Your first step professionally begins with how

has God uniquely wired you?

What gives you life, and what do you enjoy doing?

sit down with a sheet of paper, draw a line in the middle, and write down all

the things you do in a given week or given month, and put 'em in two categories.

Life giving, life sucking,

In a rapidly evolving world, how do pastors and church

leaders bridge the gap between ministry and the marketplace?

Welcome to Seek, go Create, where today we're joined by Eric Hoke, a dynamic

individual who specializes in helping church leaders transition in the world

of business to sustain their ministries.

Eric with his unique expertise as a co vocational church planter and marketplace

professional has a rich background in staffing, corporate training and ministry.

His work extends to guiding thousands of career changers, including

pastors and church leaders, aiding them in leveraging their skills for

corporate and marketplace success.

With over 15 years of ministry experience and extensive knowledge and agile project

management and leadership, Eric's insights have been sought after by top brands

and prestigious institutions, and now a lot of pastors that are just trying

to find ways to make it in the world.

Eric, welcome to Seek, go Create.

Thanks for having me, Tim.

Excited to chat.

Lemme just jump into my first question, a, I now am calling

this a cheesy icebreaker because it is, but if somebody asks you

what you do, what do you tell 'em?

What's your answer if somebody asks you that question?

Yeah.

it depends if it would do a question in the real world or in Twitter,

but for the sake of the podcast, what I do is I help pastors and

ministry folks rebrand themselves to be marketplace professionals.

That's kinda what people know me for in the church world.

In the business world, I'm the director of learning development.

A not-for-profit in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in the church world.

I'm a former co vocational church planter in the Bronx, in New York

City and in the personal world.

I'm happily married with three daughters.

Yeah.

And you, and I know you just made a transition from, we'll call it, I

don't wanna say city boy to country boy, that's probably a little bit

of extreme, but, a personal shift.

Tell me a little bit more about that.

I.

Yeah.

So in 2023, post Covid, I, a church that I founded, all Saints

Church merged with a church that we helped plant Focus Fellowship.

So the lead pastor of that church and myself sat down the end of 22.

We said, Hey, what would it look like if our churches combined

forces we're stronger and healthier, more vibrant if we're together?

There's only one catch to this.

merger and the catch is I'm gonna step down from pastoral ministry and

to go into what God has next for me.

the other pastor agreed that'd be a good idea for all of us, and

that merge happened in April 23.

That was the blast thing, keeping my family in New York City, in the

Bronx, where we spent 10 years.

So just for context, people who are listening at home.

My family of five lived in about an 800 square foot apartment on the

fifth floor of a building on Bruckner Boulevard, close to Yankee Stadium.

And we decided, you know what does God have next for us?

And it's we did the city thing and the church planting thing for a long time.

Let's be a little bit closer to family.

Let's get a house and a yard.

Let's figure out what that would look like for us.

So yeah, man, it's as of this recording, it's pretty fresh.

We've been here for about three or four months and it's been an adjustment.

Some days I'm thinking, why did I do this a long time ago?

And other days I'm thinking, why did I ever do this?

This was a terrible idea.

So that's how it's going so far.

a family of five, there's probably some that are

just, man, they're loving life.

This is the greatest thing ever.

And are there some that are like, dad, what have you done?

or husband, what have you done?

what, how, what's the consensus so far?

Three, four months in?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the one-year-old doesn't really have a vote because she's happy

wherever the four-year-old is definitely more of the city girl.

She wants to still be in New York.

She talks about her old apartment, her old school, our old building had a pool in it.

So she always talks about going to the pool.

The five-year-old who's in kindergarten is loving it.

She's got a great school and a great teacher, and my wife and I,

we sort of square dance about it.

Some days she's.

Excited about, and I'm down about it.

Other days she's down about, and I'm excited about it.

So it goes back and forth.

We haven't had too many days where we both were excited and both were down, which

was probably God's grace in his season.

Yeah, and I think that's part of life.

I ju just to kinda keep that in perspective, you said y'all were

in 800 square feet, all five of you young kids too, it sounds like.

My wife and I here behind me, for those that are watching the video,

we're in a little over 400 square feet.

We're on wheels.

It's an rv, but 800 square feet isn't.

Isn't very much much.

Did you increase that when you moved out to Pennsylvania?

Got some more square footage.

Yeah, we do.

I think the house is somewhere around 2,400, maybe 2200.

Of course we have the garage, we have the yard, we have the basement.

The thing that baffles me, we've only been there for three months and we've

already filled it up with furniture.

It blows my mind, man, how fast that happens.

'cause we, the day we moved in, it was bare bones and I feel like we blinked

and every looking cranny was claimed.

I was gonna ask if you've adhered to Parkinson's law, which, I'm

an engineer, so you know, Parkinson, I think he said that we will expand

whatever space we have will expand to.

It sounds like you have proven that out, correct.

I.

that is correct.

So the one biggest change we have, two, I guess the first one

is the baby has her own room.

The two older girls share a room, so that's a new thing.

They used to all sleep in one room and we have a guest room.

So we never had that in New York, obviously, because there's no space.

But what has happened is everyone that we know who always wanted to hang out with

us is not welcome to themselves over.

And sleeping in our guest room.

So if you're listening to this podcast and you wanna come hang out for a weekend, we

got a place for you to crash at our place.

the criteria for me to hang out is you need, a nice

level, 40 foot driveway so I could just pull in the driveway.

That's what I'm looking for.

Yeah, we got that.

Yeah, we got that.

You're good.

So Eric, this is, kind of something that I think that's

gonna help frame the conversation when someone goes through the

transition that you just went through.

It's probably not that much different than pastors you work with or people that

are making changes and things like that.

