabited as a white person myself was that ministry was a full-time vocation that was able to cover your expenses fully.
I kept thinking about my own experiences and expectations as I read the report from the ATS Black Student Debt Project. I highly encourage you to click through and at least skim. The full introduction and background can provide you the history of the project, but I will mostly reference the money autobiographies collected from 46 students from 10 different ATS Institutions (Association of Theological Schools). Although it’s not the express purpose of the project, it’s an excellent project that highlights the financial, racial, and cultural roots of multivocational ministry. To have any conversation, we have to note where the study begins, and that is with systemic disparity:
In 2016, while 55% of all graduates reported incurring educational debt in seminary, over 80% of Black graduates reported incurring debt. Their approximate average debt incurred was $46,250, almost $10,000 higher than the overall average for ATS graduates.1
I felt these numbers, thinking about the recent highs and lows around student debt forgiveness. I know anecdotally what it means to have student debt in my household, while knowing other who carry no debt as education was paid for by family wealth. The heaviness of debt feels familiar. And yet while reading the study I was able to notice the moment where my story diverged. Because like I mentioned, I didn’t have an expectation that biovcationality would be my lifetime calling. I knew church spaces of wealth and stability. Bivocational ministry is often a disruption of the plan for white spaces. But hear what this study relays about Black students. It says, “Most were planning on working multiple jobs in order to provide financially for themselves and their families while also pursuing their call from God to ministry.”2
At the risk of oversimplifying, I wonder if this is how we could name what is often the difference between multivocational ministry between Black and white churches. The financial implications of racism and longstanding racist practices in the church means white communities can assume wealth, while Black communities cannot. And so follow bivocational expectations. And so, this is only one study and one place to start. But however you get there, you can’t talk about bivocational ministry without also talking about race.
More reading
Bivocational and Beyond: Educating for Thriving Multivocational Ministry is the new textbook for all things well researched about bivocational ministry. (I’m sure I’ll reference it again.) Take particular note of the essay “Black and Bivocational” by Jessica Young Brown.
An article about Black seminary graduate with statistics galore.
It’s not a new problem: Christian Century has been publishing articles about student debt for over a decade including this one.
Upcoming Co-Vocational Ministry Event
Eden Seminary is hosting a free online conversation, “The Future of Co-Vocational Ministry.” It’s tomorrow! I’ll be there—let me know if you will be, too.
What life looks like
Orchids at the Cleveland Botanical Garden.
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