BIVOCATIONAL

Bivocational simply means "two jobs," but, when applied to Christian ministry, the concept is considerably more complex. Specifically, Bivocational discusses those ministers who have a God-called "vocation" within the confines of serving Christ through His church and have one or more other jobs or callings. The subtitle, Today's Tentmaking Ministers, refers to an updated version of early New Testament ministers like the Apostle Paul and his two associates, Aquila and Priscilla, who formed a team of bivocational ministers (Acts 18:1-3). The three served God to build His Son's churches while holding secular jobs as tentmakers to provide independent incomes and reduce their financial burdens on those they served (Bickers, 2012).

The demand for bivocational ministers in today's Christian church is far ahead of the supply. This situation developed over the last couple decades due to national economic declines and significant reductions in the number of people choosing to attend and support churches. The former decreased the value of our currency while the latter reduced the size of the weekly collections from which the church could draw a pastor's salary. These factors also forced many mono-vocational pastors to become bivocational or to leave the ministry entirely out of family financial necessity (Orlando, 2015).

Dr. Dave Felsburg, having completed his five-textbook series on outreach, evangelism, and church growth, offers his first self-help book from his forty-year bivocational ministerial career. The doctor holds engineering degrees at the bachelor's and master's levels, a seminary diploma, four years of post-graduate seminary work, and a PhD in organizational behavior and management. His secular work was in design, development and deployment of missile warning, space surveillance and atmospheric defense sensors and command and control systems for the US Government. His career traversed civilian and military Government service, executive management, and entrepreneurial leadership of four companies he founded. He lives with his wife, Isabel in central Florida.