And there's the physical aspect of it, moving to a new

place, doing something new.

But there's also the, what we really.

Dig down on here is how does success relate to it?

How do we redefine success?

Was your transition, do you perceive it?

And there's nothing good or bad about this, but is it a, is it an advancement?

Is it a horizontal move or was it, what some would call a failure?

And the reason I'm asking that is because I think that's gonna be important when

we talk about how pastors perceive.

Their future in just a little while.

So talk about just the psychology of the transition you just went through.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm going to answer it by saying that unless you have a theology

that says, as a Christian.

All of your life is a ministry.

You can look at what I just experienced and what many pastors I work with

are experiencing as a failure.

Hey, you're no longer pastoring a local church.

You're no longer in the four walls of a church building.

You're no longer preaching on Sunday.

now you work at X, Y, Z corporation.

That's the step backwards, or that's not everything that God has for you yet.

Where's that idea in?

Church history and where's an idea in scripture?

Pretty hard to come by.

so I think if you have a theology that says, and I grew up with some of this,

so I relate to it, that Christians, pastors, missionaries, ministers,

they're the Navy Seals of Christians and.

Accountants, architects, engineers, bankers, teachers, social workers,

they're they're okay, but they're not the elite and if that is

the pervasive model that you.

subscribe to as a person.

Yeah, you look at, a transition out of vocational ministry as a failure, but

if you can get the clarity that says, you know what, whether I'm preaching

on a Sunday morning or whether I'm shoveling my sidewalk after a nice storm

like we just had here in Pennsylvania, I'm still doing it to God to glory.

And that's what matters.

It takes a lot of intentionality and inner work to decouple your identity from

your position, but once you can do that.

The opportunities that God has for you are limitless.

All right.

My follow up question is one, you may or may not be able to answer,

but we're almost 250 episodes in here at Seat Go Create and.

We have had.

essence of this next question come up going all the way back to the

beginning, back to fall of 2019, and it goes something like this,

Eric, how did we come to this place?

there's a pecking order in the Kingdom of God or in the work that we do.

I've always been a marketplace guy.

I went to Bible school and things like that, but it's baked in.

If you go to Bible school, I.

Missionaries are the ultimate, the next would probably be some form of evangelist

and then a pastor, and then, you know, next would be, youth pastor, and then

you know, the, and then the drummer, that's the bottom of the spiritual

realm would be the drummer up on stage.

And then it's the, the gentiles, the unwashed masses that are the

accountants, lawyers, and all that.

How did we get to this place?

Because I agree with you, it's not scriptural because all the

disciples were co vocational.

They were bi-vocational.

How did we

get to this place where we have a ranking of who is more important, the

work they do in the Kingdom of God?

Man, there's somebody smarter than me that probably

knows the history of this.

Let me give you my, Bible college answer.

My Bible college answer is that there's something in.

The human spirit, not of God that wants to one up their fellow human.

There's something within us that says, oh, you have an Audi and I have a Ford.

How do I get an Audi?

But they don't realize the Audi guy looking at the Bentley guy and saying,

you have a Bentley and I have an Audi.

How do I get a Bentley?

I'll share a story.

My wife is an amazing person.

I'm so excited to see all the gems she gets in heaven.

One day we had a Sunday early in our church plant.

Where it was like a holiday weekend, labor Day, Memorial Day, something like that.

And attendance was low.

And when we were at church Plant, when there's a low attendance, that's

like your family and two old ladies show up, that's like a low Sunday.

And it was like that.

I remember leaving that Sunday just so discouraged and so beat

up and my wife says something to me, she's you know what's funny?

Think of the, Big church pastor, they probably had a low Sunday attendance

today because they had 600 as opposed to a thousand, and they're feeling

the same way you are right now.

It's shoot.

You have a point.

There's something about the human spirit that says, I have to acquire

more, be more, do more, have more than.

My brother or sister does.

And when it comes to the pecking order, I like that language.

I think that makes a lot of sense.

It's how do I get higher up on the rung so that God loves me more?

But God loves you regardless 'cause of what Christ did for you.

So until that seeps into your spirit, you'll always feel this

sense of, I'm not doing enough.

I'm not, made enough.

I'm not.

High enough on a ladder because I'm trying to earn God's love, which is, impossible.

Yeah, and I've always wondered, and this is, we're just.

Guesstimating here.

I'm kinda like you.

I've tried to study some of the history.

I do wonder if the Americanized First World Church, if it didn't

invent this, it threw gas on it.

it really heightened it because of our puritanical performance oriented, we're

better than you and we know it and we're gonna show it type mindset.

And then, and then we measure all types of things.

I've always been, I've always wondered, and this is another one of these

things, we don't know the answer.

What would it been like just to be one of the 12?

What would it have been like to be one of the 12 that we don't hear much about?

not the big three 12 that hung out with Jesus, but one of

the nine just observing and.

All that kind of stuff.

I've always wondered if they like, at the end of the evening, maybe their

quiet time prayer, if Jesus, I could see Peter maybe doing this, but Jesus

said, alright, let's go over the numbers.

let's talk about, they're gonna say later all we're healed, but we need to know

how many that was something picture that.

Can you picture that?

no.

I heard this quote before and I don't know who said it, so maybe one of your

listeners Will, will said it to me on Twitter, but it says, as Christians,

those who we admire, we shouldn't.

And those that we should are tied up doing God's work behind the scenes

that nobody even knows their name.

And that always stuck with me because I think greatness in the kingdom is just

that it's serving in obscurity, but I.

We're humans and we live in 20, 23, 24.

Now we're we want to be front and center.

We want to be the brand, we want to be the man.

And the Americanized version of the church is, that's real man.

That is a really good call out.

