Are you a pastor feeling the weight of vocational ministry in an ever-changing world? In this episode of Seek Go Create, host Tim Winders has a candid conversation with Eric Hoke, a specialist in guiding church leaders through career transitions, as they discuss the challenges and opportunities facing pastors today. From bi-vocational roles to the tumultuous journey of redefining identity post-ministry, this episode offers valuable insights for anyone navigating the intersection of faith, work, and calling. If you're curious to explore the evolving landscape of church leadership and hear personal stories of transition and growth, this episode is a must-listen.
"The decline in young people pursuing full-time church ministry and reluctance of older pastors to retire poses challenges for the future of churches." - Eric Hoke
Access all show and episode resources HERE
Eric Hoke is a seasoned leader with extensive experience in both ministry and corporate training. He has specialized in guiding pastors and church leaders through successful transitions into the business world, helping them sustain their ministries. With a background as a co-vocational church planter in New York City and later transitioning to a leadership role at a nonprofit in Pennsylvania, Eric brings a wealth of knowledge in career transitioning and navigating the intersection of faith and professional life.
1. Gain insight into the evolving landscape of church ministry from a seasoned pastor who successfully transitioned to a bi-vocational role, offering valuable wisdom for both church leaders and aspiring pastors.
2. Discover the complexities of identity and humility in ministry as Eric Hoke shares his personal challenges and the need for transparency and open communication in navigating career transitions.
3. Explore the intersection of faith and the marketplace, as Eric Hoke discusses the innovative approach of creating healthy communities through marketplace jobs and its impact on church sustainability.
1. Eric Hoke's website: ihelppathwaysgetjobs.com
2.Twitter/X (for following Eric Hoke and Seek Go Create for updates)
Action Steps:
1. Pastors should onnect with professionals outside of the church world, such as taking a business person out for lunch to learn about their work and what they're working on.
2. Evaluate your current roles and activities to determine what gives you life and enjoyment, and use this insight to guide your next professional steps.
3. Consider exploring Eric Hoke's website for free job tips and tricks or to inquire about their services if needed.
🔹 Unlock Your Potential Today!
1. The urgency for pastors to consider transitioning to a bi-vocational model due to future church challenges and the importance of open communication in the transition process.
2. The need for pastoral leaders to discuss their concerns with their senior pastors before seeking new positions, and the critical aspect of humility and identity in ministry.
3. The opportunity for young Christians to pursue marketplace jobs to impact communities and the necessity for older pastors to transition to facilitate smooth successions in leadership.
4. The psychological and lifestyle adjustments that accompany transitions from full-time ministry to other vocations, including redefining success and identity.
5. The importance of serving in obscurity in the kingdom of God, critiquing the desire for recognition and fame in vocational ministry and secular professions.
00:00 Church merger in 2023 led to changes.
06:20 Discussing mental and emotional impacts of transition.
07:52 Shifting perspective leads to limitless opportunities.
13:34 Admire those doing God's work in obscurity.
16:37 Youth pastor advised to communicate before seeking help.
19:38 Entrepreneur proposes global greenhouse business for missionaries.
21:07 Young leaders seek glory without hard work.
24:50 Many pastors concerned about future of ministry.
29:19 Challenges in church ministry; promoting marketable skills.
33:38 Moved to a church, welcomed with families.
35:34 Demographic aging poses challenge for churches.
38:20 Pastor starts marketplace ministry, exceeds expectations.
42:07 Request for success stories; mention gender bias.
46:37 Inquiring about break from Twitter due to toxicity.
47:20 Transitioning B2C to B2B resume business intentionality.
51:53 First, identify your unique strengths and passions.
54:06 Encourage pastors to be curious and ask questions.
Our podcast is dedicated to empowering Christian leaders, entrepreneurs, and individuals looking to redefine success in their personal and professional lives. Through in-depth interviews, personal anecdotes, and expert advice, we offer valuable insights and actionable strategies for achieving your goals and living a life of purpose and fulfillment.
If you enjoyed this episode and found it helpful, we encourage you to subscribe to or follow Seek Go Create on your favorite podcast platform, including Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode and can stay up-to-date on the latest insights and strategies for success.
Additionally, please share this episode or what you’ve learned today with your friends, family, and colleagues on your favorite social media platform. By sharing our podcast, you can help us reach more people who are looking to align their faith with their work and lead with purpose.
For more updates and episodes, visit our website or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube. We appreciate your support and look forward to helping you achieve your goals and create a life of purpose and fulfillment.
Now, you can tip us, buy us a coffee, or offer financial support. Contributions start at just $1, and if you leave a comment, you could be featured in a future episode!
Visit our Support page for more details.
Mentioned in this episode:
Unleash Your True Leadership Potential with Tim Winders
Imagine embracing the full extent of the leadership potential you were created to fulfill. This isn't just a dream; it's a journey that begins today with Tim Winders, your mentor in transformative leadership. Through Tim's executive coaching, you'll dive into the core of what it means to be a truly influential leader – one who combines skill with vision and unwavering faith. It's about transcending conventional success, embracing your purpose, and discovering the joy in leading. If you feel called to become the leader you were always meant to be, book your free Discovery Coaching Call with Tim. This is where your transformative journey to authentic and purpose-driven leadership begins. Let's unlock the extraordinary leader within you.
Your first step professionally begins with how
Eric Hoke:has God uniquely wired you?
Eric Hoke:What gives you life, and what do you enjoy doing?
Eric Hoke:sit down with a sheet of paper, draw a line in the middle, and write down all
Eric Hoke:the things you do in a given week or given month, and put 'em in two categories.
Eric Hoke:Life giving, life sucking,
Tim Winders:In a rapidly evolving world, how do pastors and church
Tim Winders:leaders bridge the gap between ministry and the marketplace?
Tim Winders:Welcome to Seek, go Create, where today we're joined by Eric Hoke, a dynamic
Tim Winders:individual who specializes in helping church leaders transition in the world
Tim Winders:of business to sustain their ministries.
Tim Winders:Eric with his unique expertise as a co vocational church planter and marketplace
Tim Winders:professional has a rich background in staffing, corporate training and ministry.
Tim Winders:His work extends to guiding thousands of career changers, including
Tim Winders:pastors and church leaders, aiding them in leveraging their skills for
Tim Winders:corporate and marketplace success.
Tim Winders:With over 15 years of ministry experience and extensive knowledge and agile project
Tim Winders:management and leadership, Eric's insights have been sought after by top brands
Tim Winders:and prestigious institutions, and now a lot of pastors that are just trying
Tim Winders:to find ways to make it in the world.
Tim Winders:Eric, welcome to Seek, go Create.
Eric Hoke:Thanks for having me, Tim.
Eric Hoke:Excited to chat.
Tim Winders:Lemme just jump into my first question, a, I now am calling
Tim Winders:this a cheesy icebreaker because it is, but if somebody asks you
Tim Winders:what you do, what do you tell 'em?
Tim Winders:What's your answer if somebody asks you that question?
Eric Hoke:Yeah.
Eric Hoke:it depends if it would do a question in the real world or in Twitter,
Eric Hoke:but for the sake of the podcast, what I do is I help pastors and
Eric Hoke:ministry folks rebrand themselves to be marketplace professionals.
Eric Hoke:That's kinda what people know me for in the church world.
Eric Hoke:In the business world, I'm the director of learning development.
Eric Hoke:A not-for-profit in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in the church world.
Eric Hoke:I'm a former co vocational church planter in the Bronx, in New York
Eric Hoke:City and in the personal world.
Eric Hoke:I'm happily married with three daughters.
Tim Winders:Yeah.
Tim Winders:And you, and I know you just made a transition from, we'll call it, I
Tim Winders:don't wanna say city boy to country boy, that's probably a little bit
Tim Winders:of extreme, but, a personal shift.
Tim Winders:Tell me a little bit more about that.
Tim Winders:I.
Eric Hoke:Yeah.
Eric Hoke:So in 2023, post Covid, I, a church that I founded, all Saints
Eric Hoke:Church merged with a church that we helped plant Focus Fellowship.
Eric Hoke:So the lead pastor of that church and myself sat down the end of 22.
Eric Hoke:We said, Hey, what would it look like if our churches combined
Eric Hoke:forces we're stronger and healthier, more vibrant if we're together?
Eric Hoke:There's only one catch to this.
Eric Hoke:merger and the catch is I'm gonna step down from pastoral ministry and
Eric Hoke:to go into what God has next for me.
Eric Hoke:the other pastor agreed that'd be a good idea for all of us, and
Eric Hoke:that merge happened in April 23.
Eric Hoke:That was the blast thing, keeping my family in New York City, in the
Eric Hoke:Bronx, where we spent 10 years.
Eric Hoke:So just for context, people who are listening at home.
Eric Hoke:My family of five lived in about an 800 square foot apartment on the
Eric Hoke:fifth floor of a building on Bruckner Boulevard, close to Yankee Stadium.
Eric Hoke:And we decided, you know what does God have next for us?
Eric Hoke:And it's we did the city thing and the church planting thing for a long time.
Eric Hoke:Let's be a little bit closer to family.
