Second Fiddle · Leader's Guide

Reading Second Fiddle together

This guide is for a pastor and spouse sitting with Second Fiddle and a cup of coffee, trying to discern whether bi-vocational ministry is where God is calling you. It follows the book’s own discussion questions for couples, in thirteen conversations.

The questions are not easy. Some will surface things you haven’t talked about yet. Some will reveal assumptions one of you has been carrying that the other didn’t know about. That is the point. The time to have those conversations is now, before you have committed and before the cost is already being paid.

Before you start

• Read it together if you can. The conversations the book starts may be worth more than anything on its pages.
• Linger on the hard questions. Some questions will be easy. The ones that surface conversations you haven’t had yet are the ones that matter most.
• Answer honestly, not aspirationally. Several questions say so directly. Describe your life as it is, not as you hope it will be.
• Let the spouse speak. Many questions are addressed to the spouse by name. Give those answers room, and don’t rush to respond or defend.
• “Not yet” is an acceptable answer. The book is clear: if you are not genuinely aligned on the calling and the cost, wait. Get there together, or don’t go.

A conversation for two (about an hour)

Thirteen conversations

Weekly works well. Take longer on any section that surfaces something you need to keep talking about.

Session by session

Session 1: A calling or a good idea?

Read: Chapter 1, "Is This Actually a Calling?" · Open with: Acts 16:9–10

The big idea: Only a genuine calling can sustain bi-vocational ministry for decades, and it can be tested by desire, affirmation, and capacity.

To open: When you drive through your community, whose faces come to mind first?

1. What is the specific burden you carry for people who are far from God? Can you describe it?
2. Who else — besides your spouse — has affirmed this calling in you? What did they see?
3. When you imagine doing this for twenty-five years, what feeling does that produce? Purpose? Dread? Something complicated?
4. Spouse: what do you see in your partner that makes you believe this is a genuine calling rather than a good idea?

This week: Each of you ask one trusted person, separately, what they see in you when it comes to reaching people far from God. Write down what they say and compare notes next time.

Session 2: Naming the cost before it names you

Read: Chapter 2, "Count the Cost" · Open with: Luke 14:28–33

The big idea: Counting the cost is an act of wisdom and faith: know what you are signing up for, then sign up fully.

To open: What is the best decision you ever made only after sitting down and thinking it through?

1. Which of the costs named in this chapter — time, career, family, physical, relational — feels most significant to you personally?
2. Spouse: which cost feels most significant to you? Is it the same one your partner named?
3. Are there costs this chapter didn’t name that you can anticipate in your specific situation?
4. Having named the costs honestly, can you both still say yes? If not, what needs to change before you can?

This week: Separately, write down the one cost that worries you most. Trade papers over coffee and talk about what you each wrote before either of you explains it away.

Session 3: Strategic deployment, not consolation prize

Read: Chapters 3–4, "The Times Demand It" and "The Tentmaker Model" · Open with: Acts 18:1–4; 1 Corinthians 9:12

The big idea: Bi-vocational ministry is not a second-class option; like Paul’s tentmaking, it gives access, credibility, and freedom to reach places a full-time model cannot.

To open: What is one place you go every week where you are known as a worker, not a church person?

1. Does the framing of bi-vocational ministry as a strategic deployment rather than a consolation prize change how you think about it? How?
2. What would it mean for your church’s finances if the pastor didn’t need to be paid? What would you do with that money?
3. Where is the specific “square inch” you feel called to reach that full-time ministry would not reach?
4. What does your day job give you access to — people, credibility, context — that pastoral ministry alone would not?

This week: Make a list together of the people your day jobs put you in regular contact with who would never walk into a church. Pray through the list by name once this week.

Session 4: Learning from how Living Faith began

Read: Chapters 5–7, "The Bar Band and the Bonfires," "The Structural Decision," and "Twenty-Five Years Later"

The big idea: Living Faith began by going where lost people already were, serving them without asking for anything, and letting the church form around that.

To open: Where was the most honest conversation you had this past month, and where were you sitting?