Yeah, it is, and it, and the reason I bring it all up

is because I think that's the.

Context that you're stepping into with your, the mission you have with, I love

the time you know exactly what you do.

I help pastors get jobs.

That's, I love the name of your organization.

I help pastors get jobs.

and I guess the thing I'd like to ask now, because I think it, it

fits, it sounds like what you just went through three, four months

ago where you went through your

transition.

That, that, that is part of a longer process, longer play that

dates back, years and years that you are comfortable with that.

Whereas there could be Joe pastor or Sally Pastor I guess could be out there right

now.

And they think that if they have to go out and get a part-time gig or a side hustle

or get a corporate job or something, that it's failure back up for me.

And again, our theme here is.

Redefining success.

Defining what success is.

Back up a little bit and give a little bit of Eric's ups and downs.

That's helped you prepare for what you just went through a few months ago.

maybe a good, a bad or ugly, whatever.

It's, I'm just opening up for you to share whatever from your background

here that you think might be pertinent that helped you get ready for this.

Yeah, I think one of the good that I, that one of the things

I did right, and there's a lot of things I'll do wrong and I'll, I

don't mind airing my dirty laundry about it to, to those listening, but

one of the things I did right was everything was always transparent.

and what I mean by that is I didn't just wake up one morning 'cause

I had a bad, burrito the night before and say, you know what?

Forget this church.

I'm gonna go do something different.

It was always an ongoing conversation with leadership, with mentors,

with select members that had the, the reason to be in the know.

like I said, it merged healthily.

it was not a quick, okay, here's your new pastor, see you later.

We did it over the course of several months, I'm really proud of that.

I'm really proud that we transitioned well.

I think one of the biggest mistakes I see pastors make, Tim, is they call me

and they say, Hey, I'm the youth pastor and I need to get outta my situation.

it's a bad situation to which I always ask, and I sometimes get accused by,

some guys on Twitter about trying to remove people from ministry.

That's not at all my dream or my vision or my desire.

The first question I typically would ask that youth pastor is, have you

spoken to a senior pastor about this?

How you sat down with him or her and just had an honest conversation

like, Hey, I'm feeling like this is my season here is coming to an end.

Can we find a way to, peacefully make a transition and nine times outta

10, you, you already know the answer.

They say, no, I haven't done that.

It's maybe that should be the first step before you call me and ask me for

a resume and help you get on LinkedIn.

Why don't you sit down with the people you're accountable to in Love and Grace.

And I obviously understand there's dynamics that play

in some of these contexts.

I'm well aware of those, but just being transparent and

open, this is where I'm at.

I'm a big fan, Pete Zaro, and he talks about how people become spiritually

mature, but remain emotionally immature and an emotionally mature

person would be open and honest.

This is where I'm going, and I want the people who love and care about me

to be informed of my thought process.

So one thing I, it's one thing I did really well.

When it comes to things I didn't do very well, and I'm now facing the backend of

it, I did put a lot of my identity into.

I'm a church planter in New York City.

how sick is that?

How many people can say that?

And that's some of that Navy Seal thinking coming in again where it's, I'm the elite.

and now I'm here.

don't work in church ministry anymore.

I volunteer at church, but don't work on staff anymore.

Living in a suburban neighborhood with a two car garage.

And those realities that I was finding identity in are

no longer a part of who I am.

So I had to ask myself those tough questions of, okay,

who is Eric Hoke removed from church planter in a major city?

And when I figured that out, let you know.

But that's still something I'm processing in real time.

I think that's I'm so glad you brought up that word identity.

Because I see it.

I'm, quote unquote, my title is Executive Coach and I, when we finish up here, I'll

have a call with a leader of a ministry.

I work with ministry leaders, and I work with business and company leaders.

And Eric, it's the same thing.

it's identity.

There are people that have identity and you know, there's words we could throw in

the pot and stir 'em in, like humility.

I heard

humility in the, in the tone of your voice in the way you were talking.

Now, I don't know if I would've heard something different 10 years ago.

I know if you had talked to me, you would say, this guy is.

Pretty brash and bold and, you know, go through things and it's like,

okay, there's more humility and hopefully less hypocrisy, you know,

less putting on a certain face and things like that.

And I see people that really struggle with that.

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna hit one more thing before we go into

some, maybe some practical things.

When I was at bible school, I was always the business guy talking to

people about, Hey, doing this, making money and all that kind of stuff.

And it was shunned.

They even had a business section.

They tried to do a little bit of what you're talking about, but I talked to

one guy who had a really good business idea for something that I thought it

would've been great for missionaries.

And Eric, he told me something that I want you to address and

just say something about it.

He said, I.

I said, man, this would be the greatest thing ever.

I said, I'd help raise some funds for this.

It was basically this greenhouse where someone anywhere could

grow stuff and then maybe sell it locally and things like that.

it was a full on cool business opportunity.

And, I said, man, every missionary in Africa and other places like this, we

need to work with him and all that.

He goes, he goes, Tim, he said, man, he goes, I would love to do that.

He says, but you know what we found?

He said, most people we've interacted with.

They're lazy.

They went into ministry.

This could be harsh sounding.

They went into ministry 'cause they didn't wanna do real work

and, and I was just like flabbergasted.

I was going, what?

But yet I did see a lot of that play out when I was in and around.

There was this thought of, it goes back to what you brought up

earlier, it's the ultimate calling and if I do that, God's gonna

take care of me.

Other people are gonna take care of me.

I'm gonna live off offering stuff like that.

But Have you seen that at all?

Counter, make me feel better.

Tell me No.

These are some of the hardest working people you'll run across.

Or just like the population.

There's some people in ministry that are just lazy.

