I began this blog article in late November, and worked it through several drafts and researched it as thoroughly as I was able, and then had it reviewed by several trusted people, and then, after all that, decided not to publish it.  Instead, I wanted to reach out first directly to the Starr King Board, and so on December 15th, 2014, I sent a letter to the Starr King Board and SKSM President Rosemary Bray McNatt.  Since my December drafts, however, a lot has happened.  Two more faculty have resigned from Starr King.  Rev. Kurt Kuhwald's resignation letter and other documents can be read on Dan Harper's blog.  It's also worth noting that Rev. Kurt Kuhwald also asks the UUA Board to conduct an inquiry -- something I don't address in my statement, but worth considering further.  The UU Society for Community Ministries has put out a Statement of Concern, calling on Starr King to reverse the refusal of diplomas and to focus energy on restoring trust.  And a list has been published of colleagues pledging support for Starr King, including financial donations.  In staying silent, I was hoping for Starr King to come to resolution quickly.  That has not happened, and events have continued to escalate.  And so I feel it's time to publish the statement I worked so hard on in December, updating it only slightly to reflect recent events.  

In the last week or two, I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bivocational ministry" as the potential saving model for sustainability in our movement.  The subject has come up in a number of collegial conversations, and Scott Wells introduces the subject in a recent post. 

First of all, as far as I can see "bivocational ministry" is just a fancy term for "part-time ministry" that makes it sound like something the minister wants because they have some other wonderful job they don't want to give up.

What are the problems with bivocational ministry?  It can be a great choice if:

• You're independently wealthy
• You're a second-career minister with a lucrative first profession
• You have a spouse with a good income

On the other hand, it's not so great if:

•  You're a first-career minister
• You're not independently wealthy
• You don't have a spouse with a good income

I was a part-time minister for a couple of years.  You could call me "bivocational" since I had a second part-time job.  As a first-career minister, I don't have a professional practice in psychology to make up a second job.  What I have is an M.A. in English, and so I taught adjunct at a community college.  I continue to do that now, even though I'm in full-time ministry.  But I taught enough during my 3/4-time ministry to make up 1/4 of my income through college teaching.  And I gave up that life as quickly as I could to go into full-time ministry.  Why?

Part-time work in this country usually comes without benefits.  As a 3/4-time minister, I therefore threw much of my total cost of ministry (TCM) into benefits.  I had a benefit package that looked much like a full-time ministers, but with a tiny salary attached to it.  The other 1/4-time job would make up some of the income difference, but not all of it.  Full-time work, because of the benefit balance piece, pays better than two part-time jobs.  Esssentially, you see, I was paying for 1/4 of my benefits that wouldn't be part of a balanced 3/4-time job out of salary.  And adjunct salary being what it is, it wasn't equivalent to 1/4 of a professional salary.

This leads to my second point: part-time employment is usually under-paid.  Even if the minister isn't underpaid in their half-time ministry, their other half-time job probably is underpaid, especially if this is a first-career minister.  As you find in ministry, being well-trained for ministry doesn't exactly put you on the top of the market for non-ministry jobs out there.

And part-time ministry is overworked.  Full-time ministers in our movement often get one Sunday a month off.  Most half-time ministers seem to get two Sundays a month off.  And 3/4-time ministers get one Sunday a month off.  That's what I find as I talk to my part-time colleagues.  So a 3/4-time minister is often doing full-time ministry for 3/4 of the money.  And since full-time ministry is often a job and a half at full-time pay, that's even worse.

I left part-time ministry for health reasons: I was pregnant.  And I had good health care through my ministry profession.  I probably could've gotten maternity leave (although this was a debate with the congregation, which is another story).  But an adjunct professor gets no paid maternity leave.  So essentially getting pregnant meant I would lose 1/4 of my income at the same time as I gained 1/3 of my family.  That math didn't look good or sustainable to me.  And the idea of working as much as I was working with a baby also didn't sit well.  And so I found myself in search and pregnant at the same time. 

