Discipleship Training for Bivocational Pastors and Ordinary Leaders
“Nobody showed us how. That was the problem.”
“We were doing Bible studies. Running programs. Filling seats. But we weren't making disciples — and deep down, we knew it.” If that's where you are right now, you're not alone.
Most churches and leaders we talk to are wrestling with the same thing:
"We're busy doing church, but are we actually making disciples who make disciples?"
This is for you if you've ever thought: "I want to lead, but I don't feel adequate." Or: "We're meeting every week, but nothing's multiplying." Or: "I'm a pastor and I'm drowning — and I don't know how to change the model without losing everything."
There's a different way. And it's been hiding in plain sight.
There's a story we hear all the time.
A pastor follows the traditional track. Bible college. Seminary. Youth pastor. Executive pastor. Maybe even a church plant. He spends years — sometimes a decade or more — pouring into the machine. Running programs, managing staff, keeping the lights on. And then one day it hits him: he doesn't even know the name of his next-door neighbor.
We've watched that moment break people open. It's the moment the "professional clergy" spell starts to crack.
Most of us grew up in churches that loved a good altar call. The message was never spoken out loud, but it was clear: if you're called to ministry, you're the elite. You're the Navy Seal of Christians. Then there's everybody else — the accountants, the roofers, the stay-at-home moms — the people who spectate.
But that model is failing. It's failing our pastors. And it's failing the mission of making disciples. According to Barna Group's State of the Pastor research, nearly half of U.S. pastors have seriously considered quitting full-time ministry since 2020. The Lifeway Research 2024 study found that more than 1,500 Protestant pastors leave the ministry each month, with financial stress ranking among the top three reasons.
We're facing a massive shortage of pastors, especially in rural areas. Churches can no longer keep pace with inflation and the cost of housing. We know seventy-year-old pastors who are burnt out and have no vision left, yet they preach every Sunday because they have no choice. No social security. No savings. Their entire livelihood tied to a pulpit they no longer feel called to hold.
We believe the Holy Spirit is inviting us into a different way. Something ancient. Something that looks a lot more like the Book of Acts than a Silicon Valley startup.
Why the Marketplace Is the Real Discipleship Training Ground
There's a dangerous idea floating around the church: if you want to be "significant" for the Kingdom, you have to be on a church staff. We've made people feel like they aren't doing real work unless they have a title.
But when a leader is in the marketplace — on "Market Street" — it makes them a better pastor. A better discipler.
One of the leaders in our network told us about a moment at his secular job. A colleague broke down in tears because his brother was facing thirty years in prison. He looked at him and asked, "Where is God in all of this?" Four years of Bible college and a seminary degree didn't matter in that moment. The man didn't need an exegesis of a Greek verb. He needed a human being to look him in the eye and say, "I'm here for you. I'm praying for you and your family."
You don't need seminary to be the hands and feet of Jesus to a broken colleague.
When leaders move to a bivocational model, they stop being "ministers for hire" and start being neighbors. We've seen it over and over — leaders who have more ministry and discipleship impact in small groups and at their secular jobs than they ever did hived away in a church office writing sermons.
Mark Clifton, author of Reclaiming Glory: Revitalizing Dying Churches, has pointed out that the bivocational pastor was the norm for most of church history — not the exception. The full-time, salaried clergy model is a relatively recent invention. The apostle Paul made tents. Most early church leaders worked with their hands.
If you feel called to ministry, our advice isn't "go get a degree." It's this: Write down the names of three people at work or in your neighborhood who don't know Christ. Start praying for them. Take them to coffee. Let your kids play together. Cultivate the ground right where you are.
Breaking the Performance Trap in Church Discipleship Programs
We've adopted a "growth at all costs" model in the American church, and it's crushing the souls of leaders.
We've been there ourselves. Fixated on being better preachers. Obsessing over SEO, Facebook ad retargeting, making sure the church dominated the Google rankings. Wanting to win for Jesus — but realizing we were just shuffling the saints from the church down the street because we had a cooler worship team or a better kids' wing.