All right, so I'll just speak as plainly as I can.

I.

I have a theory.

That if you're a young person, let's just say, I don't know, 15 to 20, and you

have aspirations of leadership and being in front of people and drive, driving

change, but you don't wanna do the hard work to do that in the marketplace to

become a pastor because you can be.

A 25, 20 6-year-old pastor at a church and have a congregation of

people who look to you for leadership.

they exist, but there's not very many, 25, 26 year olds who are leading

small businesses and companies.

there's a few of course, but I have a theory that there's some people who

say, Hey, I really want the glory of being a pastor without having to do the

grunt work of development and growth.

That's why I think a lot of.

younger leaders implode, early on in their ministry because the amount of

pressure that they put on themselves, they weren't mature enough to handle.

With that being said.

There are some lazy pastors.

I have to sometimes tell guys I talk to listen, you're stressed out because of a

board member or a deacon getting on you.

You haven't had to go to an office from nine to five your entire life.

You never had a boss, you never had projects you were accountable for.

You never had any of that.

you had.

People would also give you extra grace because you were the pastor

and they expect you to be an expert in everything when they just show

up to a place every single day.

And you have, outputs and emails and a Slack channel always humming and

different projects popping up on your calendar to different kind of pressure.

I.

So I actually encourage a lot of pastors, you have more free time now

as a full-time minister than you ever will as marketplace professional.

So why don't you use that free time and build something on the side if you

wanna make some more money, as opposed to just saying, I'm done with ministry,

I'm gonna go work somewhere else.

So that's kinda the first thing.

The second thing I'll say, though, and this is where I give pastors credit, the.

The nature of work, the stakes are so much higher in ministry.

So for example, let's suppose, someone shows up to your church and they've

been there two or three Sundays and they wanna sit down with you for

breakfast and talk about their life, and they just unload trauma, drama.

Pain, suffering loss heartache for three hours on a Wednesday morning.

That is a lot to bear for anybody.

Most marketplace leaders, that's not their Wednesday morning.

The Wednesday morning is some emails and a Slack message.

So I think that the laziness is not so much of pastors don't wanna work hard.

I think for a lot of it, it's the volume of work is so intense.

maybe it's not as frequent, I know a lot of pastors who golf on Tuesday

afternoons from at a one o'clock tea time.

I don't know many business leaders doing that, but maybe a few.

But I think the intensity of the work is obviously much

higher when you're a pastor.

yeah, I think people in ministry, some are lazy, some are over overachievers,

but certainly is an easy gig to get into if you just wanna be a freeloader.

That's for sure.

So what's going on with someone?

Let's just maybe talk to Joe Pastor that might be listening in, or

someone may know Joe Pastor before I.

They reach out to you.

Talk a little bit about the situation that they might be in, leading up

to, we'll talk in a little while about what happens after they

interact with you, but talk about what they're like leading up to that.

Some of the different scenarios or cases that you see people in.

Yeah, so we have three profiles of pastors who come to us.

About half of them are pastors who see they're writing on the wall

with the future of churches in this country, which churches are gonna

be smaller, people are gonna be less generous, and living a middle class.

Life as a full-time minister is gonna be really tough for a

lot of people moving forward.

bar, unless we have some sort of massive revival or something like

that, the future is gonna be co vocational and bi-vocational leaders

as it is already in Europe, New Zealand, Australia, what have you.

So a lot of very innovative pastors will say, okay, Bible College

Seminary, full-time ministry.

But I'm 35 and I can't keep doing this for 30 more years.

Let me call eye health pastors, get jobs and figure something out.

That's about half of the calls we get.

30% of the calls are the pastors who say, I'm done with ministry.

I'm burnt out.

I can't take it anymore.

I just wanna go get a job somewhere else.

And I'm just, I'm done with it.

A lot of them don't call us angry at God or angry at church.

They're just done being in ministry.

And then the last 20% call us because they had a moral failure or they were

fired or some circumstance removed them from ministry and they call us

and they're in crisis and we're there to provide triage and support to help

them transition into the marketplace.

So those are the three that we find most common.

I wanna become vo, I wanna leave ministry altogether, or I was forced

to leave and now I'm not sure what to do with myself professionally.

so they are coming to terms with maybe.

Full-time, financial support ministry is

not going to play out.

And that's a, that's probably a fairly I.

we talked about the psychology of it earlier.

That's probably something that something's gone on psychologically.

their wife looks at 'em and says, we can't live poor anymore.

Or this church, it's not gonna keep growing.

We see the math type thing.

What are you seeing, and this might be back to maybe a bigger picture

question before, we're going in a little bit deeper, but what are.

Kind of as trends or something.

mean, I, I, I've been observing for some time that probably the, what we'll

call, church World First World Church, whatever is going through some changes.

I think Covid really, I.

A lot of people think it was Covid.

I think it was happening before then.

Covid just

emphasized it.

But what can you share?

That's just observations that you have.

And I know that there are bar none places out there that do a lot of the research,

but just from your seat, Eric, what do you see that we might, could glean from you

about what's happening with the church?

Yeah, there's a few things that are on my radar right now.

one of them is, this is just like you said, my observations.

I don't have data on this.

I'm sure someone does, but anytime I talk to a Christian.

Under 25.

I asked him a lot of questions.

I really want to get in the brain of the Gen Z believers, and the reason

why that is a few months ago I was talking to a pastor and he was sharing

about where he went to Bible college.

He graduated from Bible college in 2005, so almost 20 years ago

with a youth ministry degree.

There was a hundred youth ministry majors.

At this Bible college 20 years ago, 19 years ago, this past year, they had three.

So in 19 years, they went from a hundred young people who said,

I want to go into full-time.

Church ministry to three.