Eric Hoke:Let's get a house and a yard.
Eric Hoke:Let's figure out what that would look like for us.
Eric Hoke:So yeah, man, it's as of this recording, it's pretty fresh.
Eric Hoke:We've been here for about three or four months and it's been an adjustment.
Eric Hoke:Some days I'm thinking, why did I do this a long time ago?
Eric Hoke:And other days I'm thinking, why did I ever do this?
Eric Hoke:This was a terrible idea.
Eric Hoke:So that's how it's going so far.
Tim Winders:a family of five, there's probably some that are
Tim Winders:just, man, they're loving life.
Tim Winders:This is the greatest thing ever.
Tim Winders:And are there some that are like, dad, what have you done?
Tim Winders:or husband, what have you done?
Tim Winders:what, how, what's the consensus so far?
Tim Winders:Three, four months in?
Eric Hoke:Yeah.
Eric Hoke:Yeah.
Eric Hoke:So the one-year-old doesn't really have a vote because she's happy
Eric Hoke:wherever the four-year-old is definitely more of the city girl.
Eric Hoke:She wants to still be in New York.
Eric Hoke:She talks about her old apartment, her old school, our old building had a pool in it.
Eric Hoke:So she always talks about going to the pool.
Eric Hoke:The five-year-old who's in kindergarten is loving it.
Eric Hoke:She's got a great school and a great teacher, and my wife and I,
Eric Hoke:we sort of square dance about it.
Eric Hoke:Some days she's.
Eric Hoke:Excited about, and I'm down about it.
Eric Hoke:Other days she's down about, and I'm excited about it.
Eric Hoke:So it goes back and forth.
Eric Hoke:We haven't had too many days where we both were excited and both were down, which
Eric Hoke:was probably God's grace in his season.
Tim Winders:Yeah, and I think that's part of life.
Tim Winders:I ju just to kinda keep that in perspective, you said y'all were
Tim Winders:in 800 square feet, all five of you young kids too, it sounds like.
Tim Winders:My wife and I here behind me, for those that are watching the video,
Tim Winders:we're in a little over 400 square feet.
Tim Winders:We're on wheels.
Tim Winders:It's an rv, but 800 square feet isn't.
Tim Winders:Isn't very much much.
Tim Winders:Did you increase that when you moved out to Pennsylvania?
Tim Winders:Got some more square footage.
Eric Hoke:Yeah, we do.
Eric Hoke:I think the house is somewhere around 2,400, maybe 2200.
Eric Hoke:Of course we have the garage, we have the yard, we have the basement.
Eric Hoke:The thing that baffles me, we've only been there for three months and we've
Eric Hoke:already filled it up with furniture.
Eric Hoke:It blows my mind, man, how fast that happens.
Eric Hoke:'cause we, the day we moved in, it was bare bones and I feel like we blinked
Eric Hoke:and every looking cranny was claimed.
Tim Winders:I was gonna ask if you've adhered to Parkinson's law, which, I'm
Tim Winders:an engineer, so you know, Parkinson, I think he said that we will expand
Tim Winders:whatever space we have will expand to.
Tim Winders:It sounds like you have proven that out, correct.
Tim Winders:I.
Eric Hoke:that is correct.
Eric Hoke:So the one biggest change we have, two, I guess the first one
Eric Hoke:is the baby has her own room.
Eric Hoke:The two older girls share a room, so that's a new thing.
Eric Hoke:They used to all sleep in one room and we have a guest room.
Eric Hoke:So we never had that in New York, obviously, because there's no space.
Eric Hoke:But what has happened is everyone that we know who always wanted to hang out with
Eric Hoke:us is not welcome to themselves over.
Eric Hoke:And sleeping in our guest room.
Eric Hoke:So if you're listening to this podcast and you wanna come hang out for a weekend, we
Eric Hoke:got a place for you to crash at our place.
Tim Winders:the criteria for me to hang out is you need, a nice
Tim Winders:level, 40 foot driveway so I could just pull in the driveway.
Tim Winders:That's what I'm looking for.
Eric Hoke:Yeah, we got that.
Eric Hoke:Yeah, we got that.
Eric Hoke:You're good.
Tim Winders:So Eric, this is, kind of something that I think that's
Tim Winders:gonna help frame the conversation when someone goes through the
Tim Winders:transition that you just went through.
Tim Winders:It's probably not that much different than pastors you work with or people that
Tim Winders:are making changes and things like that.
Tim Winders:And there's the physical aspect of it, moving to a new
Tim Winders:place, doing something new.
Tim Winders:But there's also the, what we really.
Tim Winders:Dig down on here is how does success relate to it?
Tim Winders:How do we redefine success?
Tim Winders:Was your transition, do you perceive it?
Tim Winders:And there's nothing good or bad about this, but is it a, is it an advancement?
Tim Winders:Is it a horizontal move or was it, what some would call a failure?
Tim Winders:And the reason I'm asking that is because I think that's gonna be important when
Tim Winders:we talk about how pastors perceive.
Tim Winders:Their future in just a little while.
Tim Winders:So talk about just the psychology of the transition you just went through.
Eric Hoke:Yeah.
Eric Hoke:Yeah.
Eric Hoke:I'm going to answer it by saying that unless you have a theology
Eric Hoke:that says, as a Christian.
Eric Hoke:All of your life is a ministry.
Eric Hoke:You can look at what I just experienced and what many pastors I work with
Eric Hoke:are experiencing as a failure.
Eric Hoke:Hey, you're no longer pastoring a local church.
Eric Hoke:You're no longer in the four walls of a church building.
Eric Hoke:You're no longer preaching on Sunday.
Eric Hoke:now you work at X, Y, Z corporation.
Eric Hoke:That's the step backwards, or that's not everything that God has for you yet.
Eric Hoke:Where's that idea in?
Eric Hoke:Church history and where's an idea in scripture?
Eric Hoke:Pretty hard to come by.
Eric Hoke:so I think if you have a theology that says, and I grew up with some of this,
Eric Hoke:so I relate to it, that Christians, pastors, missionaries, ministers,
Eric Hoke:they're the Navy Seals of Christians and.
Eric Hoke:Accountants, architects, engineers, bankers, teachers, social workers,
Eric Hoke:they're they're okay, but they're not the elite and if that is
Eric Hoke:the pervasive model that you.
Eric Hoke:subscribe to as a person.
Eric Hoke:Yeah, you look at, a transition out of vocational ministry as a failure, but
Eric Hoke:if you can get the clarity that says, you know what, whether I'm preaching
Eric Hoke:on a Sunday morning or whether I'm shoveling my sidewalk after a nice storm
Eric Hoke:like we just had here in Pennsylvania, I'm still doing it to God to glory.
Eric Hoke:And that's what matters.
Eric Hoke:It takes a lot of intentionality and inner work to decouple your identity from
Eric Hoke:your position, but once you can do that.
Eric Hoke:The opportunities that God has for you are limitless.
Tim Winders:All right.
Tim Winders:My follow up question is one, you may or may not be able to answer,
Tim Winders:but we're almost 250 episodes in here at Seat Go Create and.
Tim Winders:We have had.
Tim Winders:essence of this next question come up going all the way back to the
Tim Winders:beginning, back to fall of 2019, and it goes something like this,
Tim Winders:Eric, how did we come to this place?
Tim Winders:there's a pecking order in the Kingdom of God or in the work that we do.
Tim Winders:I've always been a marketplace guy.
Tim Winders:I went to Bible school and things like that, but it's baked in.
Tim Winders:If you go to Bible school, I.
Tim Winders:Missionaries are the ultimate, the next would probably be some form of evangelist
Tim Winders:and then a pastor, and then, you know, next would be, youth pastor, and then
Tim Winders:you know, the, and then the drummer, that's the bottom of the spiritual
Tim Winders:realm would be the drummer up on stage.
Tim Winders:And then it's the, the gentiles, the unwashed masses that are the
Tim Winders:accountants, lawyers, and all that.
Tim Winders:How did we get to this place?
Tim Winders:Because I agree with you, it's not scriptural because all the
Tim Winders:disciples were co vocational.
Tim Winders:They were bi-vocational.
Tim Winders:How did we
Tim Winders:get to this place where we have a ranking of who is more important, the
Tim Winders:work they do in the Kingdom of God?
Eric Hoke:Man, there's somebody smarter than me that probably
Eric Hoke:knows the history of this.
Eric Hoke:Let me give you my, Bible college answer.
Eric Hoke:My Bible college answer is that there's something in.
Eric Hoke:The human spirit, not of God that wants to one up their fellow human.
Eric Hoke:There's something within us that says, oh, you have an Audi and I have a Ford.
Eric Hoke:How do I get an Audi?
Eric Hoke:But they don't realize the Audi guy looking at the Bentley guy and saying,
Eric Hoke:you have a Bentley and I have an Audi.
Eric Hoke:How do I get a Bentley?
Eric Hoke:I'll share a story.
Eric Hoke:My wife is an amazing person.
Eric Hoke:I'm so excited to see all the gems she gets in heaven.
Eric Hoke:One day we had a Sunday early in our church plant.
