What's your other job?
The many vocations of the Canadian Multivocational Ministry Project
Research nerds, rise up. If you haven’t already, hurry along and read the full research report of the Canadian Multivocational Ministry Project. It’s a great study that helps name many dynamics of multivocational ministry.1 There’s plenty to unpack in the report but for today I’m going to stick to a list that comes early in the report. They provide a list of all the other jobs clergy have. Get ready for this delight:
I love the diversity of this list. But I also see patterns of white collar, religiously influenced careers.
To me, just this cursory glance says something important about how clergy are boxed in a bit. In my traditional pastoral ministry is tied to a three-year master of divinity degree.2 A three year masters degree is no joke. It takes considerable time and effort. What kind of other career suits this training? I think the list of careers above tries to find use of the MDiv.
This is just a hypothesis, but ties to my own experience. I went through a fairly rigorous masters degree program, taking considerable time, money, and energy. Full-time three years is about as quick as it can go, compared to the popular MBA which is part-time two to four years, but as fast as one year in an accelerated program. Additionally, people tend to know what an MBA is. If you say you have a masters of divinity, they want to know if you went to Hogwarts.
All to say, what do you do with student debt and an MDiv? You become a chaplain, or consultant, or spiritual director. You try to channel all those pastoral gifts toward something more lucrative.
Of course people end up in pastor adjacent roles because they want to be a pastor. I get that, too. So much of what I hope for in multivocational spaces is that the vocations are as freely chosen as possible.
This is all skewed by my own bias. Reflecting on this makes me wonder about what job prospects I’m missing out on because of the ways in which my clergy job has taken up so much educational space. What if I was able to study music, or finance, or mathematics? I never had room for those in my educational path. Is it realistic for a part-time job to require such an intensive degree?
Many thanks to the researchers for the Canadian Multivocational Ministry Project for collect this data and opening up these questions—and more to come.
If you’re up for it, leave a comment with what your other job is! I’d love to hear what we have reflected in our little community, clergy or otherwise.
What I’m reading
I went way out of my normal genre preferences and read Razorblade Tears by S. A. Cosby. Fair warning, this book is violent. It’s a revenge tale, dealing with the aftermath of the murder of a young married couple. It’s their fathers, one Black and one white, who are left to grapple with their sons’ queerness, class identity, and legacy. This book had a pretty straightforward commentary on race and class, but with a thriller pace.
What life looks like
Cat bliss
Including saying multivocational instead of bivocational. From the report page 5, “While the project was originally called the Canadian Bivocational Ministry Project, it became apparent that several of our interviewees had more than one job or serious volunteer commitment in addition to a congregational leadership role. We adopted the terminology of multivocational to reflect that reality.”
Mostly. In the UCC we’ve been talking about multiple paths to ministry for a while.
My other job is a Medical Laboratory Scientist.
My "other job" while both working toward ordination and very much likely after the fact as well - is Program Assistant and Data Management in the Non-Profit Human Services sector.