Leading Well When You’re Not Always Available

If you are a tentmaking pastor, you will never be as “available” as someone paid full time by the church.

Good.

That is not a weakness to hide. It is a leadership advantage if you handle it properly.

Here is how.

1. Clear the Guilt First

Most bi vocational leaders are not exhausted because of workload. They are exhausted because of internal pressure.

You feel:

I should answer that message immediately

I should attend every event

I should always be reachable

A real pastor would be more present

That thinking will crush you.

Look at the apostle Paul. Never as available as people wanted him to be. No zoom. No mobile. Often in another nation. Always on the move. Yet he achieved far more than many of us with all the tech support!

Availability is not the same as faithfulness.

If your church depends on you being constantly accessible, you do not have a healthy church. You have dependency.

Clear the guilt. Replace it with conviction:

I am called to shepherd

I am not called to be omnipresent

Jesus builds the church. It's actually good for people that I'm not always around because they will learn to depend first on Him!

Until you settle this internally, no strategy will save you.

2. Build Teams. See It as an Opportunity.

Limited availability forces something most churches avoid: shared leadership.

If you are not always there, people must step up.

That is not a compromise. That is discipleship.

Instead of asking:

“How do I do more?”

Ask:

“Who can I empower?”

Practical shifts:

Rotate who leads prayer

Develop small group shepherds

Create ministry leads for pastoral care

Train others to preach regularly

A tentmaking model creates space for maturity.

When everything runs through you, growth is shallow.

When responsibility spreads, ownership deepens.

Your limitation is actually the church’s development opportunity.

I lead a large church on 3 days a week and a movement of 800 churches on 2 days. Tentmaking business comes out of the time I take back from travelling to other nations. People ask me how I do it - it's by the grace of God and by empowering great leaders and great teams!

3. Build Simple Systems So Nothing Gets Lost

 You cannot rely on memory when your week is split between work and ministry.

 You need clean systems.

 Capture everything immediately.

 Use tools that reduce friction.

Voice to text tools like WhisprFlow to quickly turn thoughts into written notes, texts, email replied.

Todoist or another task manager to separate church tasks from business tasks

Notion to track learning and processes.

Google drive to store and share documents

There's a million tools out there - find the ones that work for you!

The goal is not complexity. It is clarity.

I've found that if something lives in your head, it will stress you.

But if it lives in a system, it becomes manageable. 

Structure protects your shepherding.

The Real Shift

Leading when you are not always available forces you to answer a deeper question:

Are you building a church that depends on your presence, or one that grows through shared responsibility?

Tentmaking is not second tier ministry.

It is a model that:

Breaks unhealthy dependency 

Strengthens teams 

Forces clarity

Builds resilient churches

If you feel stretched, good. Just make sure you are stretching systems and leaders, not just yourself.

Now be honest. Where are you still leading out of guilt instead of conviction?

Standing with you

Simon