Embracing Co-vocational Ministry: Insights from Pastor Eric Hoke

Did you know that the financial strain of full-time ministry can be eased with a dual vocation? Get ready to have your traditional concepts of ministry challenged in this eye-opening episode as we sit down with Pastor Eric Hoke, a church planner in the Bronx for over a decade. Eric unravels the pressing need for bi-vocational ministry, sharing his inspiring journey from servicing just a few pastors to now assisting 20 to 40 bi-vocational pastors.

The complexities of running urban churches are unique. From the lack of physical space to the transience of people, the hurdles are endless. But, as we explore in this podcast, co-vocational ministry can help surmount these obstacles. With Eric Hoke, we delve deep into the compelling history and contemporary relevance of co-vocational ministry – drawing parallels from Lydia's home church in the early days to the Brethren Church in Zambia and a city-to-city initiative today.

The discussion takes a turn towards coaching and personal branding within the church, often an ignored aspect of ministry. Eric's five frameworks for coaching ministry provide enlightening insights. We also discuss the often-misunderstood concept of personal branding within the confines of the church, and how pastors can use it to position themselves most effectively. Join us and learn how we can all embrace ministry in our unique ways, just like Lydia, a successful businesswoman and early church supporter.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hello and welcome to the brand new American Reformation Podcast. We long to see the wider American Christian Church fall more in love with Jesus by learning from the practices of the early church and other eras of discipleship multiplication. We want to hear from you, make sure you comment and leave a review, wherever you're watching or listening, to tell us what God is doing in your life or how you feel about today's conversation. Lord, have your way in us. Let's dive in.

Speaker 2: 0:37

Welcome to the American Reformation Podcast, tim Allman. Here I pray that you're leaning into growing today that the right hand side of your brain, the relational connection, the joy of Jesus, the hesed love that comes from knowing you are unconditionally loved by the God of the universe, by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, you've been connected to the greatest mission of all time, which is making him known in word and deed. Today you're in for a treat. We have a brand new friend of mine who was connected to me by Matt Peoples. Shout out to Matt Peoples he's been on American Reformation a number of times and this is Pastor Eric Hoek. Now I got to tell you a little bit about Eric before we get in. He's a decade long church planner in the Bronx and he has this ministry. That is unbelievable.

Speaker 2: 1:24

If you've been connected to the Knight Leadership Collective for any number of months or years, you know that we have a strong desire to see more bivocational leaders raised up within local congregations. A lot of times, the mechanisms or the pathways for recognizing the need for bivocational ministry from house churches to maybe smaller churches, the mechanisms in the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod are not necessarily there. So one of our missions is to highlight the need for bivocational ministers, and Eric has an amazing ministry that he started out as kind of a side gig with three to four pastors and over the last number of years it's grown to serving 20 to 40 bivocational pastors at any time. So welcome, eric, and share a little bit more of your ministry story. And before you do that standard question how are you praying for Reformation in the American Christian Church? Thanks for hanging with me today, eric.

Speaker 3: 2:20

Thank you so much, tim. And the way that I'm praying for Reformation in the American Church is as you said, that's for the last 10 years in the South Bronx in New York City. New York City is an amazing, complicated place to live and do ministry. One of the things that's complicated and amazing is that it's a post-Christian city. So I mean you have immigrant churches and you have that coming in which helps keep the scaffolding clear for the faith of New Yorkers, but at baseline there's no social capital to go to church in New York City. You don't talk to your coworkers about what your preacher talked about on Sundays. That's just not part of the culture and one of the things that's a, you know, unintended consequence, but a benefit of that is that Christians are not tribal.

Speaker 3: 3:07

So I have three children five, three and one. My five-year-old, lydia has been to every sort of church you can imagine from. You know, yesterday we went to an all-black menacoste church to support a friend of mine who planted a church up in Yonkers, new York. Shout out to Pastor Kevin. So they've been to experiences like that. They've been to Episcopal and Catholic and Anglican churches, they've been to Methodist and Baptist and Presbyterian churches and everything in between, and to my five-year-old and my other daughters as well church is just church and God's people are just God's people and I love that innocence in them.

Speaker 3: 3:39

But they don't have and they're still kids, of course, but they don't have that sense of like. Oh well, they're not the true Christians or the real Christians or the spiritual Christians like we are. So I'm praying that more people can be like my five-year-old and they can just say, hey, we're all God's people, we're all figured out. We all might have slightly different expressions of what that means, but if Jesus is Lord, we can all agree to that, that creed and doctrine. We're all on the same team, baby, so let's make it happen.

Speaker 2: 4:04

It appears as if Jesus said something about that. Eric, yeah, If you do not receive the King, we got like a little child you'll never enter it. Yeah, I can say more.

Speaker 3: 4:13

Yeah, you're absolutely right, man. I mean one of the things that I do. I come from kind of the Baptist evangelical world, but for the past three years I've been going to a Benedictine monastery for retreat. Every year for my birthday in the end of March, which is in upstate New York, I'm out saving your monastery for those who are interested. And it's funny because last time I went I went with my executive pastor, eleazar, or both like young pastors I'm in my 30s, he's in his late 20s, early 30s at the time and for some reason the monks thought we were both priests and all weekend just retreating as like priests. And we told them no, we're not priests, we're both evangelical pastors. And not like they were mad or offended, we never lied to them, we just assumed we were priests. Mostly priests go there, but just two single guys. And then the one monk, brother Bruno, who's probably 70 years old, was like, oh, it's okay, we all worship the same God. I was like yeah, fair point, brother Bruno. God, you're right.