For me, bivocational ministry looks like a ministry model to attract older and wealthier ministers.  It looks like an even more classist ministry.  And it looks like a future that if we pursue it will lose a lot of ministers who would add a lot to our movement, but who simply can't afford the luxury of part-time work.

In a movement that's talking about how work should be sustainable for a family, let's quit the talk of bivocational ministry as our future fix, and keep thinking about how to make a sustainable ministry sustainable for congregations as well.  It's a challenge, but if we don't meet this challenge we aren't living our faith.

I've been using my tablet (a Nexus 7 Android tablet, and before that my Kindle) to preach from rather than paper-printed text as of late, something that I know some of my colleagues are doing but some are hesitant about.  There are some good reasons for doing so:

1.  It saves paper.

That would be enough, but here are some more:

2.  I can move around with it and am not tied to the pulpit, even if I want to preach from a manuscript.
3.  It cuts down on clutter and filing. 
4.  No shuffling or sliding or flipping paper noises.
5.  Nobody accidentally walks away with part of my manuscript.
6.  I never lose a page.
7.  I never get to the middle and find out that the ink ran out midway through printing.
8.  I never leave a page on my printer.
9.  I never grab the wrong folder.
10.  For Christmas Eve and other dimly lit services, it's back-lit.
11.  Color doesn't cost more!  

For people worrying about technology failures, I can say that I've never had the tablet or Kindle technology let me down, but I've had a number of paper-related problems, including running out of ink, a printer that fails to communicate with my computer, and #5-9 above.  But I have taken to sending the file to both my tablet and my Kindle and bringing them both, just in case, so if the tablet had failed to charge fully the night before, for example, the Kindle would be ready to grab.  I've never had the electronic technology fail me, though, whereas I've had numerous problems with paper, from text where the ink ran out to grabbing the wrong folder, to leaving a page on the printer. 

There are some things that are different about the tablet, however, so here are a few tips:

1. Experiment with font sizes.  I have good eyes and normally preach with a 12-point font.  I find that if I set the font to 26-point, it's the right size for me on the tablet and Kindle.  Another way to do it is to set the font to what you would normally use, and then manipulate the paper size to be tablet-sized.  Both of these formatting options work with the Kindle.  I've only used the former with the tablet, but I assume the later would work. 
2. Lock the screen rotation, so that if you're walking around and hold it at a little bit of an angle, it doesn't keep flipping back and forth in orientation.
3. Experiment with different apps to read it in.  I was using the Adobe app, but have found I prefer to read it in the Kindle app.  The reason is that I like to tap on the corner to turn pages rather than swipe, as I find the motion both less distracting and better for keeping one hand free while preaching.  An advantage of the Adobe app is that you can make hand-written notes on the document if you want.  Sometimes I open the file in both so that I have this choice.  If I want to use the Kindle app, however, it's better to e-mail it to my Kindle (using your Kindle or Kindle app's e-mail address, which you can find out in Amazon), rather than just e-mailing it to myself and opening in Kindle. I find if you just open it using Kindle, if you close the app it loses the file and you have to do it again. 
4. Find a good cover with a strap to slip your hand in on back.  My tablet's cover isn't optimal, and I like my Kindle's cover better.  It's this one, which has a strap to slip my hand in, so that I don't have to be holding on to the tablet, and frees up the thumb to flip pages.  I plan to get essentially the same cover for my tablet soon.  Whatever your choice, make sure that cover looks professional enough that it wouldn't be out of place at a wedding or funeral, and that the tablet doesn't slip out of it easily, which is the problem with my current one. 
5. Make sure your tablet is set so that it won't time out and shut down during the meditation or hymn, especially if you have a password on it.
6. This is the one I've just learned.  You don't see as much on a page, so your page breaks are very important.  It may seem at first like you want to have a page break at the end of an element, but if you can't tell it's the end of an element your voice won't have the right inflection as you end the reading.  So put some sort of symbol at the end of each element -- maybe a little chalice -- so that you know the reading has come to an end.  And go through and make sure that all your page breaks are not at places you'll find jarring.  