Eric Hoke:Where it was like a holiday weekend, labor Day, Memorial Day, something like that.
Eric Hoke:And attendance was low.
Eric Hoke:And when we were at church Plant, when there's a low attendance, that's
Eric Hoke:like your family and two old ladies show up, that's like a low Sunday.
Eric Hoke:And it was like that.
Eric Hoke:I remember leaving that Sunday just so discouraged and so beat
Eric Hoke:up and my wife says something to me, she's you know what's funny?
Eric Hoke:Think of the, Big church pastor, they probably had a low Sunday attendance
Eric Hoke:today because they had 600 as opposed to a thousand, and they're feeling
Eric Hoke:the same way you are right now.
Eric Hoke:It's shoot.
Eric Hoke:You have a point.
Eric Hoke:There's something about the human spirit that says, I have to acquire
Eric Hoke:more, be more, do more, have more than.
Eric Hoke:My brother or sister does.
Eric Hoke:And when it comes to the pecking order, I like that language.
Eric Hoke:I think that makes a lot of sense.
Eric Hoke:It's how do I get higher up on the rung so that God loves me more?
Eric Hoke:But God loves you regardless 'cause of what Christ did for you.
Eric Hoke:So until that seeps into your spirit, you'll always feel this
Eric Hoke:sense of, I'm not doing enough.
Eric Hoke:I'm not, made enough.
Eric Hoke:I'm not.
Eric Hoke:High enough on a ladder because I'm trying to earn God's love, which is, impossible.
Tim Winders:Yeah, and I've always wondered, and this is, we're just.
Tim Winders:Guesstimating here.
Tim Winders:I'm kinda like you.
Tim Winders:I've tried to study some of the history.
Tim Winders:I do wonder if the Americanized First World Church, if it didn't
Tim Winders:invent this, it threw gas on it.
Tim Winders:it really heightened it because of our puritanical performance oriented, we're
Tim Winders:better than you and we know it and we're gonna show it type mindset.
Tim Winders:And then, and then we measure all types of things.
Tim Winders:I've always been, I've always wondered, and this is another one of these
Tim Winders:things, we don't know the answer.
Tim Winders:What would it been like just to be one of the 12?
Tim Winders:What would it have been like to be one of the 12 that we don't hear much about?
Tim Winders:not the big three 12 that hung out with Jesus, but one of
Tim Winders:the nine just observing and.
Tim Winders:All that kind of stuff.
Tim Winders:I've always wondered if they like, at the end of the evening, maybe their
Tim Winders:quiet time prayer, if Jesus, I could see Peter maybe doing this, but Jesus
Tim Winders:said, alright, let's go over the numbers.
Tim Winders:let's talk about, they're gonna say later all we're healed, but we need to know
Tim Winders:how many that was something picture that.
Tim Winders:Can you picture that?
Eric Hoke:no.
Eric Hoke:I heard this quote before and I don't know who said it, so maybe one of your
Eric Hoke:listeners Will, will said it to me on Twitter, but it says, as Christians,
Eric Hoke:those who we admire, we shouldn't.
Eric Hoke:And those that we should are tied up doing God's work behind the scenes
Eric Hoke:that nobody even knows their name.
Eric Hoke:And that always stuck with me because I think greatness in the kingdom is just
Eric Hoke:that it's serving in obscurity, but I.
Eric Hoke:We're humans and we live in 20, 23, 24.
Eric Hoke:Now we're we want to be front and center.
Eric Hoke:We want to be the brand, we want to be the man.
Eric Hoke:And the Americanized version of the church is, that's real man.
Eric Hoke:That is a really good call out.
Tim Winders:Yeah, it is, and it, and the reason I bring it all up
Tim Winders:is because I think that's the.
Tim Winders:Context that you're stepping into with your, the mission you have with, I love
Tim Winders:the time you know exactly what you do.
Tim Winders:I help pastors get jobs.
Tim Winders:That's, I love the name of your organization.
Tim Winders:I help pastors get jobs.
Tim Winders:and I guess the thing I'd like to ask now, because I think it, it
Tim Winders:fits, it sounds like what you just went through three, four months
Tim Winders:ago where you went through your
Tim Winders:transition.
Tim Winders:That, that, that is part of a longer process, longer play that
Tim Winders:dates back, years and years that you are comfortable with that.
Tim Winders:Whereas there could be Joe pastor or Sally Pastor I guess could be out there right
Tim Winders:now.
Tim Winders:And they think that if they have to go out and get a part-time gig or a side hustle
Tim Winders:or get a corporate job or something, that it's failure back up for me.
Tim Winders:And again, our theme here is.
Tim Winders:Redefining success.
Tim Winders:Defining what success is.
Tim Winders:Back up a little bit and give a little bit of Eric's ups and downs.
Tim Winders:That's helped you prepare for what you just went through a few months ago.
Tim Winders:maybe a good, a bad or ugly, whatever.
Tim Winders:It's, I'm just opening up for you to share whatever from your background
Tim Winders:here that you think might be pertinent that helped you get ready for this.
Eric Hoke:Yeah, I think one of the good that I, that one of the things
Eric Hoke:I did right, and there's a lot of things I'll do wrong and I'll, I
Eric Hoke:don't mind airing my dirty laundry about it to, to those listening, but
Eric Hoke:one of the things I did right was everything was always transparent.
Eric Hoke:and what I mean by that is I didn't just wake up one morning 'cause
Eric Hoke:I had a bad, burrito the night before and say, you know what?
Eric Hoke:Forget this church.
Eric Hoke:I'm gonna go do something different.
Eric Hoke:It was always an ongoing conversation with leadership, with mentors,
Eric Hoke:with select members that had the, the reason to be in the know.
Eric Hoke:like I said, it merged healthily.
Eric Hoke:it was not a quick, okay, here's your new pastor, see you later.
Eric Hoke:We did it over the course of several months, I'm really proud of that.
Eric Hoke:I'm really proud that we transitioned well.
Eric Hoke:I think one of the biggest mistakes I see pastors make, Tim, is they call me
Eric Hoke:and they say, Hey, I'm the youth pastor and I need to get outta my situation.
Eric Hoke:it's a bad situation to which I always ask, and I sometimes get accused by,
Eric Hoke:some guys on Twitter about trying to remove people from ministry.
Eric Hoke:That's not at all my dream or my vision or my desire.
Eric Hoke:The first question I typically would ask that youth pastor is, have you
Eric Hoke:spoken to a senior pastor about this?
Eric Hoke:How you sat down with him or her and just had an honest conversation
Eric Hoke:like, Hey, I'm feeling like this is my season here is coming to an end.
Eric Hoke:Can we find a way to, peacefully make a transition and nine times outta
Eric Hoke:10, you, you already know the answer.
Eric Hoke:They say, no, I haven't done that.
Eric Hoke:It's maybe that should be the first step before you call me and ask me for
Eric Hoke:a resume and help you get on LinkedIn.
Eric Hoke:Why don't you sit down with the people you're accountable to in Love and Grace.
Eric Hoke:And I obviously understand there's dynamics that play
Eric Hoke:in some of these contexts.
Eric Hoke:I'm well aware of those, but just being transparent and
Eric Hoke:open, this is where I'm at.
Eric Hoke:I'm a big fan, Pete Zaro, and he talks about how people become spiritually
Eric Hoke:mature, but remain emotionally immature and an emotionally mature
Eric Hoke:person would be open and honest.
Eric Hoke:This is where I'm going, and I want the people who love and care about me
Eric Hoke:to be informed of my thought process.
Eric Hoke:So one thing I, it's one thing I did really well.
Eric Hoke:When it comes to things I didn't do very well, and I'm now facing the backend of
Eric Hoke:it, I did put a lot of my identity into.
Eric Hoke:I'm a church planter in New York City.
Eric Hoke:how sick is that?
Eric Hoke:How many people can say that?
Eric Hoke:And that's some of that Navy Seal thinking coming in again where it's, I'm the elite.
Eric Hoke:and now I'm here.
Eric Hoke:don't work in church ministry anymore.
Eric Hoke:I volunteer at church, but don't work on staff anymore.
Eric Hoke:Living in a suburban neighborhood with a two car garage.
Eric Hoke:And those realities that I was finding identity in are
Eric Hoke:no longer a part of who I am.
Eric Hoke:So I had to ask myself those tough questions of, okay,
Eric Hoke:who is Eric Hoke removed from church planter in a major city?
Eric Hoke:And when I figured that out, let you know.
Eric Hoke:But that's still something I'm processing in real time.
Tim Winders:I think that's I'm so glad you brought up that word identity.
Tim Winders:Because I see it.
Tim Winders:I'm, quote unquote, my title is Executive Coach and I, when we finish up here, I'll
Tim Winders:have a call with a leader of a ministry.
Tim Winders:I work with ministry leaders, and I work with business and company leaders.
Tim Winders:And Eric, it's the same thing.
Tim Winders:it's identity.
Tim Winders:There are people that have identity and you know, there's words we could throw in
Tim Winders:the pot and stir 'em in, like humility.