Speaker 2: 5:07

True. Yeah, I mean, as you see the world going the way that we're and this is just from the beginning of our rebellion the world has been decelerating away from the promises of God and the more we kind of see this. And obviously I wrote a I'm preaching this upcoming week on the impact of technology. So much to say there. Do you think technology has increased our tribalism Is like social media. You can like find in our denomination Luther Church, missouri Synod, a conservative confessing his story. You know, really our roots go back to the Catholic church and then obviously through the story of the Reformation 500 years ago. But I don't think. I don't think social media and technology in general has increased our unity capital, our joy capital as the church. Anything to say there. I think it's increased tribalism. Go ahead, eric.

Speaker 3: 5:57

Yeah, I mean 100%. It's not a Christian show at all, but Netflix has a series called Black Mirror and in the most recent season there's an episode of here which we're going to call it. It's called Someone is the Worst and basically the premise of the shows have followed him around showing all the bad parts of her life as like a Netflix show, and one of the interesting narratives in that storyline was we try to make it positive. It was like so it's always like the negative thing she did, but like expanded. And I said well, when we're doing market research, we try to make it positive, like paint her in the best light possible.

Speaker 3: 6:32

But I think as many reviews or as many clicks, as many eyeballs, people want to see the dumpster fires and I can certainly attest that I've been guilty of that in my own life as well. I mean, I opened Twitter and it's a dumpster fire and that's just. But you feel like you're sucked into it. I just got a vacation last week. I was visiting the Polkino's with my parents and was off any social media for the whole entire week and, believe it or not, 10 miles happier and more fulfilled and more joyful and more patient and more loving and all the things that Jesus calls us to be.

Speaker 2: 7:05

You just got to call it out, man. You know we are, we are not accelerating in terms of our character and we're not connected to one another. It's false connection, like I want to be. I want to be where the people are. I want to be like with real people in real time, talking about, you know, real stuff going on in our real lives, the ups and downs of our lives, and it's just. It's just a fake in the bad. Some people can find connection and I. It has some benefit, I guess. But talk about the church and the role of the church providing that has said that loving community connection. This is, this is where the church is, where people are gathered to hear his word and then to live out his word in real time, in real contexts, with folks walking through the ups and downs. So talk about this set, that need for close connection, and then weave that, if you would, into into your bivocational ministry story. If you would, eric, awesome.

Speaker 3: 8:00

Yeah, yeah, man. Thank you so much, gosh. Where to start? Well, I guess I'll. I guess I'll start with this angle and then we'll kind of unpack from here.

Speaker 3: 8:08

But you know, covid-19, I feel like experience for the collective world. It was like a before COVID, after COVID life, and before COVID, I think, in my faith community I realized that people didn't come to church much to my. You know, bruce Diego, they hear me preach. They came to church because they wanted to see their friends, they wanted to be in community, they want to go out for lunch, they want to share their ups and downs with somebody.

Speaker 3: 8:39

And then, you know, when COVID came, new York City locked down, probably tighter than anywhere else in the country did. So we couldn't have a service, and there was not just restrictions, it was also because of what we meet and what have you. We couldn't have an actual physical service for 20 months. Everything was digital, on Zoom, and it was just. Of course it wasn't the same. Nobody would say it was the same, but it was really an apparent thing to me living in a place like New York City, that somebody wants a high production show, they can go to Broadway and they can see the best production in the world, quite literally. But they don't come to church for that. They come to church because their friends are there, their family is there, people who know them and love them and care about them are there. And you know this quote by Tim Keller and you know Tim Keller's who, how many of me and that people's met and he says if you're a small church pastor, they let you preach because you pastor them right, and if you're a big church pastor, they let you pastor them because you preach to them. So I found, if church is nothing more than just the disseminating information from the stage, you can do that from home, and if someone better than you online, I can do that as well. But when you actually have someone who loves and cares and is on mission with you, that makes the world of the difference.

Speaker 3: 9:52

So me, as a bivocational guy, I could stay in for my congregation on a Sunday and say, listen, I get it. Tomorrow I have my you know, quarterly review with my manager. I miss some of my goals and my KPI. I'm really stressed out. I don't know how it's going to go. So please pray for me as I go through that. And the person sitting there can say, oh yeah, I get that too. I've had, you know, the pressure of not performing at the highest level at my job and being concerned about my job security as well. It just makes you a lot more relatable, because you're on mission with people every single day, monday through Saturday and then on Sundays. When you come together, you fellowship, you enjoy, you give life to each other, you hear the word of God, you take the elements. All that good stuff.

Speaker 2: 10:33

That's awesome, bro. I think the future of, and maybe the present actually, just given the demographics of the American Christian church, is going to be smaller rather than larger, more small pockets, what we think of as small groups in our context. I'm privileged to pastor in our denomination, a mega church. We worship 800 people, 1,000 seasonal right. But I totally agree with that. They're letting me preach because I'm a pastor here, because in the big scheme of things that's not, you know, and I'm a passionate guy. I loved it. But I realize that the primary benefit is the courtyard time afterwards and the group's going out to get coffee or lunch afterwards. So I think the future and then we've got a couple other smaller, smaller multi sites, you know, worshiping 80 people or so, and I think that's going to be a little bit more of the standard. So would you go into the necessity for bivocational? Because in our context we've got a lot of bivocational students. Some of them in time will be ordained as pastors, god willing. So yeah, what's your perspective on the necessity of bivocational ministry today? Eric?