That's really all there is to it -- it's easier than it seems.  And if you're still asking why you should do this, go back to reason #1.  That's all you need. 

It seems I still have more to say on this issue, so those who are tired of it already may want to just close this post now and avoid the next few.  I promise to move on to another subject soon, but having NOT written about this for ten years of ministry, I've built up a list of things to say.  And it seems that there is a segment of people who have been yearning for someone to write about this. 

So what was the straw, the final thing that made me break my silence?  I think it was the "fat-shaming professor," Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico, who tweeted, "Dear obese PhD applicants: if you didn't have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won't have the willpower to do a dissertation #truth."

For the record, having written an M.A. thesis, a D.Min. thesis, and something over 300 sermons, I'm pretty sure that's not the #truth.  But I was raised by a fat man with a Ed.D.  He always told me what the hardest thing about finishing a dissertation was, and it wasn't his weight, it was having his daughter born during the dissertation writing.  I know a bit about what it takes to finish a dissertation--I was born into that legacy.

It's not that I was so angry over what Prof. Geoffrey Miller said, though.  Actually, it was a relief to have somebody say it so starkly, when usually it's never said aloud to our faces.  The #truth was finally out in the open, and the #truth was that fat prejudice does keep us from getting jobs.  And it's not because our fat makes us unable to get the job done, it's because of prejudice.  But it gave me the opportunity to talk about the fact that this kind of prejudice is common for us, and does affect us, and in ways that are not fair and have nothing to do with our ability. 

In ministry, I've known all along that while weight doesn't really affect my ability to do my job, it affected my ability to get a job.  I was told this by people in positions where they would know.  I have no doubt that past and present settlement directors would agree that fat ministers have a harder time getting asked to interview.  And they would tell you this in very kind ways -- they're not to blame, and I certainly don't blame them for the situation, and I'm appreciative when they see the situation.  And I'm not trying to say that other people don't have prejudice against them, or that this struggle is harder than other struggles.  I do say that many isms we are confronting openly, and this one we're not.  Whether that makes it harder, I can't say, I can only say that it makes it more hidden, which is what I'm trying now to do something about.

A couple examples from my own life about being fat and trying to get a call to a congregation may serve to illustrate.

During my seminary years, I was in a room with a bunch of seminarians and a minister who was with us because he was looking around for a new associate minister.  I was soon to graduate, and looking for just such a job.  And yet, no matter how many times I tried to inject myself into the conversation, I couldn't get this minister's attention.  I felt invisible.  We all feel invisible at times, but I was told later by another colleague that this wasn't a big surprise in this case, and that it was likely about weight.  I didn't put the weight interpretation on it initially; my initial interpretation was that this guy was just a jerk.  The weight interpretation was given to me later by a person who was in a position to know.

Another example: In a pre-candidating weekend, I was asked to preach at a neutral pulpit in a mid-sized church.  The search committee of the small church I was pre-candidating for said to me, "Your pulpit presence is so large.  Do you think that could work in a smaller church?"  Now, mind you, I've now been preaching successfully in small churches for over a decade.  The comment was, at first, baffling.  Should I have been somehow more meek in the pulpit?  Made eye contact with fewer people?  Gestured as if the room was smaller?  But then it seemed a clear interpretation emerged.  I do think that this comment was not so much about size of the congregation as it was about size of the minister.  Usually it's not a problem--in any size church--for the minister to hold the attention of the entire congregation during the sermon.

All of these little things could not be about weight.  They could be about other issues.  That congregation could have been looking for a meek pulpit presence.  Any one incident can be picked apart and explained by other reasoning.  I've heard African-American ministers tell me that this is something that happens to them often, that they'll tell about an incident of racism, and the white listeners will want to pick apart the incident and analyze it and get to decide for themselves whether or not it was an incident of racism, rather than just accept the experience of the teller.  I can't prove to you these were about size.  I can't prove that size was a factor in any of the congregations that chose not to interview me, either.  I just know that overall fat ministers have a harder time in settlement than average.  That's the #truth.