1. What are the bonfires in your life — the spaces where genuine conversations with unchurched people are already happening?
2. The Live Out Experiment’s hypothesis: even broken people can help other people. Do you believe that? What broken places in your own life might actually be assets for ministry?
3. What would it look like to start something in your community without trying to build an institution? What would that free you to do?
4. What has your day job already taught you about faith and the marketplace that you could share with others?

This week: Invite one person or couple who does not go to church to dinner or a fire in the backyard. No agenda beyond being together.

Session 5: Holding two full-time commitments

Read: Chapter 8, "The Permanent Tension"

The big idea: The tension between the day job and the church is not a problem to solve but the permanent condition to navigate with grace, humility, and clarity about what matters most.

To open: When was the last week that everything seemed to land on the same few days?

1. Describe a time when two genuine obligations collided. How did you navigate it? What would you do differently?
2. What is your current capacity for sustained output? Be honest — not aspirational.
3. Who can you ask for help when the load exceeds your capacity? Do you have those relationships in place?
4. Spouse: what do you need your partner to protect, even when everything else is overflowing?

This week: Decide together, ahead of time, what gets priority the next time a work deadline and a pastoral need collide. Write it down so the decision is made before the collision.

Session 6: Making peace with the ladder

Read: Chapter 9, "The Career You Won’t Have" · Open with: Philippians 4:11–13

The big idea: You are not building a career; you are building a kingdom, and that calls for a contentment Paul had to learn.

To open: What did you want to be when you were twenty-two?

1. What career ambitions are you genuinely releasing? Name them specifically.
2. How do you define success currently? Does that definition need to change?
3. Spouse: are you genuinely at peace with the career ceiling this calling creates? What would help you get there if you’re not?
4. What does contentment look like for you — not the absence of ambition, but the right kind of ambition directed at the right things?

This week: Each of you write one sentence that finishes this line: “Success for us, ten years from now, looks like...” Read them to each other.

Session 7: Guarding the heart nobody asks about

Read: Chapter 10, "Soul Care Is Not Optional" · Open with: Mark 1:35

The big idea: Nobody will ask about your heart, so time with God has to be carved out on purpose, with accountability you ask for and grace when you slip.

To open: What time of day do you feel most like yourself?

1. What does your current spiritual discipline look like? Be honest, not aspirational.
2. Who has permission to ask you about your soul? Who will actually use that permission?
3. What has happened in past seasons when your soul care slipped? What were the warning signs?
4. Spouse: how do you notice when your partner’s spiritual tank is running low? What do you do with that observation?

This week: Set a fixed time and place for meeting with God each morning this week, and tell your spouse when it is so they can ask how it went.

Session 8: The fight for genuine community

Read: Chapter 11, "The Loneliness Nobody Warned Me About"

The big idea: The loneliness of pastoral leadership is structural; the answer is not investing less in people but cultivating friendships that are genuinely mutual.

To open: Who is a friend who knew you before any title you carry now?

1. Do you have genuine friendships outside your ministry context — people who relate to you as a peer, not as a pastor?
2. How do you experience leadership isolation currently? What does loneliness feel like for you specifically?
3. What is the difference between loneliness and solitude for you? Which do you experience more?
4. Spouse: do you have your own community and support system, separate from your partner’s ministry relationships?

This week: Each of you reach out to one friend outside the church this week and set a time to get together.

Session 9: The second-fiddle posture

Read: Chapter 12, "The Ego That Has to Die" · Open with: Mark 10:43–45

The big idea: Much of what we call servanthood is still aimed at the self, and the ordinary grind of bi-vocational life is a grace that strips that away.

To open: What is a job you did recently that nobody saw?

1. Read Swindoll’s description of serving that is still aimed at the self. Do you recognize that in yourself? Where?
2. How do you feel when you serve and nobody notices? Is that answer comfortable?
3. What would it look like to do the next six months of ministry entirely “in secret” — without documenting, publicizing, or seeking acknowledgment?
4. What are the wrong reasons someone might pursue bi-vocational pastoral ministry? Do any of them apply to you?

This week: Do one act of service this week that you tell no one about, including each other.