Speaker 3: 11:48

Yeah, I think I have a unique vantage point because I think, culturally, what happens in places like New York and LA San Francisco, these are kind of canaries in the coal mine. Culturally, originally from Pennsylvania, I was actually in Pennsylvania this past week, application, like I said, I was driving to one of the water parks with our kids. I commented to my wife. I said I can't believe how many like mega churches there are. I mean, I mean mega, but like 500 North, you know churches like big churches, large parking lots, big signage, all the fancy stuff, and such a rural part of the country like where do all the people draw from? This is insane, whereas in cities it's the opposite. You have these high rise buildings, you have these, you know, 30, 40 story low income housing projects and when I was doing my kind of market research to prepare for planting all saints church in 2017, I had realized the largest non-catholic church on this lot of Hispanics in my community, so Catholics, catholicism is the largest you know denomination, largest non-catholic, so evangelical church was 75 adults and this is in a zip code of 50,000 people and there's a million and one reason for that. But the biggest one, I think, is obviously space. It's hard to come by space that people at churches can afford, based on the ties and offerings of a congregation. And then the second one is the transients. People come and go in a place like New York very often.

Speaker 3: 13:11

When I was a youth pastor in New Jersey before planting my own church, I went back there like a year ago. I had not been there in over a decade and the church was like 95% the same people, whereas you know my church plant in the Bronx. It was basically a new congregation every three years, not because people got offended at me even though some of them did but most of it was just because I'm moving. My job has changed. I'm going to a different part of the state or the city. What have you?

Speaker 3: 13:37

So, with that being said, I mean I don't know the exact numbers, but I want to say, like the average size church in all of America, not just the inner city, is less than 50 people and I mean that's not a, you know, not a massive group of people. That's what? A dozen families or so. So to expect that those dozen families to fund you as a pastor, especially if you have a wife and you have children, their medical bills, what have you. It's just really a challenging thing to do and I think a lot of pastors are kind of waking up and realizing wait a second, if I'm a you know, 30 year old or 40 year old and I've got a young family and I'm making below the minimum wage a bus driver in my school district makes more money than I do as a pastor this kind of sucks. I have no benefits. I can't keep doing this and I want to find a different path. So I'm sorry if I can't say this kind of sucks in your podcast, but I just didn't.

Speaker 2: 14:27

No, yeah, it's fine. All right, it's okay.

Speaker 3: 14:29

I've been approved. Okay, just avoid the other letters, right. But you know, I think that a lot of pastors are realizing in 2023, hey, it's not 1980 anymore I can't go, you know, work at a church of 200, 300 people and make a middle class life. It's just not really sustainable. So I help pastors get jobs as a ministry and, by God's grace, we help pastors with ministry sustainability without money stress, and we do that through a co-vocational model.

Speaker 2: 14:57

So say more I use bi vocational, use co vocational. Talk about the difference between bi and co.

Speaker 3: 15:03

Yeah, the easiest way to describe it in so many words is bi vocational is I work because I have to. So I am a pastor of a church. My church is small Maybe it's a church startup. We can't afford for me to have a full-time salary. So I'm going to go be a substitute teacher, I'm going to go be a barista at Starbucks, I'm going to go do X, y and Z and once my church gets big enough, then I'm going to quit this day job and be a full-time pastor. I'm bi vocational, co vocational is I work because I want to and I view my job as an extension of my everyday ministry. And even if the church could afford to pay me tomorrow, I would still keep my job because this is part of my ministry. So I would have self-identified as a co-vocational pastor. So even if my church was able to pay me my salary tomorrow, I still would keep my job because it's an opportunity for me to minister money through Friday and it also frees me up to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry.

Speaker 3: 15:57

I was a full-time pastor for five years. I enjoyed it. There's certainly benefits to it. By the same time, there is that pressure that, oh, I'm the one who's paid to be here, and I'm the one that's paid to do this. So I found it personally not if one does harder to delegate, harder to give away, harder to empower, harder to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry as we're called to do Fijians 412, as a co-vocational or bi vocational pastor, you kind of have to. You don't have much of a choice. You got limited time, energy and bandwidth, so it's more of a team approach to doing the ministry, which is something I found to be very beneficial and also a lot of fun.

Speaker 2: 16:34

Eric, that makes so much sense. Man and we've walked alongside a lot of pastors and in our denomination, like I've said, co-vocational even bi vocational is not something we talk about an awful lot. You've gone through four years of undergrad, likely, and then maybe four years of seminary. You may have a little bit of debt if you've gone in with a family. I mean, you've made maybe some major life sacrifices to go residential seminary and so you kind of come out. We're like, hey, I'll put in all this time.

Speaker 2: 17:06

I'm entitled, if you will, to in a sense to this kind of full-time role and then you know if you don't have people on a board or a group of elders or partners. You know it's really easy to move into the doer rather than the developer mindset and I've never really wrapped my head as much around the economical reality and this kind of while you're being paid to do it and how much of a struggle I guess I have, but just how much of a struggle that is to make that shift from doer to developer. But for a co-vocational guy or gal, it's just in your blood. It has to happen right. And as I think of a number of the folks that are co-vocational here, and thank you for the definition because I'll switch some of my language, because we have way more co-vocational leaders than bi-vocational. They're going to stay in the marketplace. That's a major part of their ministry and they by nature, develop people more naturally. So I've seen it in spades man. Anything else to add to that?

Speaker 3: 18:06

Yeah, man, I think the biggest thing is there is a stigma in every denomination that I'm aware of where you know when are you going to be a real pastor, when are you going to have a real church? And you're not really a real pastor with a little church and tells your full-time job. And the thing I always want to push back against that is, If you look at church history and even the international church, co-vocational, bi-vocational is the norm. Those of us who have had the privilege to be full-time, we're the minority and thank God that we have the ability to do that. But, like you said, Tim, you're spot on. To think you're going to go to four years undergrad, three-year seminary, move your family, graduate with $60,000 more in debt and that you're just going to waddle into a church making $80,000 a year with great health insurance because you're right, as a person is a little bit foolish. I hate to use that word, but I don't know what else to call it.