In our society, everyone is judged on their looks.  And ministry, for all that we are a liberal denomination, is a field where the image is part of the job process.  There's a degree to which looking particularly "ministerial" is an asset in this profession, and not looking like the image of a minister is a detriment.  And "fat" is not part of what people's internal image when they think "minister."  This is not the only trait people carry on their bodies that has this struggle, to be sure.  But it's one we're not confronting actively.  It's not a part of the "Beyond Categorical Thinking" discussion, to my knowledge (although it's been so long, I could be entirely wrong here).  I've never seen a workshop or discussion where people were working on getting over their fat prejudice in the process of hiring a minister.

The fat-shaming professor has been rebuked.  The school has said it's not their policy.  Academics everywhere are distancing themselves from him and from his opinion.  And yet it is the #truth that sometimes we still need not apply, because we will not be chosen.

The other side of this, and it would be remiss of me not to say this, is that sometimes a congregation doesn't let weight stop them from picking a good minister.  While I've never had a congregation where weight wasn't raised as an issue with me at all, in my current congregation the times have been few and far between.  This congregation I'm in treats me like my ministry is valued, and I really can't say enough what a great group of people they are.  I feel like here there's a clear understanding that my worth as minister isn't measured by the scale on my floor.  #truth

"What do you do the rest of the week?" I was recently asked.  I don't mind the question.  Indeed, I welcome it.  It's a frequent frustration among ministers that, regardless of how hard we work, the perception exists that we really only work on Sunday morning.  I've heard this perception myself from members, visitors, and even staff during my years of ministry.  This perception can exist when we've really had an easy time of it, or on the week when we spent all of Friday and Saturday by a bedside and then got up to give the sermon on Sunday morning.  In fact, often the weeks people think are the hardest for me are actually the easiest, and vice-versa.  For example, I find as it approaches Christmas, my job gets easier.  Nobody wants to schedule extra meetings during this time, and some meetings get cancelled.  While Christmas programs are big productions, a lot of it can be the same from year to year, which requires less research and creativity out of me.  The problem is, when I was asked on the fly what ministers do, even having done this work for over a decade, I don't think I really gave a very good answer.  So, for the record, here is an arbitrarily numbered and completely incomplete list of things a minister might be doing on other days of the week, besides the obvious (blogging!):

