Free Range Priest: Substack Seminary

2. 'The biggest challenge is a regular, sustainable paycheck'

Fr. Cathie Caimano — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 11:38:48 GMT

We’re at the end of the year, and I’m looking back. Which were the most read/commented on Free Range Priest blogs of 2025?

I’m sharing the top 5 for five weeks of the December. It’s helping me see what’s most important for the future of church…

#2 was written with , and it’s basically a summary of the conversation that led us to found - a space designed to help create the future of church. Together.

At Free Range Priest, we’re reimagining ministry in the digital age.

Subscribe to any (or all!) of these publications to be part of innovative ministry for the future of church.

The WHY:

The HOW:

The WHAT:

The WHERE:

So you want to start a denomination... is the way out of institutional collapse... another institution?

Fr. Cathie Caimano — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 13:47:51 GMT

grew up Seventh Day Adventist, then found her way to Lutheran seminary and internship. She encountered plenty of the same stresses that many of us feel around church these days - the complexities and bureaucratic hierarchy of denominations that made her journey into ordained ministry feel more burdensome than inspiring.

But then she did something unexpected and adventurous.

She not only started her own church: , a place to wrestle with God.
She started her own denomination - A New American Orthodox Church.

When I asked her why, she said she had been opened to the idea that the church is an institution, and not just a bunch of stand alone organizations.

It may surprise you, but I could not agree more.

And ever since I discovered New American Orthodox Church, I really want to be part of it.

But I’m the Free Range Priest! I am an evangelist for ‘Cage Free’ Ministry!

And that’s exactly why I am so drawn to the idea and the reality of this new denomination.

Because I’m just as drawn to the ‘Priest’ as to the ‘Free Range’. To the ‘Ministry’ as well as the ‘Cage Free’.

There is nothing inherently wrong with institutions, and church needs organization and authority.
We also need to break free from the particular expression of 1950s administration and organization that is causing gridlock in the mainline church.

The structure that is crumbling - and crushing us in ministry - is not the connection to the larger Christian tradition. It’s the corporate mindset and ways of operating left over from the 20th century that is stifling our ability to connect in life-giving ways that share the Gospel.

When I look at New American Orthodox and my own tradition - the Episcopal Church - I don’t see much difference:

Belief in Jesus Christ as the world’s salvation.
The Bible as foundational.
Baptism and Eucharist.
Church community that shares the Gospel.

We belong to the same institution - the Church - and we share the same basic beliefs and practices.

But I feel frustrated and stressed in my own denomination, and filled with excitement about this new one.

Why?

Simplicity and accessibility.

St. Jacob’s calendar lists worship, Bible study, and community events. The denominational page lists Axioms, Tenets, Rites, and Practices.

The Episcopal Church website (and every other major denominational website) has over 25 major pages.

This is a small but telling example of how the mainline institutional church has grown to a place where the heaviness of all the ‘stuff’ - all the meetings, all the events, all the committees and commissions, all the causes - is overwhelming the basics of what we believe and how we are connected as followers of Jesus.

We need to look backward

is right. We don’t just belong to a particular congregation, a singular ‘church’.

Even if we’re non-denominational, even if we have only sat in the pews of one place of worship our entire lives, we belong to the Church.

The living body of Christ that stretches back the first disciples and has always been connected.

There were Thessalonians and Corinthians and Galatians, but all were Christians. And no matter how we’ve tried to divide ourselves into sects, denominations, and break away churches, we are all tied together through Jesus.

Acknowledging this - and living into it - is central to re-discovering our core mission, easily lost to the bureaucracy of keeping individual institutions alive just for the sake of it.

We need to look forward

It’s not what we believe that’s the problem - it’s how we live those beliefs and share them in the world - together.

Today’s systems are agile, networked, technology-based (in many ways, like the earliest church).

The institutional, denominational church still lives in strictly demarcated silos, where congregations and ministers rarely collaborate in ministry outside of their own specific location (and not without reams of paperwork), much less denominations.

Where we spend much more time and many more resources keeping each individual building and community alive as a separate entity than we do fostering discipleship and the love of God across and among communities.

An example of what I mean

The Episcopal Church currently closes dozens of churches every year, and struggles to open any new ones.

There is a 54-page ‘how to start a new Episcopal community’ guide, which is explicitly for people who have applied and secured a particular grant in the church.

I can imagine a world where the Episcopal Church takes the resources used to form the grant committees, guiding committees, and top-down guidance on how to start a new expression of church (from a denomination that hasn’t done that in decades), and uses them to support places like St. Jacob’s and the New American Orthodox Church that are actually launching new faith communities.

What I first noticed about is her call to ministry is clear and unwavering.

When faced with the administrative and organizational burdens and roadblocks of the declining institutional system, she did not abandon her ministry, but re-imagined it.

