{"id":1306,"date":"2014-07-18T14:45:29","date_gmt":"2014-07-18T19:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pts.edu\/blog\/?p=1306"},"modified":"2021-03-18T13:05:28","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T18:05:28","slug":"bivocational-ministry-barista-mdiv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pts.edu\/blog\/bivocational-ministry-barista-mdiv\/","title":{"rendered":"Bivocational Ministry: Barista, MDiv"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I came to Pittsburgh from Colorado to get a Master of Divinity. I wanted to be a pastor. But three months after graduation, I was serving espresso in a local caf\u00e9. For the next five years, the 61C Caf\u00e9 in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh would be my employer, my community, and my mission field. This wasn\u2019t a mistake. It was exactly where God had called me to be.<\/p>\n<p>Thus I was baptized into the world of bivocational ministry and church planting. Bivocational ministry is often called \u201ctentmaking,\u201d following the example of the Apostle Paul at times supported his ministry through the trade of making tents (Acts 18:3). Paul\u2019s trade provided an income for him, but it also put him in touch with a diverse group of travelers and traders every day, giving him many opportunities to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n<p>When my friend and fellow alum Mike Gehrling and I answered God\u2019s call to plant a new church in Squirrel Hill, we chose to follow Paul\u2019s example and pursue bivocational ministry for the same reasons. We wanted not only to lighten the financial burden on a newly emerging congregation, but also to work in places that put us in relationship with the people to whom God was sending us.<\/p>\n<p>So Mike took a part-time job with InterVarsity doing campus ministry at Carnegie Mellon University, building community with graduate students and faculty. And I took a job at a neighborhood caf\u00e9, where I became intimately acquainted with Squirrel Hill\u2019s eclectic and eccentric population.<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t need an MDiv to serve espresso or bake muffins, but I did need theological education to prepare me for the conversations that took place every day at the caf\u00e9. What was I to say when a regular customer told me about her struggles to care for her aging mother? Or when another customer asked for help fighting an addiction? Or when a college student plopped a book about Wicca on the counter while I make her drink? Or when coworker told me he couldn\u2019t accept the idea that there is only one Truth?<\/p>\n<p>These were real people, with real struggles, in need of real Gospel. And that\u2019s precisely why I wanted to be there, rather than inside the walls of a church office. Over five years, our congregation, The Upper Room, has grown slowly from a small group to a house church to a chartered congregation, but I know without a doubt that some of the most important ministry I\u2019ve done was in the caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n<p>In February of 2014, I left the caf\u00e9 to serve at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary as the coordinator of our <a title=\"Church Planting Initiative\" href=\"http:\/\/pts.edu\/Church_Planting_Initiative\">Church Planting Initiative<\/a>. Here I have the joy of supporting students in our <a title=\"Church Planting MDiv\" href=\"http:\/\/pts.edu\/Church_Planting\">Church Planting Emphasis MDiv<\/a>. I\u2019m still bivocational \u2013 serving part-time at PTS and part-time at The Upper Room \u2013 but now I have the joy of encouraging and supporting church planters as they embark on similar journeys.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, two of our Church Planting Emphasis students now work at the same caf\u00e9 where I served. There they encounter real people, with real struggles, in need of real Gospel. As students, they\u2019re engaged in bivocational education, practicing ministry both in and outside the Church. In so doing, they\u2019re both being formed for the future of the Church and following in ancient apostolic footsteps.<\/p>\n<p><em>Written by the Rev. Christopher Brown (MDiv, 2008), Church Planting Initiative coordinator at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and co-pastor of The Upper Room Presbyterian Church.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I came to Pittsburgh from Colorado to get a Master of Divinity. I wanted to be a pastor. But three months after graduation, I was serving espresso in a local caf\u00e9. For the next five years, the 61C Caf\u00e9 in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh would be my employer, my community, and my mission&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[46],"series":[],"class_list":["post-1306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-planting","category-ministry","tag-bivocational-ministry-and-church-planting"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\r\n<title>Bivocational Ministry: Barista, MDiv<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"After his MDiv program in Pittsburgh, Rev. 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