• Preparing for Sunday -- indeed, this may be the bulk of what we do.  In seminary, I often heard that 20 hours per week was the average amount of time a minister spends preparing for the Sunday service, mostly spent researching material and writing the sermon.  Why does it take so long after years of seminary study?  Actually, it takes longer the farther one is from seminary, I think, because you've used up the sermons on all those seminary book topics, and you have to dig further and research more to keep fresh.  If I relied only on what I learned a decade ago for my sermons, my sermons would be pretty stale.  No matter how much reading I get done in study leave, I still find myself needing to find good articles for readings and more data for sermons throughout the year.
• Board and Committee Work -- How many committees does your church have?  Your minister probably goes to about n+3 committee meetings, then.  (Okay, n+3 was pretty arbitrary, and would totally vary by church size.  In a big church, there are more committees, but a smaller percentage are attended by the minister.)  In my church, I attend most of the committee meetings on most of the months in which they meet, with the exception of building and finance, which I'm happy to attend also, but often these particular committees meet at irregular times and I don't always hear about the meeting times until afterwards.  Some of the meetings may include advance meetings with the chair.  The board meeting I will write a report for, and that will take a certain amount of time.  Other committees may also have reports or preparation work to be done.  Some ministers may engage in the work of the committee, others see themselves as being there to represent the faith or provide a spiritual presence, others see themselves like a paid consultant or expert there to give advice and ideas.
• Pastoral Care -- Perhaps the most important non-Sunday work of a minister in the eyes of a congregation, this kind of work arrives suddenly and can be very intense.  It requires of us that we drop everything sometimes and attend to what is happening with our members.  Occasionally pastoral care will also involve administrative work of rounding up resources for a member in need.
• Rites of Passage -- Funerals and weddings, for member and sometimes non-members of the church are an irregular part of the work.  In the beautiful times of the year in our region, we may find ourselves working every Saturday on weddings.  In between weddings and funerals, there's also working with the people involved to plan the events, and then writing the service.
• Religious Education -- A minister may write, plan, and lead religious education classes or programs for children, youth, and adults.
• Administration -- A minister is expected to do a lot of administration work.  There's a reason why clerical and clergy are related work.  We answer e-mails, phone messages, compile reports, do filing, etc.  Sometimes we write pamphlets or webpages or blog.  Strangely, although I did secretarial work part-time through college, grad school, and seminary, and worked full-time as an administrator and in other paper-pushing time jobs for two years between degrees, this is the area I feel poorest in during my ministry years.  Of course, for most of that time I have not had a church secretary (a different thing from the secretary of the board), and I remind myself that it's actually in the UUMA guidelines that a minister should have access to a secretary...  Depending on whether there is a church secretary or not, the minister's skill in this area, and what committees a church has and how strong they are, a minister might be asked to create any number of different documents from the order of service to the newsletter to the pledge drive brochure to the entire webpage.
• Staff Supervision -- The minister is often head of staff, which means meeting regularly with staff, supervising, handling problems or conflicts, and doing reports.
• Fundraising -- Some ministers do some direct solicitation of funds, some do grant-writing, some organize and run fundraisers.  We're expected to know, understand, and be mindful of the church finances.
• Community Service -- Some ministers see an important part of their work as being involved in the greater community and representing their faith in that role.  This might be through volunteering at agencies or serving on boards and committees, or running programs in the community, or through a number of other ways.  Some ministers volunteer to be on-call at the hospital, or for the police or fire department, certain nights per month.  Some ministers do programs in a local prison.  Getting out there into the world and representing our faith and our individual church while we do so is an important piece of ministry for some, but not all, clergy.
• Social Justice -- Some clergy, but not all clergy, see social justice as an important part of a minister's role.  This may mean going to protests, lobbying at the state or national capital, writing our elected leaders, writing for the local paper, attending conferences, doing on-line work for social justice, and attending more committees and programs in the community or at a state or national level.  Clergy have a lot of different ideas about how to most effectively or most appropriately do this work, or whether to do it at all.
• Denominational Work -- Often our work is to be the conduit, or one of the conduits, for connection to our denomination or district.  Sometimes this is work that is essentially required of us by the larger body, and sometimes it is something to which we feel a responsibility for and sign up for.  We might serve on yet more committees or task forces, or work to help in a particular area, or just maintain contact with various officials.  We might spend a fair amount of time reading e-mails, newsletters, blog posts, and websites to stay up-to-date. 
• Work with Other Ministers -- Sometimes in our region we'll have a local interfaith or ecumenical clergy group.  We also probably have groups of colleagues we meet with periodically at a regional and national level within our denomination.  Sometimes this is something required of us, sometimes it is just something which we feel obligated to participate in as part of our role.  All of these bodies also have tasks, some of which we'll occasionally be doing, and boards and committees, some of which we'll occasionally be on.  We may also get called upon to do work with other ministers one-on-one, from teaching a particular skill to being a listening ear.  This is part of the work we commit ourselves to as ministers, to help one another. 
• Study -- Not just for worship services, ministry, like all fields, requires that we keep up-to-date with information and knowledge, and this requires study and continuing education programs.  Sometimes "study" can also mean staying up with popular culture or the news--it's important for us to know what's going on out there in the world.
• Spiritual Practice -- Ministry is a high burn-out profession because of the high demands.  It is necessary that we stay spiritually grounded in order to do this work.  But more than that, because we are spiritual leaders in our community, this is something we have to do in order to practice what we preach.  

I'm sure I've skipped dozens of things, including some big ones, among what we do.  But I hope I've convinced someone somewhere that ministry is about much, much more than just being in the pulpit on Sunday.