Session 10: Get there together, or don’t go

Read: Chapter 13, "You Cannot Do This Alone" · Open with: Ecclesiastes 4:9–10

The big idea: If a husband and wife are not genuinely aligned on the calling and the cost, the right answer is to wait.

To open: What is one hard thing the two of you have already carried together?

1. On a scale of genuine alignment: are you both in the same place about the calling and the cost? If not, what needs to be resolved?
2. What does “in it together” actually mean for your marriage? What does it look like practically?
3. Have you seen a ministry marriage fall apart? What did you observe? What do you want to do differently?
4. What is the one thing you most need your spouse to know about what you’re feeling about this calling right now?

This week: Pray together, out loud, for honesty with each other about this calling. If either of you is not yet ready, say so, and agree that “not yet” is an acceptable answer.

Session 11: The home and the depth

Read: Chapters 14–15, "The Short End of the Stick" and "The Depth We Didn’t Always Reach" · Open with: Ephesians 5:25–26

The big idea: The home is not less important than the ministry, and a marriage needs a protected, unhurried conversation that goes below logistics.

To open: What is something in your house that has been broken longer than it should have been?

1. Who in your household will carry more of the domestic burden? Have you talked about that explicitly?
2. Spouse: what do you need relationally that you are afraid won’t be there if your partner is bi-vocational?
3. What specific weekly rhythm would protect the depth of your marriage through the demands of bi-vocational life?
4. Look at your current calendar and wallet. What do they say about your actual priorities? Is that the story you want them to tell?

This week: Put one unhurried conversation on the calendar this week. Ask each other: How are you feeling about us? What are you afraid of? What do you need from me that you are not getting?

Session 12: What the spouse needs to say

Read: Chapter 16, "A Word to the Ministry Spouse"

The big idea: The ministry spouse is a genuine co-laborer, and telling the pastor clearly what they see and need is an act of love, not nagging.

To open: What is the most meaningful encouragement anyone has ever given you?

1. Spouse: what do you need your partner to hear that you haven’t said clearly enough yet?
2. Pastor: what specific things can you commit to that would tell your spouse they are more important than the ministry?
3. What encouragement has your spouse given you that has mattered most? Have you told them it mattered?
4. How will you make sure neither of you is carrying this alone?

This week: Tell each other, honestly and specifically, one thing you see the other giving that nobody else notices.

Session 13: Rhythms for the long obedience

Read: Chapters 17–20, "The Real Weekly Rhythm," "A Theology of Three," "Failure, Repentance, and Getting Back Up," and "Marathon, Not Sprint" · Open with: Galatians 6:9

The big idea: Protect the non-negotiables, build a healthy church on three pillars, get back up after failure, and stay.

To open: What is something you have kept doing for ten years or more? What kept you going?

1. Sketch out what a realistic weekly rhythm might look like for you. Where are the non-negotiables? Where is the margin?
2. Of the three pillars — leadership development, intentional discipleship, missional engagement — which comes most naturally to you? Which will require the most intentional effort?
3. How do you process failure? Do you tend toward self-protection or honest ownership? What would healthy failure look like for you?
4. What would it mean to commit to the long obedience in the same direction? What would you need to lay down to make that commitment?

This week: Sit down with a blank week and draw your realistic rhythm together: early morning, the marriage, the Sabbath first, then everything else.

A final question for the couple

Having read this book and talked through these questions: do you both sense God calling you into bi-vocational ministry? Not with certainty about every detail. Not with all the costs resolved. But with a shared, genuine, counted-cost yes?

If yes: say it to each other. Out loud. Then say it to God. Then turn the key.

A note for cohort and network leaders

Second Fiddle was written for the person considering bi-vocational ministry, and for the spouse who needs to understand what is being asked of both of them. If you mentor bi-vocational leaders, the most useful thing you can do is make room for couples to have these conversations honestly, before they commit, rather than hurrying anyone toward a yes.

Couples who count the cost together before beginning are far more resilient than couples who discover the cost in the middle of it.

Questions are from the Discussion Questions for Couples in Second Fiddle: What Nobody Tells You About Bi-Vocational Ministry by Mark Sentell. The book is available in 3 formats on Amazon. marksentell.com/books/second-fiddle/