Speaker 2: 19:00

So you're walking through. Get a little bit more, because we may have some people that want to reach out to you. Eric, to navigate the ministry. Is it a name, is it just an organic thing that's just kind of taken off relationally? Say more about your ministry.

Speaker 3: 19:12

Yeah, man, so the ministry is called. I kept it really simple for people because we pastors we like to make things simple. It's called I help pastors get jobs and basically the domain I help pastors get jobscom and essentially the way it works is we help ministers and ministry professionals rebrand and remessage their skills in a way that makes sense to hiring managers, because you can't submit a resume I mean you're a handsome guy, tim, but with your, your face and it says password, tim, you're in top skills, the discipleship preaching. You can't put that in and let go get a job at XYZ corporation. They're going to think who in the world is this guy Right? So, like, what we do is we help pastors think through hey, you didn't, you know, you didn't lead Bible studies, you did event planning, you didn't preach, you communicated to stakeholders, you didn't manage a board, you managed a budget and a leadership team, things of that nature. Just again, remessaging and rebranding. And the cool thing about it is that we have a business model. I've always admired Louis Von An, who's the founder of Duolingo. Louis always says I would never want cost to be a barrier for someone to learn, to not learn a language, because there's so many benefits to learning other languages.

Speaker 3: 20:27

So I help pastors get jobs. About 97% of the folks who engage us don't pay a penny. They can get our email newsletter. They can get our free PDF. We have free videos they can watch they don't pay a penny. And then it's 3% of the pastors who decide to, you know, invest a little bit of their of their money because they really want to make a move and they can either do a class, a master class, which is nine hours of me sharing kind of the best practices to go from A to Z on how to rebrand yourself as a marketplace professional, and I joke around that it took me nine years to figure it out. I'll teach you in nine hours. So it's a pretty good deal.

Speaker 3: 21:01

So that's like the most entry level, basic tier, one tier above. That is what I call resume rewrite, which is when a pastor will say I really want this job, can you go ahead and make me a resume tailored to this job. And it's been a really amazing thing because we'll have pastors who apply to 100 jobs, get zero callbacks, show up for a resume, apply to three jobs and get three callbacks within a day or two. And it's not because there's any magic potion in the resume. It's just knowing how to use the right words and the right language that you know makes sense to the person receiving it.

Speaker 3: 21:32

And the final tier is kind of all that the class, the resume, a cover letter and then a coach and call with me where I sit down with the pastor and say here's how you kind of dial in your LinkedIn. Let's practice some interview questions, let's really spend time really getting to know each other, figure out where your you know weaknesses are and make them stronger. And interviews are a big one because interviewing for a marketplace job and interviewing for a pastoral job are worlds apart and a lot of ways they're actually in complete tension. So learning how to kind of untangle those is really critical for a pastor who wants to transition.

Speaker 2: 22:06

Dude, I love this Like this is good. How long have you been doing this?

Speaker 3: 22:11

This launched in March 2022. So a year and a half.

Speaker 2: 22:14

I don't think I I'm pretty well connected. Is anybody else doing this?

Speaker 3: 22:19

Well, here's a I haven't heard of yeah, in my I have a day job. So my co-vocational job is with a workforce development organization where I train 18 to 29 year olds from underserved communities to get jobs at JP Morgan, bank of America, salesforce, metta, what have you? And one day the light bulb went off on my head. You know what? There's a lot of programs like this for underserved people. There's a lot of programs like this for veterans. But who helps pastors when they want to change careers? And I just you know, I called. I called Steve Plike. You guys have Steve Plike on on her show a few weeks ago.

Speaker 3: 22:49

I like to listen to that one. He's a mentor of mine, a friend. I call Brad Briscoe. I'm not sure if you know him. He's the director of co-vocational ministry for North American Mission Board, which is my, my background. And then I call Robert Elkin, who works for Redeemer City to City, and I'm like hey man, I have this really crazy idea help pastors rebrand from marketplace professionals, explore co-vocational ministry. I know somebody smarter and richer and more handsome is already doing it. Tell me who it is so I can just reach out to them and see how I can support them. Brad, steve, robert were like no, no one that I know is doing that. He'd be the first, and I think I still am the first and the only person that actually just helps pastors. Only you know. Rebrand, and here's how you get a marketplace job.

Speaker 2: 23:29

Eric, you're an entrepreneur, bro. There are a few people like you who say, because creativity is taking two existing ideas and just bringing them together. You know the church is evolving, we all know. You know, pastors, the church was closing and all of that Like, let's, let's care for our brothers and for those who have women in ministry. Ordained women in ministry too are yeah, it's really really powerful. So let's, let's dig into the theology of co-vocational by vocational. You referenced scripture and even history, some folks who leveraged co-vocational by vocational ministry. What are some of your primary examples?

Speaker 3: 24:08

Yeah. So I'm not going to say Paul, cause everybody says Paul, so we'll skip over him today, ted maker?

Speaker 3: 24:14

Yeah, kind of easy answer, but I'm going to leverage. I'm going to talk about Lydia, who was, of course, one of Paul's accomplices and helpers in ministry. She was a business woman, she had a dealer in purple cloths, but she was also a woman who feared God and she used her wealth. She posted, you know, a church in her home and she was somebody who had a lot to give in ministry, though she was never, you know, full-time pastor or in vocational ministry. She was somebody who used her, her skills and entrepreneurship, which I'm sure came in handy for starting the church. She used her home in hospitality, which was massive, and she also we could have some evidence she funded, helped fund Paul's ministry, like she was one of his donors, and it's pretty phenomenal Think about that that God used her. Because I'm afraid in a lot of our churches we would say to Lydia okay, go to seminary and get ordained and go and become a full-time pastor for God to use you. Actually, wait a minute. I think God is using me, maybe not in that way, but in this special way.