Tim Winders:I heard
Tim Winders:humility in the, in the tone of your voice in the way you were talking.
Tim Winders:Now, I don't know if I would've heard something different 10 years ago.
Tim Winders:I know if you had talked to me, you would say, this guy is.
Tim Winders:Pretty brash and bold and, you know, go through things and it's like,
Tim Winders:okay, there's more humility and hopefully less hypocrisy, you know,
Tim Winders:less putting on a certain face and things like that.
Tim Winders:And I see people that really struggle with that.
Tim Winders:So I'm gonna, I'm gonna hit one more thing before we go into
Tim Winders:some, maybe some practical things.
Tim Winders:When I was at bible school, I was always the business guy talking to
Tim Winders:people about, Hey, doing this, making money and all that kind of stuff.
Tim Winders:And it was shunned.
Tim Winders:They even had a business section.
Tim Winders:They tried to do a little bit of what you're talking about, but I talked to
Tim Winders:one guy who had a really good business idea for something that I thought it
Tim Winders:would've been great for missionaries.
Tim Winders:And Eric, he told me something that I want you to address and
Tim Winders:just say something about it.
Tim Winders:He said, I.
Tim Winders:I said, man, this would be the greatest thing ever.
Tim Winders:I said, I'd help raise some funds for this.
Tim Winders:It was basically this greenhouse where someone anywhere could
Tim Winders:grow stuff and then maybe sell it locally and things like that.
Tim Winders:it was a full on cool business opportunity.
Tim Winders:And, I said, man, every missionary in Africa and other places like this, we
Tim Winders:need to work with him and all that.
Tim Winders:He goes, he goes, Tim, he said, man, he goes, I would love to do that.
Tim Winders:He says, but you know what we found?
Tim Winders:He said, most people we've interacted with.
Tim Winders:They're lazy.
Tim Winders:They went into ministry.
Tim Winders:This could be harsh sounding.
Tim Winders:They went into ministry 'cause they didn't wanna do real work
Tim Winders:and, and I was just like flabbergasted.
Tim Winders:I was going, what?
Tim Winders:But yet I did see a lot of that play out when I was in and around.
Tim Winders:There was this thought of, it goes back to what you brought up
Tim Winders:earlier, it's the ultimate calling and if I do that, God's gonna
Tim Winders:take care of me.
Tim Winders:Other people are gonna take care of me.
Tim Winders:I'm gonna live off offering stuff like that.
Tim Winders:But Have you seen that at all?
Tim Winders:Counter, make me feel better.
Tim Winders:Tell me No.
Tim Winders:These are some of the hardest working people you'll run across.
Tim Winders:Or just like the population.
Tim Winders:There's some people in ministry that are just lazy.
Eric Hoke:All right, so I'll just speak as plainly as I can.
Tim Winders:I.
Eric Hoke:I have a theory.
Eric Hoke:That if you're a young person, let's just say, I don't know, 15 to 20, and you
Eric Hoke:have aspirations of leadership and being in front of people and drive, driving
Eric Hoke:change, but you don't wanna do the hard work to do that in the marketplace to
Eric Hoke:become a pastor because you can be.
Eric Hoke:A 25, 20 6-year-old pastor at a church and have a congregation of
Eric Hoke:people who look to you for leadership.
Eric Hoke:they exist, but there's not very many, 25, 26 year olds who are leading
Eric Hoke:small businesses and companies.
Eric Hoke:there's a few of course, but I have a theory that there's some people who
Eric Hoke:say, Hey, I really want the glory of being a pastor without having to do the
Eric Hoke:grunt work of development and growth.
Eric Hoke:That's why I think a lot of.
Eric Hoke:younger leaders implode, early on in their ministry because the amount of
Eric Hoke:pressure that they put on themselves, they weren't mature enough to handle.
Eric Hoke:With that being said.
Eric Hoke:There are some lazy pastors.
Eric Hoke:I have to sometimes tell guys I talk to listen, you're stressed out because of a
Eric Hoke:board member or a deacon getting on you.
Eric Hoke:You haven't had to go to an office from nine to five your entire life.
Eric Hoke:You never had a boss, you never had projects you were accountable for.
Eric Hoke:You never had any of that.
Eric Hoke:you had.
Eric Hoke:People would also give you extra grace because you were the pastor
Eric Hoke:and they expect you to be an expert in everything when they just show
Eric Hoke:up to a place every single day.
Eric Hoke:And you have, outputs and emails and a Slack channel always humming and
Eric Hoke:different projects popping up on your calendar to different kind of pressure.
Eric Hoke:I.
Eric Hoke:So I actually encourage a lot of pastors, you have more free time now
Eric Hoke:as a full-time minister than you ever will as marketplace professional.
Eric Hoke:So why don't you use that free time and build something on the side if you
Eric Hoke:wanna make some more money, as opposed to just saying, I'm done with ministry,
Eric Hoke:I'm gonna go work somewhere else.
Eric Hoke:So that's kinda the first thing.
Eric Hoke:The second thing I'll say, though, and this is where I give pastors credit, the.
Eric Hoke:The nature of work, the stakes are so much higher in ministry.
Eric Hoke:So for example, let's suppose, someone shows up to your church and they've
Eric Hoke:been there two or three Sundays and they wanna sit down with you for
Eric Hoke:breakfast and talk about their life, and they just unload trauma, drama.
Eric Hoke:Pain, suffering loss heartache for three hours on a Wednesday morning.
Eric Hoke:That is a lot to bear for anybody.
Eric Hoke:Most marketplace leaders, that's not their Wednesday morning.
Eric Hoke:The Wednesday morning is some emails and a Slack message.
Eric Hoke:So I think that the laziness is not so much of pastors don't wanna work hard.
Eric Hoke:I think for a lot of it, it's the volume of work is so intense.
Eric Hoke:maybe it's not as frequent, I know a lot of pastors who golf on Tuesday
Eric Hoke:afternoons from at a one o'clock tea time.
Eric Hoke:I don't know many business leaders doing that, but maybe a few.
Eric Hoke:But I think the intensity of the work is obviously much
Eric Hoke:higher when you're a pastor.
Eric Hoke:yeah, I think people in ministry, some are lazy, some are over overachievers,
Eric Hoke:but certainly is an easy gig to get into if you just wanna be a freeloader.
Eric Hoke:That's for sure.
Tim Winders:So what's going on with someone?
Tim Winders:Let's just maybe talk to Joe Pastor that might be listening in, or
Tim Winders:someone may know Joe Pastor before I.
Tim Winders:They reach out to you.
Tim Winders:Talk a little bit about the situation that they might be in, leading up
Tim Winders:to, we'll talk in a little while about what happens after they
Tim Winders:interact with you, but talk about what they're like leading up to that.
Tim Winders:Some of the different scenarios or cases that you see people in.
Eric Hoke:Yeah, so we have three profiles of pastors who come to us.
Eric Hoke:About half of them are pastors who see they're writing on the wall
Eric Hoke:with the future of churches in this country, which churches are gonna
Eric Hoke:be smaller, people are gonna be less generous, and living a middle class.
Eric Hoke:Life as a full-time minister is gonna be really tough for a
Eric Hoke:lot of people moving forward.
Eric Hoke:bar, unless we have some sort of massive revival or something like
Eric Hoke:that, the future is gonna be co vocational and bi-vocational leaders
Eric Hoke:as it is already in Europe, New Zealand, Australia, what have you.
Eric Hoke:So a lot of very innovative pastors will say, okay, Bible College
Eric Hoke:Seminary, full-time ministry.
Eric Hoke:But I'm 35 and I can't keep doing this for 30 more years.
Eric Hoke:Let me call eye health pastors, get jobs and figure something out.
Eric Hoke:That's about half of the calls we get.
Eric Hoke:30% of the calls are the pastors who say, I'm done with ministry.
Eric Hoke:I'm burnt out.
Eric Hoke:I can't take it anymore.
Eric Hoke:I just wanna go get a job somewhere else.
Eric Hoke:And I'm just, I'm done with it.
Eric Hoke:A lot of them don't call us angry at God or angry at church.
Eric Hoke:They're just done being in ministry.
Eric Hoke:And then the last 20% call us because they had a moral failure or they were
Eric Hoke:fired or some circumstance removed them from ministry and they call us
Eric Hoke:and they're in crisis and we're there to provide triage and support to help
Eric Hoke:them transition into the marketplace.
Eric Hoke:So those are the three that we find most common.
Eric Hoke:I wanna become vo, I wanna leave ministry altogether, or I was forced
Eric Hoke:to leave and now I'm not sure what to do with myself professionally.
Tim Winders:so they are coming to terms with maybe.
Tim Winders:Full-time, financial support ministry is
Tim Winders:not going to play out.
Tim Winders:And that's a, that's probably a fairly I.
Tim Winders:we talked about the psychology of it earlier.
Tim Winders:That's probably something that something's gone on psychologically.
Tim Winders:their wife looks at 'em and says, we can't live poor anymore.
Tim Winders:Or this church, it's not gonna keep growing.
Tim Winders:We see the math type thing.