And I'm really curious, what is it with Gen Z that says me?

I'm good.

I don't wanna pursue that.

I'm a millennial, I'm an elder millennial.

my group Gen Xers, we were, I.

Going to seminary.

We were planting churches, we were moving our families to cities

like the Bronx and starting, ministries from scratch, and Gen Z.

I'm just, I'm not seeing that and maybe it's happening.

I just don't have exposure to it.

But that has my attention.

The other end of the spectrum is when you see lead pastors who are.

70 and 80 years old and hanging onto their pulpits and not wanting to give it up.

and sometimes it's about power and control, but oftentimes

Tim is just financial.

I don't have a retirement, I don't have social security.

This is if I quit working, I.

At this church, I'm gonna be living on the street.

So I see that on two extremes, where it's like, what's happening in

the church milieu that young folks don't wanna jump into ministry.

Then the older folks don't wanna give up their ministries

and how can we address that?

And what I'm really.

Find people perk, get their ears perked up when it comes to

the, I help pastors to get jobs.

Conversation is, Hey, tell a group of 22, 23 year olds, Hey, you

don't have to go to Bible college and get a youth ministry degree.

You can get a marketable skill where you can make a lot of money and you and

your three or four best friends and go move to whatever part of the country

you want to, buy some homes or rent some apartments and just start meeting

people in your community and let the kingdom of God flourish from that.

And if we're living in a really exciting time in the world where

people can do that and maybe they couldn't a generation or two ago.

And I think that as more Christians begin to think missionally of, Hey,

how do I get a marketplace job, build healthy community, impact my

neighborhoods, and make a tangible difference for the kingdom Gen Zs aren't

signing up for seminary, but I think a lot of them will sign up for that.

And I think in terms of the older crowd, some of them need to say, all

right, I need to transition and let the.

The 40-year-old, the 50-year-old, the 30-year-old, take this

pulpit and I need to step down.

Until then we're gonna, we're gonna have a huge vacuum.

Yeah.

And obviously some of those folks don't know how much

money these youth pastors make.

They make the big bucks, right?

But.

Exactly.

our son-in-Law, who, we actually met him when we were

at bible school a few years ago.

He would've been 18, 19.

We would've been in our late fifties, almost 60.

I'm a tail end of the boomer generation.

he does have a bible school degree, but he actually is gone

the route of cybersecurity.

And does some things with his church.

In fact, they offered him, I guess I could say this, hopefully they offered

him the jo, the job of youth pastor a while back, and it just didn't make sense.

The money, the, the, the work,

I mean, you know, the, the way a lot of, so here's this, maybe I'm

gonna pose this as a question.

I see these divisions in church world, there's the denominational world, which I

think is in trouble.

I think the Denomin in general, denominations, they've got some challenges

that they're gonna have to deal with.

And then I think there's what we'll call mega church.

I.

World and and we will pop in and visit some of those as we travel around some.

The music's great.

It's entertaining.

Smoke and mirror, not smoke and mirror.

Sorry, was, did I say that out loud?

Smoke.

Smoke.

The smoke

Smoke machine.

It's okay.

we can

skinny

smoke machines,

that really cool.

Very entertaining.

And then

there's, and then there's what obviously is a movement now, which is like home,

church, small church, blah, blah, blah.

I think there's this vast middle ground.

And I guess my question for you hear is where are you seeing a lot of.

Your people come from?

Where are these people come from?

My guess would be that middle ground, but maybe not.

What, what are you seeing from those groups?

And if I missed a group, you can call me out on it or highlight it.

No, this is actually a really pointed question because when we

transitioned from the Bronx, we were in.

We were in a public school, we were mobile, we were scrappy.

We were, very janky kids ministry.

My children would just hang out in a sanctuary while I preached and

fight each other in the back row.

And my wife and I, when we moved out here to Lancaster, which is Ki

Lancaster, Pennsylvania, it's kinda like the Bible Belt of the Northeast.

I.

And we, my wife and I, we're gonna find the biggest, baddest, mega church in town.

Our kids will finally have a kid's ministry, Disneyland for Jesus to go to.

We'll be able to sit and have the, entertainment factor service

and just be ministered to, and I don't wanna tell anybody that

I'm a pastor and I don't want.

To deal with that and let that be our church experience for a while.

While Tim, you're laughing 'cause you probably know how well that

went because we went to one mega church and they were fantastic.

Beautiful church, amazing people.

But every Sunday morning it was a fight for my kids.

true anxiety.

Are we gonna go in the back?

I don't want to go in the back.

I don't like going in the back.

Can I stay with you?

And it was one of those dynamics where it was the kids were invited

to the sanctuary, but the kids weren't really invited to the

sanctuary, if that makes sense.

Every time we'd go in with the kids very quickly and Usher would come over

and say, Hey, we have kids in ministry.

Do you wanna go check in your kid?

it was that.

So we did that for a few months and then we ended up going to, like what

you just described, that 140 person, middle of the road, Lutheran church

is where we're worshiping right now.

They let kids into service if kids cry or scream or whatever.

They don't care.

They just keep having service.

And it's been really life, life-giving, and beautiful in the past, and I

have gotten to know each other.

It's been really special.

That's where we, that's where we landed.

So we had a idea.

big box church.

Our kids said, no way.

And a wise pastor who transitioned outta ministry told me best advice I can give

you for finding a church post ministry.

Post church ministry.

Do it like follow your kids, like you drug them to church for all these years.

Let them drag you to where they want to go.

And they brought us to this medium sized Lutheran church.

So there you go.

So how the medium sized churches doing?

'cause I agree there.

Pretty vital.

But isn't that where just sometimes the math is really hard to make it work?

you may know about that personally, but I just see that being a struggle.