We celebrate numerical growth and ignore the back door.
A healthy church should be firing on three cylinders:
The Front Door — How people find us and engage in relationship.
The Inside — How we do spiritual formation and deep small group discipleship.
The Back Door — How we send people out to plant missional communities and new works.
If we only focus on the front door, we aren't making disciples. We're running a show. And the pressure to keep that show running leads to mission drift. We trade leadership development for production value.
Consider adding a simple comparison chart here showing "Growth at All Costs" church model vs. "Ordinary-Led Multiplication" model — 3 or 4 rows covering what's measured, who leads, what success looks like, and sustainability.
Here's what we wish someone had told us earlier: God's love for you is not linked to your output. Whether you're an accountant at an insurance company or a missionary to an unreached people group, God doesn't love you any more or any less. That is a freeing thing. When you stop performing for God's love, you gain the capacity to actually serve His people.
From Solo Pro to a Discipleship Process That Multiplies
If you're a pastor feeling the walls close in — living in a moldy parsonage, watching your reserves deplete, feeling your family suffer — before you quit ministry, do something practical.
Take a sheet of paper. Make three columns:
Column 1: What can only I do? This list will be much shorter than you think.
Column 2: What can I delegate? Folding bulletins. Social media. Mowing the church lawn. Things others would be happy to do.
Column 3: What is just busy work? The fluff that doesn't move the needle.
Then have a courageous conversation with your leaders. Tell them: "I'm going to focus on Column 1. I need you to step up for Column 2. And we're going to stop doing Column 3."
Maybe you don't preach 52 Sundays a year. Maybe you preach 40 and let lay leaders develop their gifts for the other 12. This creates a pastor-championed, ordinary-led culture. It frees you to find a job in the marketplace to supplement your income. That actually makes the ministry more sustainable and gives you more vibrant leadership capacity.
This is essentially what Ephesians 4:12 describes — equipping the saints for the work of ministry, not doing all the ministry yourself. When pastors actually practice this, something shifts. Leaders emerge who didn't know they had it in them. And the church becomes what it was always meant to be: a body, not a one-man show.
If you're a church looking for a discipleship pathway your ordinary people can lead, that shift is where it starts.
The Ordinary Way Forward: A Church Discipleship Pathway That Works
We're told we need to double or triple church planting by 2050 to keep up with population growth. The Silicon Valley model of raising $500,000 for a suburban launch isn't sustainable for most of the world.
But look at how many Black and Brown churches have multiplied for decades. A leader with a day job — a school bus driver, a teacher — gathers people in a home. They grow to 40 or 50 people. They move into a storefront. They keep their day job. They keep their roots in the community. They don't need half a million dollars to reach their neighbors.
That sounds like the Book of Acts to us.
At Ordinary Movement, we've seen this play out across 35 states with more than 245 groups launched — led by ordinary men and women who don't have ministry degrees. They have day jobs. They have families. And they're making disciples who make disciples, now into second, third, and fourth generations.
Our identity verse is Acts 4:13:
"When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus."
You don't need to be a celebrity preacher in a $3,000 shirt to make a difference. You don't need to wait for a "perfect" situation that will never come. God has given you breath. He has given you life. He has placed you in a specific neighborhood for a reason.
The next step is simpler than you think. Whether you're a leader who wants to start a group, a church looking for a discipleship pathway, or someone exploring what a men's or women's discipleship process looks like — we'll show you how.
Stop waiting for your ship to come in and start cultivating the ground you're standing on.
About Ordinary Movement
Ordinary Movement is a nationwide discipleship movement helping ordinary believers become disciples who make disciples. Founded in 2018 with a single group, OM has grown to over 245 groups across 35+ states — led by everyday men and women using a free, biblical, 27-session discipleship process. 99% of participants report growth in intimacy with Jesus. Learn more at ordinarymovement.com.