Tim Winders:What are you seeing, and this might be back to maybe a bigger picture
Tim Winders:question before, we're going in a little bit deeper, but what are.
Tim Winders:Kind of as trends or something.
Tim Winders:mean, I, I, I've been observing for some time that probably the, what we'll
Tim Winders:call, church World First World Church, whatever is going through some changes.
Tim Winders:I think Covid really, I.
Tim Winders:A lot of people think it was Covid.
Tim Winders:I think it was happening before then.
Tim Winders:Covid just
Tim Winders:emphasized it.
Tim Winders:But what can you share?
Tim Winders:That's just observations that you have.
Tim Winders:And I know that there are bar none places out there that do a lot of the research,
Tim Winders:but just from your seat, Eric, what do you see that we might, could glean from you
Tim Winders:about what's happening with the church?
Eric Hoke:Yeah, there's a few things that are on my radar right now.
Eric Hoke:one of them is, this is just like you said, my observations.
Eric Hoke:I don't have data on this.
Eric Hoke:I'm sure someone does, but anytime I talk to a Christian.
Eric Hoke:Under 25.
Eric Hoke:I asked him a lot of questions.
Eric Hoke:I really want to get in the brain of the Gen Z believers, and the reason
Eric Hoke:why that is a few months ago I was talking to a pastor and he was sharing
Eric Hoke:about where he went to Bible college.
Eric Hoke:He graduated from Bible college in 2005, so almost 20 years ago
Eric Hoke:with a youth ministry degree.
Eric Hoke:There was a hundred youth ministry majors.
Eric Hoke:At this Bible college 20 years ago, 19 years ago, this past year, they had three.
Eric Hoke:So in 19 years, they went from a hundred young people who said,
Eric Hoke:I want to go into full-time.
Eric Hoke:Church ministry to three.
Eric Hoke:And I'm really curious, what is it with Gen Z that says me?
Eric Hoke:I'm good.
Eric Hoke:I don't wanna pursue that.
Eric Hoke:I'm a millennial, I'm an elder millennial.
Eric Hoke:my group Gen Xers, we were, I.
Eric Hoke:Going to seminary.
Eric Hoke:We were planting churches, we were moving our families to cities
Eric Hoke:like the Bronx and starting, ministries from scratch, and Gen Z.
Eric Hoke:I'm just, I'm not seeing that and maybe it's happening.
Eric Hoke:I just don't have exposure to it.
Eric Hoke:But that has my attention.
Eric Hoke:The other end of the spectrum is when you see lead pastors who are.
Eric Hoke:70 and 80 years old and hanging onto their pulpits and not wanting to give it up.
Eric Hoke:and sometimes it's about power and control, but oftentimes
Eric Hoke:Tim is just financial.
Eric Hoke:I don't have a retirement, I don't have social security.
Eric Hoke:This is if I quit working, I.
Eric Hoke:At this church, I'm gonna be living on the street.
Eric Hoke:So I see that on two extremes, where it's like, what's happening in
Eric Hoke:the church milieu that young folks don't wanna jump into ministry.
Eric Hoke:Then the older folks don't wanna give up their ministries
Eric Hoke:and how can we address that?
Eric Hoke:And what I'm really.
Eric Hoke:Find people perk, get their ears perked up when it comes to
Eric Hoke:the, I help pastors to get jobs.
Eric Hoke:Conversation is, Hey, tell a group of 22, 23 year olds, Hey, you
Eric Hoke:don't have to go to Bible college and get a youth ministry degree.
Eric Hoke:You can get a marketable skill where you can make a lot of money and you and
Eric Hoke:your three or four best friends and go move to whatever part of the country
Eric Hoke:you want to, buy some homes or rent some apartments and just start meeting
Eric Hoke:people in your community and let the kingdom of God flourish from that.
Eric Hoke:And if we're living in a really exciting time in the world where
Eric Hoke:people can do that and maybe they couldn't a generation or two ago.
Eric Hoke:And I think that as more Christians begin to think missionally of, Hey,
Eric Hoke:how do I get a marketplace job, build healthy community, impact my
Eric Hoke:neighborhoods, and make a tangible difference for the kingdom Gen Zs aren't
Eric Hoke:signing up for seminary, but I think a lot of them will sign up for that.
Eric Hoke:And I think in terms of the older crowd, some of them need to say, all
Eric Hoke:right, I need to transition and let the.
Eric Hoke:The 40-year-old, the 50-year-old, the 30-year-old, take this
Eric Hoke:pulpit and I need to step down.
Eric Hoke:Until then we're gonna, we're gonna have a huge vacuum.
Tim Winders:Yeah.
Tim Winders:And obviously some of those folks don't know how much
Tim Winders:money these youth pastors make.
Tim Winders:They make the big bucks, right?
Tim Winders:But.
Eric Hoke:Exactly.
Tim Winders:our son-in-Law, who, we actually met him when we were
Tim Winders:at bible school a few years ago.
Tim Winders:He would've been 18, 19.
Tim Winders:We would've been in our late fifties, almost 60.
Tim Winders:I'm a tail end of the boomer generation.
Tim Winders:he does have a bible school degree, but he actually is gone
Tim Winders:the route of cybersecurity.
Tim Winders:And does some things with his church.
Tim Winders:In fact, they offered him, I guess I could say this, hopefully they offered
Tim Winders:him the jo, the job of youth pastor a while back, and it just didn't make sense.
Tim Winders:The money, the, the, the work,
Tim Winders:I mean, you know, the, the way a lot of, so here's this, maybe I'm
Tim Winders:gonna pose this as a question.
Tim Winders:I see these divisions in church world, there's the denominational world, which I
Tim Winders:think is in trouble.
Tim Winders:I think the Denomin in general, denominations, they've got some challenges
Tim Winders:that they're gonna have to deal with.
Tim Winders:And then I think there's what we'll call mega church.
Tim Winders:I.
Tim Winders:World and and we will pop in and visit some of those as we travel around some.
Tim Winders:The music's great.
Tim Winders:It's entertaining.
Tim Winders:Smoke and mirror, not smoke and mirror.
Tim Winders:Sorry, was, did I say that out loud?
Tim Winders:Smoke.
Tim Winders:Smoke.
Tim Winders:The smoke
Eric Hoke:Smoke machine.
Eric Hoke:It's okay.
Eric Hoke:we can
Tim Winders:skinny
Eric Hoke:smoke machines,
Tim Winders:that really cool.
Tim Winders:Very entertaining.
Tim Winders:And then
Tim Winders:there's, and then there's what obviously is a movement now, which is like home,
Tim Winders:church, small church, blah, blah, blah.
Tim Winders:I think there's this vast middle ground.
Tim Winders:And I guess my question for you hear is where are you seeing a lot of.
Tim Winders:Your people come from?
Tim Winders:Where are these people come from?
Tim Winders:My guess would be that middle ground, but maybe not.
Tim Winders:What, what are you seeing from those groups?
Tim Winders:And if I missed a group, you can call me out on it or highlight it.
Eric Hoke:No, this is actually a really pointed question because when we
Eric Hoke:transitioned from the Bronx, we were in.
Eric Hoke:We were in a public school, we were mobile, we were scrappy.
Eric Hoke:We were, very janky kids ministry.
Eric Hoke:My children would just hang out in a sanctuary while I preached and
Eric Hoke:fight each other in the back row.
Eric Hoke:And my wife and I, when we moved out here to Lancaster, which is Ki
Eric Hoke:Lancaster, Pennsylvania, it's kinda like the Bible Belt of the Northeast.
Eric Hoke:I.
Eric Hoke:And we, my wife and I, we're gonna find the biggest, baddest, mega church in town.
Eric Hoke:Our kids will finally have a kid's ministry, Disneyland for Jesus to go to.
Eric Hoke:We'll be able to sit and have the, entertainment factor service
Eric Hoke:and just be ministered to, and I don't wanna tell anybody that
Eric Hoke:I'm a pastor and I don't want.
Eric Hoke:To deal with that and let that be our church experience for a while.
Eric Hoke:While Tim, you're laughing 'cause you probably know how well that
Eric Hoke:went because we went to one mega church and they were fantastic.
Eric Hoke:Beautiful church, amazing people.
Eric Hoke:But every Sunday morning it was a fight for my kids.
Eric Hoke:true anxiety.
Eric Hoke:Are we gonna go in the back?
Eric Hoke:I don't want to go in the back.
Eric Hoke:I don't like going in the back.
Eric Hoke:Can I stay with you?
Eric Hoke:And it was one of those dynamics where it was the kids were invited
Eric Hoke:to the sanctuary, but the kids weren't really invited to the
Eric Hoke:sanctuary, if that makes sense.
Eric Hoke:Every time we'd go in with the kids very quickly and Usher would come over
Eric Hoke:and say, Hey, we have kids in ministry.
Eric Hoke:Do you wanna go check in your kid?
Eric Hoke:it was that.
Eric Hoke:So we did that for a few months and then we ended up going to, like what
Eric Hoke:you just described, that 140 person, middle of the road, Lutheran church
Eric Hoke:is where we're worshiping right now.
Eric Hoke:They let kids into service if kids cry or scream or whatever.
