From its early origins within the Jewish Synagogue to the present day, the Church has continued to reflect on the nature of its life as community and its ordering of ministry. So also, since the latter part of the twentieth century, new experiments and new expressions of ministry have come to the fore in the face of the changing cultural and religious landscape.

Mark Edington’s book, Bivocational: Returning to the Roots of Ministry, offers insight into a way of being the church in contexts where employed professional clergy are no longer a viable option. This practice may also mirror a much earlier practice, one that is nearer to the New Testament church, at least in its Pauline expression of the body of Christ, wherein the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, even though Paul, as apostle and teacher, continued with his tentmaking. ‘The tentmakers of Paul’s day are the bivocational ministers of our day’ (p. 22).

This vision of bivocational ministry offers something new and old. The newness of this bivocational practice relates to a reconceived ecclesial practice for our present day wherein the sense of vocation is purposefully and consciously shared by the pastor or priest and the congregation. Mark Edington makes it clear, however, that this vision and practice cannot arise for reasons pragmatic alone, but from the vision of an incarnational church: ‘the entire congregation adopts a bivocational understanding of the ministry it is called to in the world’ (p. 11, cf. p. 108).

Bivocational ministry is at heart an ecclesial vision of the Church in ministry, a ‘shared ministry’. The subtitle of this book, Returning to the Roots of Ministry, suggests something more than pragmatism in the face of necessity. Here is a collaborative model of ministry, a view held by many across the Church today as it speaks of our baptismal identity as the basis for all ministerial orders in the Church.

This book is divided into five chapters outlining the bivocational vision and practice for the pastor, the congregation, church polity, and bivocational theology of ministry. The final chapter offers a suggested vision for the church’s bivocational practice. It helpfully outlines examples from various contexts.

There are, however, key parameters that need to be in place for this model of church and ministry to work. Not least of all is the leadership style of the pastor or priest: ‘effective leadership in this setting depends on skills centered in interpersonal connection, clarity of communication, and comfort with leading from the side rather than the front’ (p. 38) and to see leadership as ‘an inherently social work’ (p. 40).

However, this is not a model for every congregation. There is a lot of ground work to be done by priest and parish to discern the possibility that priest, or people are up to bivocational ministry in the way this book presents. Congregations that are ‘group centered’ more than ‘pastor centered’ are ‘better suited to a bivocational pastorate’ given the ‘capacity for initiative of its lay members’. The capacity for this bivocational model does not depend of congregational size, as may first be thought. It is more the case that the determining factor is that the congregation is ‘group-centred’ and has a key sense of ministry as ‘a work of the entire congregation’ (pp. 48–51).

Bivocational is a model worth exploring. It points to a deep ecclesiology and one worth pondering much more in the light of today’s challenges. Is this vision of bivocational ministry one that needs wider consideration beyond the contexts of pragmatic necessity? Edington presents a vision that the Church needs to consider and model even if it cannot go the whole distance. Bivocational speaks about something important and points us toward some keys for developing parish or congregational visions and practices that are not so clergy dependent, where wider initiative is encouraged and developed. The incarnational vision underlying this model is also its strength.

There are, however, also pragmatic reasons for further reflection about bivocational ministry. Mark Edington offers a very helpful overview together with some clues toward its development. The book is not intended to be an in-depth ecclesiology, but it offers clues to a Church polity and theology of ministry that undergird bivocational ministry. Its vision is more instrumental and pragmatic, in spite of its incarnational preference and vision.