The gig economy is the new normal and it’s changing everyday life.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can read last week’s article for context. But last week, I addressed seven ways the gig economy is affecting everyone in our culture today—especially those in your church.
In short, the gig economy is changing the way that we view ourselves—and it’s not for the better.
Here’s the thing though. The gig economy not only affects everyone in your church—whether they’re Christian or not—but it also affects your leaders and how you should approach leadership in the church.
Let’s start with your changing congregation.
On a practical level, since the gig economy is the new normal, this means that close to half of your congregation is probably working more than one job.
So have you considered how this should affect:
- Your approach to streaming your service?
- Attendance patterns and measuring engagement in your church?
- Preaching on and discipling your church on issues of faith and work?
- When and how you offer leadership development and training?
On a side note, if you haven’t read chapter three of my book, No Silver Bullets, where I talk about the shift that we need to make “from being the sage on the stage to being the guide on the side,” you’re going to want to pick it up. In that chapter, I illustrate how you can flip the classroom and offer both a high tech and high touch approach to leadership development
There’s also the issue of money and multiplication.
If you’ve read anything on movements—particularly church planting movements—you’ll know that money and education are two massively stifling factors to movemental energy.
So if you want to reach your city with the gospel, it’s critical that you not let theological education or salary influence your strategy for church multiplication!
In the gig economy, the idea that your church needs to pay you full-time for legit ministry to happen is changing. In other words, bivocational ministry (which is what we’ve traditionally called pastors who have another job, or who are gigging out of necessity), is ceasing to be a last-resort option.
It’s NOT about doing two things poorly anymore. Bivocational ministry is actually about leveraging all of your life into one calling!
So what if you need to hire another staff member for growth, but don’t have the money for it?
What if, instead of trying to raise full-support, you created training and development to help that future staff member raise part of their salary, but then also helped them find a gig to fill in the gap?
And instead of seeing this as a punishment, what if you created a culture where this was actually an opportunity for evangelism, for community engagement, to raise up leaders, and to release all of your people into ministry, rather than holding onto the keys of ministry yourself?
Now what if you’re a pastor and your church is paying you full time? How does the gig economy affect you?
If that’s you, what if you considered gigging for evangelistic purposes and to have a closer pulse on your community?
Just imagine what would happen if every pastor began driving Uber of Lyft at least 10 hours a week?
Or put up a room in their house on AirBnB?
Not only would that provide an additional source of income, but more importantly, it would offer you an opportunity to pray for your city as you’re driving through it, as well as opportunities for evangelism and spiritual conversations!
Friends, the gig economy has arrived. What are you going to do about it?
If you’re interested in unpacking and learning more about the gig economy and the way it’s seeped into our culture and our everyday work, life, and love, be sure to pick up a copy of my new book, You Are What You Do: And Six Other Lies about Work, Life, and Love.