Not outside the authority of the larger church, but within it. Not rejecting the Christian tradition, but embracing it more strongly. Not isolating her faith community, but broadening it.

This is Cage Free Ministry.

At Free Range Priest, we’re reimagining ministry in the digital age.

Subscribe to any (or all!) of these publications to be part of innovative ministry for the future of church.

The WHY:

The HOW:

The WHAT:

The WHERE:

Substack Seminary: how to be ‘Cage free’ if you serve a denominational church (or if you don’t)

Fr. Cathie Caimano — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 21:40:12 GMT

Available for iOS and Android

It's about the money

Fr. Cathie Caimano — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 10:23:04 GMT

Frustrating conversations I’ve had recently:

I applied for a ‘ministry innovation’ grant, and did not get it (again). Why? My ministry is actually a business (an LLC), and the granting agency will only award money to non-profits.

When I argued - pretty passionately - that having a ministry that is an LLC is the innovation, they were unmoved.

A few weeks later, a colleague (who had no idea I applied) casually mentioned that she had received one of those grants. For a ministry that was lovely? Yes. Innovative - I don’t think so.
I was in a conversation with a different colleague and we were talking about a church organization that has ‘innovation’ in its title. And how the ministry they were doing seemed like the same old, same old: let’s try the old system in a new way (I call it the ‘pub church syndrome’).

We were discussing how meager the offerings were, and how hard it must be for the leaders to take risks - because they get a salary from the institutional church, and they are subject to ‘death by a thousand committees’.
Yet another grant application passed me by (I did not even bother to apply to this one).

Later, a third colleague casually mentioned that her congregation was awarded one of the grants - and they didn’t even really need the money. It was just a nice bonus - an an affirmation that they were moving in a good direction (again, by my own definition, the proposed ministry - ‘outreach’ to certain populations - is nice but not actually changing anything (nor is it well-defined).

I admit, all of these conversations got me down.

To re-iterate, none of the people I was talking with were privy to where I was coming from - I didn’t know how to talk about it without seeming to criticize them. And certainly, they were all coming from good places, for good reasons.

But it’s all re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

How do I know?

In each case, I did ask three things:

What is the goal of the proposed ‘innovative’ ministry?
How will you know when you’ve achieved it - how will you measure it?
How will it be sustainable into the future?

None of those I spoke with had answers. In fact, they seemed surprised by the questions.

I have to ask myself a hard question, too:

Am I just bitter and envious because I hustle so hard to keep my own ministry afloat?

Well, yes.

And: no.

On the one hand, sure. I would take an angel investment (or a grant) to support the work I do. (And if you’re in a position to have this conversation, please call me!).

On the other hand, stringing one contract, subscription, or course after another together is how I’m learning that church can happen in new ways.

Here’s what I know, 100%:

We will not see the church reborn until we figure out new ways to finance it - and to financially support ministers.

I know this is hard - it’s uncomfortable, we don’t want to talk about money and God in the same sentence.

Ministry shouldn’t be about money - we have higher aims. We know what Jesus says to the rich man: give away your possessions.

Lots of people send me well-meaning notes about the sin of commodifying religion.

AND…

It’s an issue as old as the church.

Paul may (or may not) have been a tentmaker, but he sure railed on and on about how ministers should be paid, and reminded everyone to take up collections in the congregation.

Even Jesus said, ‘the laborers deserve to be paid’.

The question facing us today is not really if ministers deserve to be paid - and if religious communities should thrive financially - but how.

The mainline denominational church mindset seems to be that it’s perfectly ok for ministers to receive professional-level salaries, and to gather donations and utilize endowment funds to support ministry.

But as those paid positions become fewer, the donations dry up, and the funds start to dwindle - it’s not ok to find other ways to support the transformational work of helping people know Jesus.

To me, there’s discernment in seeing what is working, and what isn’t.

We keep struggling to make our budgets, keep being unable to pay our ministers, keep finding ourselves stymied in actually doing the ‘ministry’ part of ministry (as opposed to the fundraising part taking up so much of our energy)…

And we’re stuck! We keep insisting that money isn’t the problem as we close church doors.

Maybe this is a sign that we are being called in a new direction.

One that feels more abundant, more joyful, more creative, more connected.

In yet another conversation I was having recently, a friend asked me if I would ever go back to full-time ministry in a congregation.

I actually surprised myself with my vehemence when I said: ‘you could not pay me any amount of money to take a standard institutional church job right now’.

My friend was a little taken aback!

’Why not?’, she asked.

It’s because of the joy.

I feel more connected to my own priesthood, more focused on my own faith, and more energized about sharing Good News as a creative entrepreneur.