Speaker 3: 25:09

The other thing I'll share is more of a modern example. So after Bible college, I went to Liberty for undergrad. I spent three months in South Africa and Zambia as a missionary, and while I was in Zambia I worked with the Brethren Church, and one of the unique things about the Brethren Church is they have, at least in that context, all of them. Other pastors were co-vocational and they would actually have four pastors, all of which had day jobs and each one kind of oversee a different domain of ministry. So one was the family guy, one was the outreach guy, one was the mercy and justice guy and one was like the finance guy. They each took a turn preaching, one per month essentially, but they all had their kind of departments they oversaw, and it was pretty amazing because they had a pretty large church, I want to say north of 200 or 300 people, but a single-page staff member, but four kind of volunteer pastors that had teams, who had teams, that had teams.

Speaker 3: 26:01

And I also see that here in the inner city as well, with Spanish Pentecostal churches. We'll see all these churches that have multiple pastors on staff, all of whom are volunteer. So you call that Novo, no vocational yes, we're a volunteer pastor, but they're able to equip the saints, like we said earlier, to kind of maximize ministry. There is no solo pastor model, which I think is pretty profound and I would probably. What you would say is probably more biblical as well.

Speaker 2: 26:28

Yeah, dude, I agree with you on so many things and I know we're just getting to know one another. But for those of you who have listened to this for a while, sometimes I feel like I can pull out my hair a little bit because of our very narrow understanding of what formation looks like. We even used in our denomination the gold standard of seminary training as residential and I may say, okay, if you can, if it's the right season of life, I think it's great. But we're making a case that it shouldn't be kind of the only. We don't have in our denomination an online MDIV, and so we're running a test with, again out of our now I have new language, not bivocational co-vocational pastors in our context and we're hoping it gets observed with curiosity rather than condemnation by our church body. We'll see how that will go. So, along those lines, what should seminary or, in your experience, what has seminary education, theological formation, look like for co-vocational pastors?

Speaker 3: 27:33

Yeah, I mean I had the traditional route, tim. I went to a residential seminary Naya College. I'm grateful for that. I think it was formative. I also recognize I'm a person of immense privilege. I'm a person that had the means to upper my life and relocate for seminary. I had a wife who was a nurse that made a lot of money. We didn't have any children at the time. So if you were to say to me now, as a man who's 36 years old with three kids, hey, upper your life and go to seminary another part of the country, I'd be like, yeah, that's not going to happen. Sorry, it's not in the cards for me, but at the time it did.

Speaker 3: 28:05

I think city to city, where Matt Peeples and I met, is a really good example of what training can look like. So they have a program called the Incubator with bivocational pastors. They do it for full-time pastors as well, but to cohort of ministers who are serving in real time. So these are not people who are just starting out. They have a ministry. It could be a senior pastor, it could be a associate pastor, it could be a church planter. But they meet once a month, normally in the evenings, I think. They swap it between online and in person. I'm not sure how they're doing it currently, but that's how they were doing it when I was familiar with them, and they'll do projects, they do papers, they do readings. They do all the things you would imagine a seminary does. The cool thing with them, too, is that they do it at no cost and I'm a granite. They're a city to city. They're Redeemer Presbyterian Church, they're Tim Keller. They have a lot of money, a lot of influence, a lot of all that stuff, but it's pretty phenomenal that they have the ability to train pastors not just Presbyterian pastors, not just PCA church planters in New York City, but of every denomination stripe you can imagine, at no cost to the student.

Speaker 3: 29:08

And it's accessible, it's contextual, it's in the evenings and weekends for the co-vocational guys. There's nothing worse than seeing a church. I've seen this before. It's so funny. They'll look at the nomination and say we love our co-vocational planters. Please join us for a co-vocational lunch on Thursday at 12 pm. It's like yeah, I'll be at work. I'm not going to be at work that long. So I think that's a really good example of how you can train co-vocational leaders. It's kind of that more hybrid delivery model Evens and weekends, low cost, stay in your context, but let's do it while you're on mission. Let's have a pumpy full theory and send you out. Let's train you in real time.

Speaker 2: 29:46

Have you heard of Kairos University, matt Peoples, kairos Network?

Speaker 3: 29:52

Yeah, Kairos.

Speaker 2: 29:52

University? Yeah, it's something to take a look at too, because does that offer a degree of any sort, or more like a certification?

Speaker 3: 29:59

program? Yeah, more of a certification Like yeah, I'm like a redeemer city to city incubator graduate. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 30:05

Yeah, so the cool thing about Kairos University is you could go through city to city, but then, because it's a competency-based theological education, a life experience, as well as whatever learning model or community you are in, counts toward, respectively, filling up your nine outcomes for a master divinity degree.

Speaker 2: 30:26

So it may be something to look and partner, because some people like in our denomination, a degree actually matters and internationally, a lot of times a degree actually matters. So, yeah, there's so many ways asynchronous models, synchronous models, et cetera that we can offer really, really high quality theological formation that works for Baibo and co-vocational leaders, as well as those who are going to be full time in a church into the future. So, so good, let's pivot a little bit and start talking about coaching, because you're doing coaching and I think there's a revolution that's going on right now in terms of the coaching space, which is different than, say, being a consultant. Right, I'm going to tell you what to do. Coaches come alongside, ask questions to lead toward that individual taking their right next step to do whatever it is the Lord has kind of called them to do. So what are some of your basic concepts in your coaching ministry there, eric?

Speaker 3: 31:26

Yeah. So the I Help Pastors Get Jobs has five frameworks. We kind of tease out these five frameworks to help the pastor whenever they step their end in their journey. So I kind of go over those high level and then kind of share how I tease those out in a coaching session. So the first one is mindset. Basically that's the foundation.