It's almost it's almost like this business, I'll use my business perspective

that, it's not startup anymore.

But we

can't scale it and grow it.

I don't like those words, but I'll use 'em here.

You can't scale it and grow it to where we could have like full-time

staff people, blah, blah, blah.

So we're kind of in this middle ground.

That just makes it tough and and in the world we're in, it's hard to

settle in with middle of the road.

I like middle of the road.

I think that's fine.

But what do you see there?

Is that where some people come to you guys?

Because it's just hard to make the math work?

I.

yeah, for sure.

And not only that, the biggest challenge that I see, and I think

this is not just medium size and larger churches, is the number of,

white heads you see every Sunday.

And God bless the saints, senior Saints, we love 'em.

We need them.

They're sweat, blood and tears.

I built those churches.

But what, what happens when they're gone?

that's what my brain always goes back to.

So if you have a church of 200 people at 160 or over 60, where does that

lead leave the church in 25 years?

And I think a lot of people call us because they see

they're writing on the wall.

yeah, people have bankrolled this for a long time, but that,

that, that bank is drying up.

Yeah, and I'm looking at it as a former real estate guy

too, going, man, there's gonna be a lot of buildings out there.

There's gonna be a lot of assets and things like that.

So anyway, Eric, I'm curious how, let's, tell me how this started.

Tell me how you migrated to it.

Because if I think I saw something on the background.

You've almost.

I've been through, this is a little bit exaggerative, but you've almost

been through every role that one could have in quote unquote ministry.

I think missionary and church plant, youth pastor, all that kind of

stuff.

don't know if you ever drummed or anything like that, but maybe you did.

You're shaking your head no for those that are listening and and it sounds

like you've also been from like.

Liberty University to, minus to actually, hardcore, theology

school to, all over the place.

First of all, I'm fascinated with that because I think so many people get

in one space and they never leave.

I think that kind of

helps transitions too, by the way.

But at what point did you say, I am well equipped and I've got the resources

and I'm called to help pastors.

So all of it was by accident slash God's grace.

I don't know, which was God's grace, which was an accident.

So I'll just tell the whole story.

So I'm an accidental bi-vocational pastor.

Some people are.

Have the mentality of, I'm always gonna be bi-vocational because I look at

it as a strategic way to do ministry.

I was not one of those people when I planted All Saints, I knew

it was gonna be in a large city.

I knew it was gonna be an underserved community.

I knew it was gonna take at least six months of my dynamic preaching

to grow to 200, 300 people.

of course the joke was on me because our church never grew anywhere near to that

size, which churches in New York City don't grow that, that large anyways.

Typically, so I started doing bivocational ministry by accident.

I was doing some leadership development and some training, as a

side gig plus pastoring the church.

covid hit a lot of the church plants that were like mine.

ended up closing up shop.

And I realized that the ones who ended up closing, all of them had one

thing in common that I didn't, and that was the pastor was full-time.

So I had reached out to a mentor of mine to share what I was thinking through,

and he really encouraged me, Tim.

He said, listen man, why don't you make part of your ministry helping pastors.

think differently about vocation, figure out how to get into the

marketplace, how to do ministry and marketplace ministry together.

I think that could be something you could think, you can scratch a pretty

big itch in the church world right now.

And me being the cynical, New York City adjacent person, I am thought,

oh, no one's gonna care about that.

But sure, I'll give it a try.

Put together this very janky low budget website.

A lead generating PDF put on my social media.

Went and made myself some lunch.

Came back an hour or two later, and 300 people had signed up for it.

So I thought, oh, my friend was onto something and we've been

off to the races ever since.

And to your point, like I'm not someone that, this is not theory

for me 'cause I've had to do it.

Like I've had to rebrand as a marketplace professional in Manhattan

as a Liberty University graduate.

So nobody here has it worse than I do.

Trust me.

So I had to figure all that out.

And then I got actually into workforce development where I was

helping young adults, 18 to 24 year olds, break into the marketplace.

And it just was a realization I had, Tim, they have programs like

this for underserved young adults.

They have programs like this for veterans.

They have programs like this for what?

Like people of color.

They have programs like this for all sorts of people in society.

But where is it for pastors?

It doesn't exist.

So we started it.

So you mentioned a word, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna follow

up to ask it as a, are you sure?

Because some people might wanna argue with it.

You said that this is a ministry and

if someone says Eric.

This isn't a ministry.

There's money changing hands.

There's some profit there.

There.

It doesn't look like a ministry.

How do you respond?

Yeah.

the first thing I would say is that 97% of people who engage

our content never paid a penny.

And every single, not every day, I'll be honest, every week I get an email from

someone that says, Hey Eric, you don't know me, but I follow you on Twitter.

I get your emails.

I did everything you said and I found a job and praise God.

I have pastors who emailed me probably once a month.

I want to do your class.

I can't afford it.

Do you have any advice for me?

I said, here's my advice.

Here's a coupon code for a free voucher.

Go take the class.

The only thing I charge for is anything that requires customization.

And why do I do that?

Because I'm a working father of three kids and they're, they get hungry every

single day and their feet won't stop growing and they need, new shoes for

ballet and a new, a new outfit for karate.

so I do this on the side because obviously it takes time, money, and energy.

The vast majority of what I do is no cost.

so that's how I do it.

I just say, Hey, I charge a little bit of money.

Honestly, it's about one third to one fifth of what the market

rate is for the similar services.

but you can take everything I've given for free and figure it out

on your own if money's a barrier.

Yeah.

And just so that I'm clear, I am all for charging money.

I'm a business guy that goes over into the ministry world at times.

I did not come up.

Along in ministry.

So I'm all for that.