Every time someone subscribes to my newsletter, signs up for a workshop, or enters into a consulting contract with my ministry, I know we are consciously collaborating on more peace, more love, more healing, more miracles.

More Jesus.

I know we are not signing up for a relationship in which they will spend ‘church’ time complaining about gossip or why the walkways aren’t getting swept.

Instead, we will be sharing our faith journeys with each other and supporting our mutual discipleship.

Here’s the beautiful secret about ministry innovation:

There’s a lot of uncertainty
There’s a lot of failure
There’s definitely discomfort

And … when those moments come where you feel the power of resurrection joy, it’s worth the struggle.

It’s way more than the money. But if we don’t charge money for it, others won’t see the value. And they won’t take their own risk to share their own calling.

It feels like walking the footsteps of the first disciples.

🔅🔅 Here’s your tip:

In today’s church, clergy in full-time (and even half-time!) positions typically spend a disproportionate part of their ministry doing what I call ‘propping up the institution’ - attending meetings, planning budgets, devising new programs (that are just like the old programs…) - trying to keep the institution running.

It leaves less and less time for the work of ministry: prayer and worship, discipleship and service, hospitality and evangelism.

We can let go of a lot of the administrative work. In fact - most of it! We can also let go of the worry about whether the institution is going to survive (it probably isn’t, long term, and nothing you can do can change it…).

But we can…

…. serve the ministry part of our jobs, and intentionally spend the rest of our time/energy on developing creative, innovative ways of sharing the faith.

And congregations can support this (Dioceses and denominations, too).

In fact, instead of saying, ‘this is our pastor and they will only work for our congregation and its immediate needs’, congregations could boldly and proudly pay for some of the time that their pastor is working to build the church of the future.

Things that may fail (most will probably fail!), but from which they’ll learn and move forward again.

Things that will share God’s love in new ways, long after the institutional church has collapsed.

At Free Range Priest, we’re reimagining ministry in the digital age.

Unstuck church

Fr. Cathie Caimano — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 12:25:07 GMT

The phone rings again - or it pings with another social media message.

Another friend is reaching out - clergy or lay, working for the mainline church or a member of a congregation.

They’ve just been fired, or they work with someone who should be fired - but won’t be.
They’re running the church all by themselves because no one else shows up.
They have no idea what they’re doing but they’re afraid of being found out, and losing their job.
They’re asked to do things (fire others, close churches) that they don’t want to do, but they can’t say no.
They know the budget can’t last another year, but everyone keeps going ahead like everything is ok.

It’s a mess. They’re stressed, they’re frustrated, they’re mad. Most of them, somewhere in the conversation say this:

‘I’m never going back to that church/denomination/diocese again.’

These calls are becoming more and more frequent. Maybe it’s because of what I do, or my experience in the church. But it’s becoming alarming.

People aren’t calling about what we think of as classic misbehavior - no one is stealing money or having inappropriate relationships (at least, they’re not telling me about it if they are!).

The alarming things are much more mundane:

Power dynamics
Entrenchment
People in jobs they’re not qualified for (but won’t leave)
Politics (all sides - people who embrace certain politics, people who won’t embrace politics, etc).
Conflict

I was worried that if I published this, people would see themselves in my story and feel exposed.

But I guarantee that these are
a) composites and
b) a drop in the bucket of the things I’ve heard lately.

I tell them all I really can’t help them beyond being a listening supporter. I have no ecclesiastical standing or authority to be involved in their situation.

But I can tell them this:

They are not alone (by a long shot)
This is what institutional collapse looks like

And it’s hard to see the big picture when you’re putting out fires every day.

It’s hard to see the system shifting when it all feels so personal.

My ministry has always been about helping people re-imagine church.

This is why so many people are calling me when things feel intolerable in their ministry. They definitely want to imagine better ways of serving God and their neighbor!

What I see is that before we get to the point of building something new, we need to see how it’s not a choice anymore.

The church of the mid-20th century is not working now that we are well into the 21st.

And the fires we’re putting out - that feel like unique, isolated situations - are signs of the futility of doing the same thing again and again, and hoping for different results.

But it all starts with seeing the places we are stuck - and how we use those pain parts to start building something new.

It may feel like you’re too stressed, too busy, too caught up in what your ministry looks like now to think about the big picture.

But I’m convinced that the walls we keep banging our heads against are exactly the places that God is calling us to turn around and find new paths for sharing Good News.

At Free Range Priest, we’re reimagining ministry in the digital age.

Subscribe to any (or all!) of these publications to be part of innovative ministry for the future of church.

The WHY:

The HOW:

The WHAT:

The WHERE:

Common Ministry

Fr. Cathie Caimano — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 13:45:33 GMT

photo by Cathie Caimano

I was preaching on what it means to be a disciple. I stopped and asked the congregation - ‘how many of you think of yourselves as disciples?’