Speaker 3: 31:45

If you have a mindset that says, oh, I'm becoming a Baibo-cational pastor or I'm moving to the marketplace because I'm a failure in ministry, you're never going to get a job, you're never going to show up well in interviews, you're never going to lead with your best foot forward. So we have to really kind of untangle, you know, the mindset like, hey, you're doing this because this is what God has called you to, he's released you to, you're not quitting your ministry, you're extending and expanding your ministry. And that is really a humongous hurdle for pastors, and rightfully so. There's so much identity that goes into being a pastor, tim, as we both are well aware that when people either step back to become a part-time pastor or leave ministry altogether, it's a lot that they're processing and dealing with. So mindset is the first one.

Speaker 3: 32:26

Second one is discovery. We, as pastors, we spend so much time just playing defense, responding to the needs of people. So-and-so is in the hospital. So-and-so is upset because it's volunteered and show up. So-and-so is mad because we didn't play the worship song on Sunday. So-and-so is passed away. There's a million reasons why we're constantly playing defense and I know that in my experience as a pastor, I didn't spend enough very much time asking myself how's God made Eric Hoek? How am I wired? What fires me up? What excites me? What are my giftings? What are my skills? I spent so much time putting out fires. I don't even know who I am as a person, removed from being a helper to other people. So we've spent a lot of time in discovery, like how's God made you specifically removed from a pastor? The third is rebrand.

Speaker 2: 33:11

Can we pause on discovery real quick before you rebrand? So do you use assessments at all, any kind of assessments that to help with that discovery process?

Speaker 3: 33:20

So we have a four kind of jobs we recommend for pastors to kind of explore, based on the way that God has wired them. They are learning and development, project management, sales or nonprofits. We call it the heart, head, hands, feet framework. I would kind of ask like, okay, are you like a empathetic, caring person? Do you love hospital visits and sitting with the sick visiting shut-ins? Heart you probably should look at. Not for profit you probably would not enjoy going to a sales job somewhere because you have a huge compassion at heart. Head I used to read. Role academic Do you love learning? Do you love reading? Do you love teaching? Consider a job and learning development.

Speaker 3: 34:00

That's how I cut my teeth into, into co-vocational ministry and work-in-place work is I became a learning development coach. The last one is hands. The second or third one is hands project management. You're like tinkering with things, you're like fixing things, you're like managing multiple demands. That's how you're wired. You're like being a high octane leadership role. Project management should be a great path to pursue. And the last one is the feet. You like movement, you like chasing things down. You don't mind knocking on doors. Get into sales.

Speaker 3: 34:28

We have pastors. It's pretty phenomenal, tim. We have one guy in New Orleans church planter got into a softwares of service, saas sales. He texted me that he was going to make $21,000 in the month of December and I'm like, I think you mean like the last quarter right, like you know, like last three months, like no, like in one month I'm going to make $20,000. I was like, oh shoot, is your company hiring? Like it's like, and he was, you know, a church planter making maybe $50,000 three or four months prior and he kept his church as well. He's doing both. So that's sort of the assessment that we use for discovery How's God wired you based on these kind of full jobs and then within them or different avenues you can explore. So that's that yeah.

Speaker 2: 35:10

That's spectacular. I love that framework. So continue on the third thing you do you help pastors rebrand. A lot of times in the church, a lot of times in the church, eric Brand is seen as a bad word. Right A church is brand or a personal brand. So how do you even help work through that reconcept of a brand? I wonder if you've ever had any pushback about brand connected to church. Go ahead.

Speaker 3: 35:32

Yeah, of course I have, because you know how we pastors are. We can be stubborn when it comes to stuff like that. But I oftentimes say like, listen, it's not a matter of trying to sell yourself, it's a matter of positioning yourself in the best possible light. And if you I don't know, let's just say you're in the mood for tacos, by taking to a burger place You'd be like well, eric, I said I wanted tacos, why are we at a burger place? I said I don't know, burgers and tacos are both food. Let's just go get burgers instead, but I wanted tacos, right?

Speaker 3: 35:59

So if you give a ministry resume, churchy answers everything's through the lens of being a pastor and not kind of rebranding yourself to be a taco instead of a hamburger. No matter how tasty you might be, so to speak, you're never going to secure the job because, like, we're trying to hire a person that does this, not a person that does that. So that's the whole rebrand pillar in the framework. The fourth one is the interview. Kind of, as I shared earlier, a church interview and a corporate interview are radically different in many different ways. I think the easiest way to kind of untangle all that is that in a church interview. They're really looking for humility, which is good. You would want your pastor to be someone who's humble. But in a corporate interview, a marketplace interview, they want confidence. They want someone that can walk in there and say, like I can do this job, I have the ability to do so. So we really help pastors untangle that. What is the let's let's?

Speaker 2: 36:52

yeah, let's pause there. What is that about church culture that I think is imbalanced toward humility, and humility maybe being more the personality, because you can be humble and confident at the at the same time, you know who you are in Christ and then you speak out of that clarity, that confidence of of self, your identity in Jesus, and and I think, yeah, just just talk through. So I'm. I'm at a church that wanted Tim Oman to to step in to lead. You know what I'm saying. Like I didn't have to put on a veneer, put on a mask, to come in and take this like low place of great men. You know I came in and my interview process I've been here 10 years now, dude, so it's hard for me to even like get my mind wrapped around the head honey and approach that Christ Greenfield actually utilized to go after me as an associate pastor in Denver, coming down here to to Phoenix. It was definitely much more. I think it was atypical is what I'm trying to get after to how most churches kind of kind of do it.

Speaker 2: 37:51

So talk about that, that need for the humble kind of lowly pastor and and how that is again so much different than kind of the way the secular world does it. Cause I think the church has something to learn here as it relates to to that first article reality in our secular world Go ahead.