Eric Hoke:They don't care.
Eric Hoke:They just keep having service.
Eric Hoke:And it's been really life, life-giving, and beautiful in the past, and I
Eric Hoke:have gotten to know each other.
Eric Hoke:It's been really special.
Eric Hoke:That's where we, that's where we landed.
Eric Hoke:So we had a idea.
Eric Hoke:big box church.
Eric Hoke:Our kids said, no way.
Eric Hoke:And a wise pastor who transitioned outta ministry told me best advice I can give
Eric Hoke:you for finding a church post ministry.
Eric Hoke:Post church ministry.
Eric Hoke:Do it like follow your kids, like you drug them to church for all these years.
Eric Hoke:Let them drag you to where they want to go.
Eric Hoke:And they brought us to this medium sized Lutheran church.
Eric Hoke:So there you go.
Tim Winders:So how the medium sized churches doing?
Tim Winders:'cause I agree there.
Tim Winders:Pretty vital.
Tim Winders:But isn't that where just sometimes the math is really hard to make it work?
Tim Winders:you may know about that personally, but I just see that being a struggle.
Tim Winders:It's almost it's almost like this business, I'll use my business perspective
Tim Winders:that, it's not startup anymore.
Tim Winders:But we
Tim Winders:can't scale it and grow it.
Tim Winders:I don't like those words, but I'll use 'em here.
Tim Winders:You can't scale it and grow it to where we could have like full-time
Tim Winders:staff people, blah, blah, blah.
Tim Winders:So we're kind of in this middle ground.
Tim Winders:That just makes it tough and and in the world we're in, it's hard to
Tim Winders:settle in with middle of the road.
Tim Winders:I like middle of the road.
Tim Winders:I think that's fine.
Tim Winders:But what do you see there?
Tim Winders:Is that where some people come to you guys?
Tim Winders:Because it's just hard to make the math work?
Tim Winders:I.
Eric Hoke:yeah, for sure.
Eric Hoke:And not only that, the biggest challenge that I see, and I think
Eric Hoke:this is not just medium size and larger churches, is the number of,
Eric Hoke:white heads you see every Sunday.
Eric Hoke:And God bless the saints, senior Saints, we love 'em.
Eric Hoke:We need them.
Eric Hoke:They're sweat, blood and tears.
Eric Hoke:I built those churches.
Eric Hoke:But what, what happens when they're gone?
Eric Hoke:that's what my brain always goes back to.
Eric Hoke:So if you have a church of 200 people at 160 or over 60, where does that
Eric Hoke:lead leave the church in 25 years?
Eric Hoke:And I think a lot of people call us because they see
Eric Hoke:they're writing on the wall.
Eric Hoke:yeah, people have bankrolled this for a long time, but that,
Eric Hoke:that, that bank is drying up.
Tim Winders:Yeah, and I'm looking at it as a former real estate guy
Tim Winders:too, going, man, there's gonna be a lot of buildings out there.
Tim Winders:There's gonna be a lot of assets and things like that.
Tim Winders:So anyway, Eric, I'm curious how, let's, tell me how this started.
Tim Winders:Tell me how you migrated to it.
Tim Winders:Because if I think I saw something on the background.
Tim Winders:You've almost.
Tim Winders:I've been through, this is a little bit exaggerative, but you've almost
Tim Winders:been through every role that one could have in quote unquote ministry.
Tim Winders:I think missionary and church plant, youth pastor, all that kind of
Tim Winders:stuff.
Tim Winders:don't know if you ever drummed or anything like that, but maybe you did.
Tim Winders:You're shaking your head no for those that are listening and and it sounds
Tim Winders:like you've also been from like.
Tim Winders:Liberty University to, minus to actually, hardcore, theology
Tim Winders:school to, all over the place.
Tim Winders:First of all, I'm fascinated with that because I think so many people get
Tim Winders:in one space and they never leave.
Tim Winders:I think that kind of
Tim Winders:helps transitions too, by the way.
Tim Winders:But at what point did you say, I am well equipped and I've got the resources
Tim Winders:and I'm called to help pastors.
Eric Hoke:So all of it was by accident slash God's grace.
Eric Hoke:I don't know, which was God's grace, which was an accident.
Eric Hoke:So I'll just tell the whole story.
Eric Hoke:So I'm an accidental bi-vocational pastor.
Eric Hoke:Some people are.
Eric Hoke:Have the mentality of, I'm always gonna be bi-vocational because I look at
Eric Hoke:it as a strategic way to do ministry.
Eric Hoke:I was not one of those people when I planted All Saints, I knew
Eric Hoke:it was gonna be in a large city.
Eric Hoke:I knew it was gonna be an underserved community.
Eric Hoke:I knew it was gonna take at least six months of my dynamic preaching
Eric Hoke:to grow to 200, 300 people.
Eric Hoke:of course the joke was on me because our church never grew anywhere near to that
Eric Hoke:size, which churches in New York City don't grow that, that large anyways.
Eric Hoke:Typically, so I started doing bivocational ministry by accident.
Eric Hoke:I was doing some leadership development and some training, as a
Eric Hoke:side gig plus pastoring the church.
Eric Hoke:covid hit a lot of the church plants that were like mine.
Eric Hoke:ended up closing up shop.
Eric Hoke:And I realized that the ones who ended up closing, all of them had one
Eric Hoke:thing in common that I didn't, and that was the pastor was full-time.
Eric Hoke:So I had reached out to a mentor of mine to share what I was thinking through,
Eric Hoke:and he really encouraged me, Tim.
Eric Hoke:He said, listen man, why don't you make part of your ministry helping pastors.
Eric Hoke:think differently about vocation, figure out how to get into the
Eric Hoke:marketplace, how to do ministry and marketplace ministry together.
Eric Hoke:I think that could be something you could think, you can scratch a pretty
Eric Hoke:big itch in the church world right now.
Eric Hoke:And me being the cynical, New York City adjacent person, I am thought,
Eric Hoke:oh, no one's gonna care about that.
Eric Hoke:But sure, I'll give it a try.
Eric Hoke:Put together this very janky low budget website.
Eric Hoke:A lead generating PDF put on my social media.
Eric Hoke:Went and made myself some lunch.
Eric Hoke:Came back an hour or two later, and 300 people had signed up for it.
Eric Hoke:So I thought, oh, my friend was onto something and we've been
Eric Hoke:off to the races ever since.
Eric Hoke:And to your point, like I'm not someone that, this is not theory
Eric Hoke:for me 'cause I've had to do it.
Eric Hoke:Like I've had to rebrand as a marketplace professional in Manhattan
Eric Hoke:as a Liberty University graduate.
Eric Hoke:So nobody here has it worse than I do.
Eric Hoke:Trust me.
Eric Hoke:So I had to figure all that out.
Eric Hoke:And then I got actually into workforce development where I was
Eric Hoke:helping young adults, 18 to 24 year olds, break into the marketplace.
Eric Hoke:And it just was a realization I had, Tim, they have programs like
Eric Hoke:this for underserved young adults.
Eric Hoke:They have programs like this for veterans.
Eric Hoke:They have programs like this for what?
Eric Hoke:Like people of color.
Eric Hoke:They have programs like this for all sorts of people in society.
Eric Hoke:But where is it for pastors?
Eric Hoke:It doesn't exist.
Eric Hoke:So we started it.
Tim Winders:So you mentioned a word, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna follow
Tim Winders:up to ask it as a, are you sure?
Tim Winders:Because some people might wanna argue with it.
Tim Winders:You said that this is a ministry and
Tim Winders:if someone says Eric.
Tim Winders:This isn't a ministry.
Tim Winders:There's money changing hands.
Tim Winders:There's some profit there.
Tim Winders:There.
Tim Winders:It doesn't look like a ministry.
Tim Winders:How do you respond?
Eric Hoke:Yeah.
Eric Hoke:the first thing I would say is that 97% of people who engage
Eric Hoke:our content never paid a penny.
Eric Hoke:And every single, not every day, I'll be honest, every week I get an email from
Eric Hoke:someone that says, Hey Eric, you don't know me, but I follow you on Twitter.
Eric Hoke:I get your emails.
Eric Hoke:I did everything you said and I found a job and praise God.
Eric Hoke:I have pastors who emailed me probably once a month.
Eric Hoke:I want to do your class.
Eric Hoke:I can't afford it.
Eric Hoke:Do you have any advice for me?
Eric Hoke:I said, here's my advice.
Eric Hoke:Here's a coupon code for a free voucher.
Eric Hoke:Go take the class.
Eric Hoke:The only thing I charge for is anything that requires customization.
Eric Hoke:And why do I do that?
Eric Hoke:Because I'm a working father of three kids and they're, they get hungry every
Eric Hoke:single day and their feet won't stop growing and they need, new shoes for
Eric Hoke:ballet and a new, a new outfit for karate.
Eric Hoke:so I do this on the side because obviously it takes time, money, and energy.
Eric Hoke:The vast majority of what I do is no cost.
Eric Hoke:so that's how I do it.
Eric Hoke:I just say, Hey, I charge a little bit of money.