I was shocked that maybe only one hand raised besides mine!

This is a group of very faithful people. I had assumed that pretty much all of them thought of themselves as disciples.

So I rephrased the question…

’How many of you think of yourselves as followers of Jesus?’, I asked. This time, more than half the group raised their hands.

I couldn’t resist asking one more question: ‘What’s the difference, for you?’

One brave soul answered: ‘I guess following Jesus is more about having an imperfect life and faith and trying to get closer to what God wants for us.’

To her, the difference was that being a disciple - as opposed to a follower of Jesus - felt formal. It felt like something you had to be trained, and somehow equipped to do, and she didn’t feel like she was.

All of this was incredibly surprising to me, the priest and pastor of this flock for eight years now!

My perception of them is that they are very well-prepared for discipleship - individually, they each have prayer lives, participate in community worship, serve others in God’s name, attend Bible study, love God and neighbor. They’ve mostly been doing this for a long time - decades, lifetimes.

But they themselves did not feel this way. They were more unsure of their grasp of Christianity, of the Bible, of their daily faith life, than I imagined.

It makes me wonder if more of my ministry should be about helping them explore their own ministry.

I’m still reading through Michael Plekon’s Book “Ministry Matters”. The third chapter focuses on Nicholas Afanasiev, an Eastern Orthodox theologian and priest who served in Paris in the early 20th century.

Afanasiev often returned to the them of ‘common ministry’: ‘Every Christian is set apart, ordained by the Spirit, and sent into ministry in the church.’

From a practical perspective, it makes me wonder if most congregational life is set up to be the kind of community that helps its members discover the ministry we share, and the ministry each is called to.

I wonder if I’m really supporting that with the congregation I serve.

When I think of the future of church, this is what I’m thinking about.

We're all 'specialty ministers' now

Fr. Cathie Caimano — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 11:09:48 GMT

There’s two facts about today’s church that roll around in my head pretty much constantly:

More and more congregations are struggling to find (and afford) clergy leadership.

More and more ministers - lay and ordained - feel called to serve ministry outside of the traditional congregational context.

These two facts are interrelated, of course: clergy and lay ministers feel the burden of the declining church, which makes serving in traditional ways difficult. A lot of full-time work for (very) part-time pay; a lot of aging congregations that aren’t very interested in doing new things; a lot of administrative and organizational work that doesn’t feel spiritually fulfilling.

Clergy want to be able to share the Gospel in new ways, and create new kinds of communities. The biggest obstacle: getting started, and developing their ministry in real time.

On the congregational side, the exhaustion of trying to continue to do church ‘the way we always have’ with fewer people and resources; the sadness and grief of thinking they may have to close their doors; the struggle to find even supply clergy for worship and spiritual care, and because of this, not feeling spiritually fed at church in ways they may have in the past.

Congregations want someone to lead worship on Sunday, be with them in spiritual need, and lead their faith community. The biggest obstacle: they cannot find and/or afford this leadership.

The declining church is driving congregations and clergy in different directions, seeking the same thing: growing in the faith, connecting with God and creating community with others, serving others in Jesus’ name.

What if we could find ways that they could support each other?

In 2022, the Church Pension Group (Episcopal Church) put out a webinar on the state of clergy in the church, and I was personally thrilled to see that 14% of clergy were serving as ‘specialty ministers’.

As a Free Range Priest, I’m one of those specialty ministers, and I was so excited to see this statistic that I wrote a whole blog post about!

14% isn’t a lot - but it is about 840 of the approximately 6,000 active Episcopal clergy. Add deacons and lay ministers, and I am willing to bet the number is about 1,500 - 2,000, just in the Episcopal Church.

At the same time, I pulled this from Facebook where it was circulating widely, showing the wide gap between congregations searching for clergy, and clergy looking for new congregational positions (again, this is the Episcopal Church).

It makes me think….

Can traditional congregations - and dioceses - work with ‘specialty clergy’? Can this be the basis of re-imagining the kind of work that clergy and lay ministers do with congregations?

And at the same time, can ‘specialty’ clergy work with multiple congregations, across dioceses - and even denominations - creating new kinds of community that exist both online and in-person?

For that matter, what if we were all ‘specialty ministers’?

Some of us called to sacramental ministry, some to congregational administration/organization, some to pastoral care or formation, etc.? And this was the practical basis for supporting both emerging types of ministry and congregations together?

You know I think this is possible!

My whole ministry is about re-imagining how we might look at how we do church - the ways we organize and create community, the ways we’re stuck in 20th-century models of administration that can stifle the emergence of new ministry (and how to get out of them!).

I also think that utilizing today’s technology for administration, organization, and communication can help make it reality.

That’s my specialty ministry. What’s yours? And how can we build the church of the future together?