Speaker 3: 38:08

Yeah, man, it's. It's funny. It's like we want, like a lot of churches will say, we want a visionary leader that brings change, as long as it impact my life, right, and I think a lot of churches like they stay small and they stay stagnant because they, they, they, they, they psychologically want things to change. They want new families to come, they want baptisms, they want growth, they want salvation, they want all the things that we celebrate as churches, but as long as it it convenes them or cause their life any pain or stress, and they can have their church exactly how they've always liked it for the past, however long years.

Speaker 3: 38:42

I think that this is probably more of a challenge in smaller churches, stagnant churches, churches that aren't looking to innovate and change and grow, which are most, you know, most churches that I've experienced and most pastors I work with they're coming from context that says, hey, I was at this, 150 year old, you know congregation.

Speaker 3: 38:58

They just want these kinds of things to be the same. They just want someone to push the buttons and, you know, reach sermons and visit us in the hospital and that was it. So I think that kind of humility like, yes, I'll come and I'll be an Euro beating server and just give me a tie so I can feed my family is where that comes from. And you're right In the marketplace. They're assessing you on your competencies, on your skills. What have we done? That's similar to what you'll be doing here, because hiring is all about risk fundamentally right, and we want to mitigate our risk as much as possible to make sure we're hiring the right person, and that's why we want to you know, really fact check is this the right person for the job?

Speaker 2: 39:35

So so good man. Anything else as it relates to what you work folks through.

Speaker 3: 39:40

Yeah, the last one, sustainability and I think this is one that gets kind of overlooked is like what's your relationship with your church going to be now that you're bivocational or co vocational? Because if you keep doing everything we did as a full time pastor while having a full time job, you're going to burn out about three to six months and you're going to hurl up people in the week. So to start thinking now, what do I need to change and adjust and kind of massage to make this sustainable for the long term? Who do I need to raise up? Who do I need to train? Who ready to fill in the gaps that I can't do anymore?

Speaker 3: 40:10

One of the things that I did that was smart. In my journey as a church planters, I always had a cov, I was always a co pastor with another bivocational pastor and he and I could tag team preaching. We could. We could each take vacations in the summer, we could each take a sabbatical after five years because we had each other. And that was massive because sometimes he had it in him to do something for the church that I didn't, and vice versa. It also was a huge benefit because I had a traditional eight to five job in Lower Manhattan and he was a bartender. So I was kind of like the day shift pastor and he was kind of night shift pastor, so it worked out pretty well.

Speaker 2: 40:43

You look at the Bible and they did things together. I mean the easy stories, luke nine and then Luke 10, the sending of the 12 and then the 70 sent out two by two, and I think we've overlooked that. As it relates to leadership within the church, how we need to have a partner pastor. I don't, I'm the lead senior. Blah blah blah we don't really use that language. I've got a partner pastor now who is a pastor for me and has stepped in. He's newer on our team, has stepped in here the last year and we go back about a decade now as friends and it's really fun to do life in ministry with friends and I just feel so bad I mean truly man for guys, whether you're full time or co or bi vocational guys that just feel like man. I'm all. I'm all alone here and Sunday's coming and I got to preach and then you know.

Speaker 2: 41:39

And then, if you throw in, I got an eight to five job. I can just see how that would get just over overwhelming. Anything more to say about the need to do it with other people, not for other people, eric.

Speaker 3: 41:51

Yeah, man, I would just say the best advice is that if you are seriously exploring this path of being co vocational and you don't have someone to do it with, you should wait. I would not advise any pastor to say I'm just going to continue being a solo pastor while working a full time job. That's just a recipe for disaster, because it is so. Like you said, Tim, it can be so frustrating, so exhausting, so many demands on my time and my energy. I don't have anyone to lean on. When you have that one person or that team of people that you can count on and you're all together, working together, it makes, like I said earlier in the interview, a lot more fun, a lot more enjoyable to do ministry that way.

Speaker 2: 42:28

Hmm, I totally agree. So let folks under the hood. What a normal week for a Covocational pastor. Looks like Sunday showing up and you're gonna do your thing then. But how do you help them find that that balance that you're talking about, as they transition into this kind of new world?

Speaker 3: 42:46

Yeah, yeah, man. Well, the first thing is is that you know, balances an illusion, because I like never perfectly balance everything. So, in addition to being a covocational pastor for seven years of the pastor here in the Bronx and then, I've also have three children Under five. So they were all born after church was planted and I'm sure your listeners are well aware New York City is not a place where people you know Work and you know go out for two hour long lunches and hit the golf club on Thursday afternoon and go to happy hour for three hours. It's a pretty intense place to live and to work.

Speaker 3: 43:17

So one of the things I often coach passers through is wherever you are, just be fully there. If you're at work, just work. If you're at church doing church stuff, be it, be a church doing church stuff. If you're with your kids, or if your wife, your husband, be with your what, your kids, your wife, your husband, just be fully present. Because it's so easy to get pulled in every sort of direction and I try to do things like oh, from one to three, I'm gonna do this. From two to five, I'm gonna do that Whatever, the only thing I can say is that you know, it's easy to paint a rosy picture of covocational ministry.

Speaker 3: 43:48

You know having you know this day job plus leading your church. But all that pastors in on a little secret under the hood that for the first two years, and being a bivocational covocational pastor, I would get up at five o'clock every single morning to do church stuff and now go to work from nine to five. That was my life. So that's right. To make those kind of sacrifices I definitely would not recommend. This is not for the faint of heart. Don't do that forever because I don't think I could have, but I did that for a good season in my life hmm, are there stories of covocational, like team church where they're just Growing like nobody's business and they're not really paying anybody?

Speaker 2: 44:26

or maybe your part-time salary, etc. Do you have some stories of churches that folks could look up and say, wow, here's. Here's a model to follow.