Eric Hoke:Honestly, it's about one third to one fifth of what the market
Eric Hoke:rate is for the similar services.
Eric Hoke:but you can take everything I've given for free and figure it out
Eric Hoke:on your own if money's a barrier.
Tim Winders:Yeah.
Tim Winders:And just so that I'm clear, I am all for charging money.
Tim Winders:I'm a business guy that goes over into the ministry world at times.
Tim Winders:I did not come up.
Tim Winders:Along in ministry.
Tim Winders:So I'm all for that.
Tim Winders:In fact, when I did go to o over to your site, I saw some of your pricing
Tim Winders:and I went, that's fairly modest.
Tim Winders:That's, I don't wanna say you, you could probably charge more if you chose to.
Tim Winders:So this isn't a money grab and all that.
Tim Winders:I'll.
Tim Winders:guarantee that, gimme a couple, give us a couple of success stories.
Tim Winders:you got a couple of couple here and there's a few questions I wanna
Tim Winders:ask before we wrap up here, but how about a few of you know this person?
Tim Winders:I always say Guy, but I'm sure that there might be women here.
Tim Winders:We need more.
Tim Winders:I think women in the ministry world, they're just, they seem to be
Tim Winders:smarter and can handle things better.
Tim Winders:Maybe they've got this figured out and we just need the guys that can't figure
Tim Winders:out how to make the money piece work.
Tim Winders:So anyway, tell us some success stories.
Tim Winders:Sorry, but sidebar
Tim Winders:commentary.
Tim Winders:We may need to cut that out.
Eric Hoke:we'll make the cut longer if we decide to, but the majority
Eric Hoke:of the emails I get from people who say, oh, I figured it out on my own
Eric Hoke:with your free resources are woman.
Tim Winders:That totally makes sense.
Tim Winders:we're sitting here talking and truthfully, I think I, I saw that
Tim Winders:you were, agile, project management.
Tim Winders:That's my wife.
Tim Winders:She's gotten all the
Tim Winders:training on that.
Tim Winders:You know, we would probably be really wise if we actually got just the
Tim Winders:wives to have these conversations.
Tim Winders:But no, two guys, we can get on and talk for 60 minutes, say stuff, act
Tim Winders:like we know what we're talking about.
Tim Winders:But yes, the women are.
Tim Winders:Definitely smarter.
Tim Winders:We will admit that.
Tim Winders:And we may just leave that in for, just for the sake of
Tim Winders:its accuracy and also Okay.
Tim Winders:Success stories.
Tim Winders:Tell us about some.
Eric Hoke:Yeah, I think one of my favorite success stories was
Eric Hoke:a pastor who's living in Ohio.
Eric Hoke:his, he was originally from Georgia.
Eric Hoke:His parents were aging.
Eric Hoke:He wanted to get down to Georgia to be closer to them.
Eric Hoke:Very hard to do that when you're pastoring full-time.
Eric Hoke:several states away.
Eric Hoke:He reaches out to us.
Eric Hoke:He says, listen, I've been applying for jobs down in Georgia.
Eric Hoke:I can't get a single call back.
Eric Hoke:I can't get anyone to answer my, my, inquiries and very smart
Eric Hoke:guy, sharp, competent, been in ministry for a long time.
Eric Hoke:He shelled out for the resume rewrite.
Eric Hoke:He sent us a job of interest.
Eric Hoke:We went in Taylor's resume for an operations role.
Eric Hoke:And he applied for 10 jobs over the course of a weekend, and by the following
Eric Hoke:week had three invitations to interview.
Eric Hoke:I ended up getting a job with the City of Decatur.
Eric Hoke:I'm not sure if I'm saying that I'm not from
Tim Winders:Decatur, I think it's Decatur.
Eric Hoke:Decat Decatur.
Eric Hoke:Thank you, Decatur.
Eric Hoke:that's the French version.
Eric Hoke:Decatur.
Tim Winders:Yeah, and there's no French in Georgia.
Tim Winders:Just so you know, I'm from Georgia, so I
Eric Hoke:Exactly.
Eric Hoke:Oh, there you go.
Eric Hoke:Perfect.
Eric Hoke:Thank you for, thanks for the save there brother.
Eric Hoke:Anyways, for the city working with the mayor.
Eric Hoke:Really high profile job.
Eric Hoke:Loving it, killing it, and.
Eric Hoke:He took a, he took a bet on himself and he was able to, serve in that
Eric Hoke:way, able to be closer to his family.
Eric Hoke:And it was just a huge win.
Eric Hoke:And the coolest thing that I love to see, man, is the confidence boost
Eric Hoke:that these guys and gals get when they realize, oh, like I do have skills.
Eric Hoke:I do have the ability to translate my, the things I've learned in ministry.
Eric Hoke:I do have things that the market will pay me money for.
Eric Hoke:It's a huge win.
Eric Hoke:Every time that happens.
Tim Winders:Yeah.
Tim Winders:And he, listen, I know that part of the city, there are plenty of
Tim Winders:ministry opportunities It is Not as if he's not in ministry anymore.
Tim Winders:I.
Eric Hoke:Totally.
Tim Winders:Yeah,
Eric Hoke:Totally.
Tim Winders:so much there.
Tim Winders:it's not quite inner city, but it's a, it's an urban, definitely
Tim Winders:an urban area with a lot going on.
Tim Winders:I wanted to ask a couple things here.
Tim Winders:I'm watching my time.
Tim Winders:There's a few things I'll wrap up with here, but you, I found you
Tim Winders:somehow on Twitter, The platform formerly known as Twitter.
Tim Winders:Do we call it x?
Tim Winders:I don't know.
Tim Winders:I don't know exactly what to do.
Tim Winders:There is that where you have built up and now have, a lot of your
Tim Winders:activity or, where do people find you?
Tim Winders:That might be a better question.
Eric Hoke:Yeah, Twitter is where I'm most active.
Eric Hoke:Social media wise.
Eric Hoke:You can also go to, I help pastors get jobs.com.
Eric Hoke:If you click on the free PDF, that'll put you on my email list.
Eric Hoke:I send out an email every Monday.
Eric Hoke:just job tips and tricks to transition from vocational
Eric Hoke:ministry into the marketplace.
Eric Hoke:I reread every single response that I get from those emails as well.
Eric Hoke:So if you ever have a question, I pick my brain on something.
Eric Hoke:You can do that.
Eric Hoke:And also there's a Calendly link as well on the webpage.
Eric Hoke:You can schedule time with my associate Mark, and if our services
Eric Hoke:are a benefit to you, we can definitely start that conversation.
Eric Hoke:But I'm actually on a Twitter break right now.
Eric Hoke:Twitter's great for gauging people and having conversation.
Eric Hoke:It's terrible for your soul.
Eric Hoke:So I've decided to take a few weeks and just give it a breather.
Eric Hoke:I feel a little bit better doing that, but yet my name Eric Koch on
Eric Hoke:Twitter or I help pastors get jobs.com.
Tim Winders:that and I was actually gonna ask you about that 'cause I, yesterday
Tim Winders:when I was just snooping around looking for some info on you, I saw that you
Tim Winders:had taken a break from what we call Twitter and h How's that going for you?
Tim Winders:Is that nice to be away?
Tim Winders:And listen, a lot of people would wanna know.
Tim Winders:How, especially if your business revolves around that platform or
Tim Winders:one of these platforms, and we could probably insert a lot of 'em, even
Tim Winders:though Twitter seems to be a little more toxic at times and especially now
Tim Winders:that it's just the wild, wild West.
Tim Winders:But, what does it look like to step away?
Tim Winders:Tell me more about that.
Eric Hoke:Yeah, man.
Eric Hoke:it was done with intentionality.
Eric Hoke:One of the dreams that I have for iHealth pastors to get jobs is to pivot
Eric Hoke:from a B2C business to a B2B business.
Eric Hoke:So what I mean by that is we can do resumes all day and
Eric Hoke:that's good and that's fine.
Eric Hoke:We're happy to support.
Eric Hoke:But those denominations, networks, Folk seminaries, just bigger entities.
Eric Hoke:Working with them directly to support and resource their
Eric Hoke:pastors is what has my attention.
Eric Hoke:And presidents of seminaries aren't hanging out on Twitter typically, so
Eric Hoke:what we're trying to do is build right now in the background, more credible.
Eric Hoke:Collateral and material that we can present to, leaders in those
Eric Hoke:spaces because we just struck a deal with the PCA last year, at the end
Eric Hoke:of last year, where we're helping resource their pastors in transition.
Eric Hoke:And those are the things that are really exciting because then that pastors just
Eric Hoke:not getting the support from us, but also from their denomination of their network.
Eric Hoke:To help them transition out of ministry?
Eric Hoke:so I can go on Twitter and say some goofy things and get some traffic.
Eric Hoke:that's good and that's fine.
Eric Hoke:But the word you used earlier, which is the word that I also have a
Eric Hoke:complicated relationship with scale.
Eric Hoke:I help pastors get jobs, never scales.