In fact, when I did go to o over to your site, I saw some of your pricing

and I went, that's fairly modest.

That's, I don't wanna say you, you could probably charge more if you chose to.

So this isn't a money grab and all that.

I'll.

guarantee that, gimme a couple, give us a couple of success stories.

you got a couple of couple here and there's a few questions I wanna

ask before we wrap up here, but how about a few of you know this person?

I always say Guy, but I'm sure that there might be women here.

We need more.

I think women in the ministry world, they're just, they seem to be

smarter and can handle things better.

Maybe they've got this figured out and we just need the guys that can't figure

out how to make the money piece work.

So anyway, tell us some success stories.

Sorry, but sidebar

commentary.

We may need to cut that out.

we'll make the cut longer if we decide to, but the majority

of the emails I get from people who say, oh, I figured it out on my own

with your free resources are woman.

That totally makes sense.

we're sitting here talking and truthfully, I think I, I saw that

you were, agile, project management.

That's my wife.

She's gotten all the

training on that.

You know, we would probably be really wise if we actually got just the

wives to have these conversations.

But no, two guys, we can get on and talk for 60 minutes, say stuff, act

like we know what we're talking about.

But yes, the women are.

Definitely smarter.

We will admit that.

And we may just leave that in for, just for the sake of

its accuracy and also Okay.

Success stories.

Tell us about some.

Yeah, I think one of my favorite success stories was

a pastor who's living in Ohio.

his, he was originally from Georgia.

His parents were aging.

He wanted to get down to Georgia to be closer to them.

Very hard to do that when you're pastoring full-time.

several states away.

He reaches out to us.

He says, listen, I've been applying for jobs down in Georgia.

I can't get a single call back.

I can't get anyone to answer my, my, inquiries and very smart

guy, sharp, competent, been in ministry for a long time.

He shelled out for the resume rewrite.

He sent us a job of interest.

We went in Taylor's resume for an operations role.

And he applied for 10 jobs over the course of a weekend, and by the following

week had three invitations to interview.

I ended up getting a job with the City of Decatur.

I'm not sure if I'm saying that I'm not from

Decatur, I think it's Decatur.

Decat Decatur.

Thank you, Decatur.

that's the French version.

Decatur.

Yeah, and there's no French in Georgia.

Just so you know, I'm from Georgia, so I

Exactly.

Oh, there you go.

Perfect.

Thank you for, thanks for the save there brother.

Anyways, for the city working with the mayor.

Really high profile job.

Loving it, killing it, and.

He took a, he took a bet on himself and he was able to, serve in that

way, able to be closer to his family.

And it was just a huge win.

And the coolest thing that I love to see, man, is the confidence boost

that these guys and gals get when they realize, oh, like I do have skills.

I do have the ability to translate my, the things I've learned in ministry.

I do have things that the market will pay me money for.

It's a huge win.

Every time that happens.

Yeah.

And he, listen, I know that part of the city, there are plenty of

ministry opportunities It is Not as if he's not in ministry anymore.

I.

Totally.

Yeah,

Totally.

so much there.

it's not quite inner city, but it's a, it's an urban, definitely

an urban area with a lot going on.

I wanted to ask a couple things here.

I'm watching my time.

There's a few things I'll wrap up with here, but you, I found you

somehow on Twitter, The platform formerly known as Twitter.

Do we call it x?

I don't know.

I don't know exactly what to do.

There is that where you have built up and now have, a lot of your

activity or, where do people find you?

That might be a better question.

Yeah, Twitter is where I'm most active.

Social media wise.

You can also go to, I help pastors get jobs.com.

If you click on the free PDF, that'll put you on my email list.

I send out an email every Monday.

just job tips and tricks to transition from vocational

ministry into the marketplace.

I reread every single response that I get from those emails as well.

So if you ever have a question, I pick my brain on something.

You can do that.

And also there's a Calendly link as well on the webpage.

You can schedule time with my associate Mark, and if our services

are a benefit to you, we can definitely start that conversation.

But I'm actually on a Twitter break right now.

Twitter's great for gauging people and having conversation.

It's terrible for your soul.

So I've decided to take a few weeks and just give it a breather.

I feel a little bit better doing that, but yet my name Eric Koch on

Twitter or I help pastors get jobs.com.

that and I was actually gonna ask you about that 'cause I, yesterday

when I was just snooping around looking for some info on you, I saw that you

had taken a break from what we call Twitter and h How's that going for you?

Is that nice to be away?

And listen, a lot of people would wanna know.

How, especially if your business revolves around that platform or

one of these platforms, and we could probably insert a lot of 'em, even

though Twitter seems to be a little more toxic at times and especially now

that it's just the wild, wild West.

But, what does it look like to step away?

Tell me more about that.

Yeah, man.

it was done with intentionality.

One of the dreams that I have for iHealth pastors to get jobs is to pivot

from a B2C business to a B2B business.

So what I mean by that is we can do resumes all day and

that's good and that's fine.

We're happy to support.

But those denominations, networks, Folk seminaries, just bigger entities.

Working with them directly to support and resource their

pastors is what has my attention.

And presidents of seminaries aren't hanging out on Twitter typically, so

what we're trying to do is build right now in the background, more credible.

Collateral and material that we can present to, leaders in those

spaces because we just struck a deal with the PCA last year, at the end

of last year, where we're helping resource their pastors in transition.

And those are the things that are really exciting because then that pastors just

not getting the support from us, but also from their denomination of their network.

To help them transition out of ministry?

so I can go on Twitter and say some goofy things and get some traffic.

that's good and that's fine.

But the word you used earlier, which is the word that I also have a

complicated relationship with scale.

I help pastors get jobs, never scales.