Speaker 3: 44:35

Yeah, there's two places I would recommend. The first is about the Western United States examples. I'm sure you have an international audience, but here in the US the Tampa Underground is a great one to look up. They're fantastic that they have a whole, they have books and they have a lot of, you know, like market, like materials and assets you can look at and study.

Speaker 3: 44:53

One is a little bit smaller, is called the Korea Collective. They're based out of Pennsylvania. They're doing a really fabulous work as well, very similar to Tampa Underground, and one of the things that's cool about both of these groups Is that, as a decentralized model, right so you might have a traditional Sunday morning church where people gather around and listen to some certain listen to some songs in the sermon. But we also have a ministry that's to. You know, bikers may have a ministry. They have one ministry in in Korea collective that literally their whole ministry is going to different Renaissance fairs All summer and ministering people in the Renaissance fair community. They have a. They have a nail salon Christian-owned, and employees, you know young girls and trains them on how to do, you know, nails, and this nail salon broke a whole sex trafficking ring In the state because they were ministering to these girls and hearing their stories.

Speaker 3: 45:44

It's like stuff like that, I think, is really really cool, and I mean mine is up stories of microcosm of both of those. But you know, all saints church, you know, in our seven years of existence Planted a church, another church in the Bronx with a bilingual Spanish-speaking pastor, and another church in East New York, brooklyn, with a Trinidadian pastor, and so three different congregations kind of sprung up, all of which co-locational leaders, all Expressions of community and faith that didn't exist prior. All because of the ability just to say, hey, you don't need half a million dollars in a seminary degree to start a church, you need a few people who can go on mission together. Are these like a large, glamorous, exciting churches? Not really. I might be 25 people on a Sunday morning, but I'll say it was 25 people that weren't gathering there before. I think God rejoices in that.

Speaker 2: 46:30

Amen. This is the future and the and the present right now, and I pray people really, really take that to heart. Let's close with a theological question how? How is discipleship and evangelism connected? Because I think a lot of times they get bivurated right, but you planted a church, that planted a church. It was born pregnant, you know, and I bet that was in the the plan. Well, the Holy Spirit's plan, sure, from from the jump right. So yeah, talk about discipleship and evangelism and the interconnection there.

Speaker 3: 47:04

Yeah, so I'll share two stories and then thank you again for your time today. Tim, this was a lot of fun. I'm right back at you. The first story is that when I was being mentored to plant my own church, my mentors a pastor named rich, and he told me one time If you get hit by a bus, right right, I run my bicycle around New York City every single day, so it's very likely, if you get by a bus, who's gonna take over your church? And I said I have no idea. Well, you got to figure that out because it can't be. The Eric Koch show has to be, you know, jesus show. So you have to figure out now who are you being kind of disciple? Who are you gonna train? Who can develop? If God forbid, something happens to you? The church continues and that's something I think all pastors should consider, whether they bike around New York City or not Is that, is this ministry gonna die with me? So that that's a problem and I should take this very seriously. So kind of begin thinking now, who's the people in my life that I can begin developing? I think that's the first story. Second story man Miss discipleship and evangelism.

Speaker 3: 48:02

One of my neighbors in my part. I live in a five-story apartment building in the Bronx. One of my neighbors asked me in the mail room Eric, are you a member of the clergy class? Yeah, sure you could say that he's like okay, do you mind if you and I sit down and talk about something I'm going through? I'm sure so. A few weeks later I went to his apartment who drinks themselves for water? And this guy just spilled his life story to me good, bad and ugly, you know. Tears were shed, we prayed together and this guy will probably never walk into a church because just that's not part of his life. But he knew enough to know that there's a person in ministry who loves Jesus, who lives in my building I can talk to, and he's not the only person that I've had those conversations with in my neighborhood, which I think is really cool.

Speaker 3: 48:46

I think when pastors and ministry folks remove the mentality that ministry only happens in the four walls of the church, it opens the opportunity for God to work in our lives money through Sunday, and I think that's a really powerful thing. So what's the line between discipleship and evangelism? I mean, what was happening? What was happening in that guy's apartment when he was praying and Crying because of the sins that he's dealing with and hearing about Christ. I would say it was both. It was totally evangelism and discipleship. So how do you entangle those two? I don't know, but I'm open to listening and learning, but for now I'm just gonna try to live with people and serve them the best I can.

Speaker 2: 49:22

Yeah, you're. You're pastoring your community, yeah right. And we need more of the baptized folks who say I'm the everyday Christian Pastoring their, their neighborhood. That's right. There'd be a renaissance toward that, in that direction. Man, that's what I'm praying for and this has been so much fun. Eric, I love your heart. You have blessed our listeners today immensely. If we got I help pastors get jobs calm. You can hit Eric up there if his services could be of help to you and your email. Would you mind giving that out as well, eric?

Speaker 3: 49:55

No not all, it's just my name here. I see at I help pastors get jobs calm, and then also, if you download the free PDF on the website, that'll kind of trigger you into a mailing list, so we can engage that way as well. You also can follow me on Twitter. Up my name, eric oak.

Speaker 2: 50:10

Eric oak, the one and the only Jesus is using you in a mighty way. Man and I am better for our time today. Sharing is caring. Please like, subscribe, comment wherever it is You're taking this in, whether it's on YouTube, spotify, itunes, wherever it is. I'm a Spotify guy. Where do you take in podcast, eric? Spotify, man, only Spotify. Yeah, only Spotify, only Spotify. So this is growing. This is a podcast the night leadership, collective, united leadership org. If we can help you in any way, it's a good day. Go make it a great day. Thanks so much, eric. Appreciate it, man.

Speaker 3: 50:38

Thanks Tim.