Eric Hoke:With me being goofy on Twitter is scales when I start becoming a
Eric Hoke:thought leader with denominations, networks, seminaries, and Christian
Eric Hoke:institutions and saying, Hey, how do we think differently about this?
Eric Hoke:And how can we resource our pastors?
Tim Winders:but you have had quite an, quite a big jump in, I guess we'll
Tim Winders:call 'em followers over on Twitter X.
Tim Winders:What do you attribute that to?
Tim Winders:Is it you're, your.
Tim Winders:Rugged ruggedly, handsome looks.
Tim Winders:Is it your, Witt and things like that?
Tim Winders:what do you, I'm always intrigued and people want to say, Hey, if someone's
Tim Winders:jumped, 2,500 followers in a year, or doubled or tripled, which I think
Tim Winders:you've seem like you have, what do you
Tim Winders:attribute that to?
Tim Winders:Or is it luck or God's grace?
Tim Winders:Like you talked earlier when you transitioned into what you're doing now.
Eric Hoke:Yeah, so there's a formula that I use and obviously anyone
Eric Hoke:can find this on the internet.
Eric Hoke:It's not something I made up.
Eric Hoke:it's been out there.
Eric Hoke:it's a strategy for getting attention.
Eric Hoke:And it's the four E's, entertain, educate, Exploit, exploit bad ideas.
Eric Hoke:And now I'm drawing a blank on the fourth one 'cause I'm a little rusty from being
Eric Hoke:off Twitter for the last couple weeks.
Eric Hoke:Entertain, exploit.
Eric Hoke:Oh, and, educate and, gosh, what's the last one I'm looking for?
Eric Hoke:almost inspire, but it starts with an E.
Eric Hoke:So all You need to have a formula on, on Twitter.
Eric Hoke:A lot of people I see everything's education.
Eric Hoke:Do these 10 things, get a job, do these eight things to get an interview, do these
Eric Hoke:four things and negotiate your salary.
Eric Hoke:Okay, that's helpful, but that's all you're ever pumping out there.
Eric Hoke:gets dry after a while.
Eric Hoke:Some people are just entertaining.
Eric Hoke:They're telling 'em jokes and memes and puns and that's good for entertainment
Eric Hoke:value, but not very helpful.
Eric Hoke:one of the things that I found a lot of traction it with.
Eric Hoke:Is exploiting bad ideas that happen within the church world, and
Eric Hoke:especially like the staffing world.
Eric Hoke:Like one of my first viral tweets was, how's a church board gonna put you
Eric Hoke:through 10, 10 rounds of interviews to offer you a $30,000 a year job?
Eric Hoke:And that got legs and shared and commented on by, everybody and their mother.
Eric Hoke:So that's the strategy that I go through.
Eric Hoke:I try to make sure.
Eric Hoke:Every time I'm posting, I'm hitting all four of those kind of Is it entertaining?
Eric Hoke:Is it educating, is it exploiting?
Eric Hoke:And there's a fourth E that I'm drawing a
Tim Winders:Is it encourage, encourage, inspire.
Eric Hoke:Encourage.
Eric Hoke:Encourage.
Eric Hoke:You got it.
Eric Hoke:Yeah.
Eric Hoke:I think it's encourage you.
Eric Hoke:Got it.
Eric Hoke:Thank you.
Eric Hoke:encourage, exploit, educate,
Tim Winders:very good.
Tim Winders:Yeah, and I think I may have seen some of those 'cause that Dr.
Tim Winders:I, I, the exploit thing is something that I see quite a bit and I love when
Tim Winders:people are talking about things like that.
Tim Winders:what's wrong with the current system?
Tim Winders:This is what's
Tim Winders:wrong with the current system, and I've seen a good bit of that, so that's good.
Tim Winders:A couple of questions real quick here before we wrap up.
Tim Winders:One, I think I'd love it, and I think we've given some things along
Tim Winders:the way, but just as a little bit of an exclamation point to the topic.
Tim Winders:Let's just say that someone is listening in and they, maybe their
Tim Winders:ministry, maybe there's something else.
Tim Winders:They just know they need to make some adjustments, changes, something like that.
Tim Winders:Give.
Tim Winders:a quick tip or two, just that might be tangible for them just to move them in
Tim Winders:the direction that they might need to go.
Tim Winders:They're already feeling the urge.
Tim Winders:Something needs to change.
Tim Winders:What would you tell 'em?
Eric Hoke:Yeah, the first thing I would say is your next step, professionally does
Eric Hoke:not begin with what jobs are out there.
Eric Hoke:Your first step professionally begins with how has God uniquely wired you?
Eric Hoke:What gives you life, and what do you enjoy doing?
Eric Hoke:and I find that for pastors, this can be very tricky, but sit down with a
Eric Hoke:sheet of paper, draw a line in the middle, and write down all the things
Eric Hoke:you do in a given week or given month, and put 'em in two categories.
Eric Hoke:Life giving, life sucking, everything that's life giving.
Eric Hoke:It's pretty amazing what we can do nowadays.
Eric Hoke:Punch that all in the chat.
Eric Hoke:GBT say, what jobs would I be doing?
Eric Hoke:These things and it'll give you half a dozen jobs to start looking for.
Eric Hoke:that's a really tangible first step that you can do.
Eric Hoke:that's something I'd recommend.
Eric Hoke:What gives you life and how can you do more of that?
Eric Hoke:Because the solution is not just go get another job.
Eric Hoke:The solution is find ways in which you can live out your
Eric Hoke:giftedness as a professional.
Tim Winders:I like that.
Tim Winders:And then one of the first things someone has to do is to make
Tim Winders:sure that they understand that chat GPT and AI is not the devil.
Tim Winders:That is not, bad theology, right?
Tim Winders:No, it's a good tool.
Tim Winders:That, that we could use for these things.
Tim Winders:And especially coming up with, I think that's great.
Tim Winders:I think that's a good tip, Eric, for almost anyone pastor.
Tim Winders:Yes.
Tim Winders:But I think anyone that feels like they're in some type of transition
Tim Winders:or change, so I appreciate that man.
Tim Winders:it's been a great conversation.
Tim Winders:I appreciate it.
Tim Winders:Eric, we are seek, go create those three words.
Tim Winders:My last question for you, I'm gonna let you choose one
Tim Winders:of those over the other two.
Tim Winders:It just.
Tim Winders:overthink it.
Tim Winders:Seek, go or create.
Tim Winders:Which word do you choose
Tim Winders:and why?
Eric Hoke:I'm gonna choose seek.
Eric Hoke:there's something that I've been very intentional about the last
Eric Hoke:few years, and that's just being really curious about things.
Eric Hoke:It's I'll meet somebody and I'll say, let's say, oh, I work, you mentioned
Eric Hoke:earlier, oh, I, I worked in this field.
Eric Hoke:I'm, or my wife's in Agile project management.
Eric Hoke:It's oh, like what is that?
Eric Hoke:Can you share more about what that is?
Eric Hoke:Like?
Eric Hoke:How does she do that?
Eric Hoke:What kind of stuff is she working on?
Eric Hoke:I think so many pastors, man, they get.
Eric Hoke:they have people who come to their churches every day, every
Eric Hoke:Sunday, they see them preach.
Eric Hoke:They see them pray for people.
Eric Hoke:They see them offer the sacraments.
Eric Hoke:But if you were to ask that same pastor, Hey, what does
Eric Hoke:Joe do Monday through Friday?
Eric Hoke:What does Sally do Monday through Friday?
Eric Hoke:I don't know, works in some office somewhere.
Eric Hoke:So I'd encourage pastors who feel like they're seeking out what's next to you.
Eric Hoke:Know, be curious.
Eric Hoke:Take that business person out for lunch this week and say, Hey, listen,
Eric Hoke:you know what I do every week.
Eric Hoke:What do you do every week?
Eric Hoke:What are you working on?
Eric Hoke:What's going on in your world?
Eric Hoke:I think there's a lot of value in just asking questions, and being curious.
Tim Winders:I love that.
Tim Winders:Yeah, I had that Ted lasso clip that be curious him at the dartboard.
Tim Winders:Come up.
Tim Winders:Eric Hoke.
Tim Winders:He helps pastors get jobs.
Tim Winders:Great conversation.
Tim Winders:I've loved this and I recommend you checking out all his stuff.
Tim Winders:Jump over to Twitter.
Tim Winders:Follow him.
Tim Winders:Even if you may not be a pastor, Eric is, fun to follow over on Twitter X.
Tim Winders:So we are seek go create here.
Tim Winders:We release new episodes every Monday.
Tim Winders:Your support means the world to us.
Tim Winders:Now you can tip us, buy me coffee, or a sip of whiskey.
Tim Winders:If you're inclined to do that, you can offer us financial support.
Tim Winders:Just go to seek go create.com/.
Tim Winders:Support contributions start at just $1.
Tim Winders:I'll tell you, you will not be able to get me a sip of whiskey for a buck, so you're
Tim Winders:gonna need to give me more than that.
Tim Winders:You could leave a comment there.
Tim Winders:Your comment could be featured in a future episode visit seek go create.com/support.
Tim Winders:Until next time, continue being all that you are created to be.