With me being goofy on Twitter is scales when I start becoming a

thought leader with denominations, networks, seminaries, and Christian

institutions and saying, Hey, how do we think differently about this?

And how can we resource our pastors?

but you have had quite an, quite a big jump in, I guess we'll

call 'em followers over on Twitter X.

What do you attribute that to?

Is it you're, your.

Rugged ruggedly, handsome looks.

Is it your, Witt and things like that?

what do you, I'm always intrigued and people want to say, Hey, if someone's

jumped, 2,500 followers in a year, or doubled or tripled, which I think

you've seem like you have, what do you

attribute that to?

Or is it luck or God's grace?

Like you talked earlier when you transitioned into what you're doing now.

Yeah, so there's a formula that I use and obviously anyone

can find this on the internet.

It's not something I made up.

it's been out there.

it's a strategy for getting attention.

And it's the four E's, entertain, educate, Exploit, exploit bad ideas.

And now I'm drawing a blank on the fourth one 'cause I'm a little rusty from being

off Twitter for the last couple weeks.

Entertain, exploit.

Oh, and, educate and, gosh, what's the last one I'm looking for?

almost inspire, but it starts with an E.

So all You need to have a formula on, on Twitter.

A lot of people I see everything's education.

Do these 10 things, get a job, do these eight things to get an interview, do these

four things and negotiate your salary.

Okay, that's helpful, but that's all you're ever pumping out there.

gets dry after a while.

Some people are just entertaining.

They're telling 'em jokes and memes and puns and that's good for entertainment

value, but not very helpful.

one of the things that I found a lot of traction it with.

Is exploiting bad ideas that happen within the church world, and

especially like the staffing world.

Like one of my first viral tweets was, how's a church board gonna put you

through 10, 10 rounds of interviews to offer you a $30,000 a year job?

And that got legs and shared and commented on by, everybody and their mother.

So that's the strategy that I go through.

I try to make sure.

Every time I'm posting, I'm hitting all four of those kind of Is it entertaining?

Is it educating, is it exploiting?

And there's a fourth E that I'm drawing a

Is it encourage, encourage, inspire.

Encourage.

Encourage.

You got it.

Yeah.

I think it's encourage you.

Got it.

Thank you.

encourage, exploit, educate,

very good.

Yeah, and I think I may have seen some of those 'cause that Dr.

I, I, the exploit thing is something that I see quite a bit and I love when

people are talking about things like that.

what's wrong with the current system?

This is what's

wrong with the current system, and I've seen a good bit of that, so that's good.

A couple of questions real quick here before we wrap up.

One, I think I'd love it, and I think we've given some things along

the way, but just as a little bit of an exclamation point to the topic.

Let's just say that someone is listening in and they, maybe their

ministry, maybe there's something else.

They just know they need to make some adjustments, changes, something like that.

Give.

a quick tip or two, just that might be tangible for them just to move them in

the direction that they might need to go.

They're already feeling the urge.

Something needs to change.

What would you tell 'em?

Yeah, the first thing I would say is your next step, professionally does

not begin with what jobs are out there.

Your first step professionally begins with how has God uniquely wired you?

What gives you life, and what do you enjoy doing?

and I find that for pastors, this can be very tricky, but sit down with a

sheet of paper, draw a line in the middle, and write down all the things

you do in a given week or given month, and put 'em in two categories.

Life giving, life sucking, everything that's life giving.

It's pretty amazing what we can do nowadays.

Punch that all in the chat.

GBT say, what jobs would I be doing?

These things and it'll give you half a dozen jobs to start looking for.

that's a really tangible first step that you can do.

that's something I'd recommend.

What gives you life and how can you do more of that?

Because the solution is not just go get another job.

The solution is find ways in which you can live out your

giftedness as a professional.

I like that.

And then one of the first things someone has to do is to make

sure that they understand that chat GPT and AI is not the devil.

That is not, bad theology, right?

No, it's a good tool.

That, that we could use for these things.

And especially coming up with, I think that's great.

I think that's a good tip, Eric, for almost anyone pastor.

Yes.

But I think anyone that feels like they're in some type of transition

or change, so I appreciate that man.

it's been a great conversation.

I appreciate it.

Eric, we are seek, go create those three words.

My last question for you, I'm gonna let you choose one

of those over the other two.

It just.

overthink it.

Seek, go or create.

Which word do you choose

and why?

I'm gonna choose seek.

there's something that I've been very intentional about the last

few years, and that's just being really curious about things.

It's I'll meet somebody and I'll say, let's say, oh, I work, you mentioned

earlier, oh, I, I worked in this field.

I'm, or my wife's in Agile project management.

It's oh, like what is that?

Can you share more about what that is?

Like?

How does she do that?

What kind of stuff is she working on?

I think so many pastors, man, they get.

they have people who come to their churches every day, every

Sunday, they see them preach.

They see them pray for people.

They see them offer the sacraments.

But if you were to ask that same pastor, Hey, what does

Joe do Monday through Friday?

What does Sally do Monday through Friday?

I don't know, works in some office somewhere.

So I'd encourage pastors who feel like they're seeking out what's next to you.

Know, be curious.

Take that business person out for lunch this week and say, Hey, listen,

you know what I do every week.

What do you do every week?

What are you working on?

What's going on in your world?

I think there's a lot of value in just asking questions, and being curious.

I love that.

Yeah, I had that Ted lasso clip that be curious him at the dartboard.

Come up.

Eric Hoke.

He helps pastors get jobs.

Great conversation.

I've loved this and I recommend you checking out all his stuff.

Jump over to Twitter.

Follow him.

Even if you may not be a pastor, Eric is, fun to follow over on Twitter X.

So we are seek go create here.

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