It was a long drive to this meeting.
Along the way, all I saw were a lot of cows and tractors.
But then right in the middle of the meeting, there was a mic drop.
The Chamber of Commerce director didn't even know what she had done. She mentioned there were 1,600 micro-enterprises in the county. But you couldn't tell from looking.
Cows and tractors are a big business sector, but it wasn't really adding up.
And what is a micro-enterprise, anyway?
So back in my office, I looked it up. A micro-enterprise is any business with less than 10, or less than 5 employees, depending on whose definition you use.
And she was right. There were 1,600 of them in that little rural county. But what really made my jaw drop was the 18,000 in the community where I live.
When I saw the shift in interest among Gen Z and Millennials toward becoming an entrepreneur, it all started to make sense. There's a generational, work-life shift happening right before our eyes.
All around every church, there are hundreds and thousands of people who are changing their life direction. They are wanting to, trying out, and working at becoming a business owner.
While they come in all sizes, ages, and backgrounds, many of them are young. But the trend extends upwards into the Boomer generation, too.
What does it mean for churches? It means that to be credible and relevant you not only have to figure out social media, podcasting, and video. But you've also got to figure out how to engage people who are focused on building an entrepreneurial lifestyle in church.
To work with young adults, all the way up to Millennials, and not speak the language of entrepreneur is to miss a large percentage of the population.
But feeling engaged isn't currently the reality in most churches. When we ask entrepreneurs about their church experience, we get the same story almost every time:
I can tell this same story from my own church. When we started Founder's Table, we didn't know if there was even one other entrepreneur in the church. But we discovered they were hidden all around us.
But the sad truth is that if there is no ability to engage someone who is catalytic, highly networked, proactive, and creative in the list of regular church programs, they will probably take their energy elsewhere.
But it doesn't have to be that way. Jesus recruited a lot of entrepreneurs, and they need what you have—the ability to pastor them.
But pastors and church leadership teams need to understand and lean into who this audience is becoming and how they can create new energy for mission inside the church and in the marketplace.