The way Americans go to work has changed. The two top factors are the ability to work remotely and their work-life balance. These are two interconnected trends. And people in your church and those you’d like to reach are dead serious about these two things.
To illustrate just how significant these trends are:
- Nearly 75% view work-life balance as the core factor when looking for a job, and about half would quit their job if they can’t find a way to enjoy their life.
- 7 in 10 of the people who started a business did it because they were looking for more control of their time and lifestyle.
It’s a one-two punch. People want to have a better balance between work and their lives, and they see becoming their own boss as the best path to achieve that goal. So, the number of people who want to become business owners and those who are actually doing it either full-time or part-time is continuing to grow.
Put simply, your population is becoming more entrepreneurial. But here’s the rub: starting your own business is a paradigm-shifting experience, and the church has to adapt.
One in five Gen-Zers and Millennials say they were students before starting their businesses, according to an American Express survey. This represents a 567% increase in the rate of young people launching businesses directly after school compared to older generations.
The church has to adapt to this dramatic shift in lifestyle and the direction of work. 50% of Gen Z aspires to become an entrepreneur or start their own business, according to a report from Samsung and Morning Consult, and a 2023 Samsung and Morning Consult survey of U.S. students ages 16 to 25 revealed that 50% of respondents wished to start a business. It’s almost impossible to consider any kind of young adult ministry without taking this into consideration.
This is also true among immigrants who are nearly twice as likely (1.9x) to start businesses compared to the general U.S. population. That has implications for any church that is in an urban community or has commitments to church planting.
The people who go down an entrepreneurial road start to see everything in a new way. That includes church.
When they make the move to start a side hustle, launch something new, or buy into a business, everything changes:
- It means that they are now open to a new level of discipleship in which they are hungry to translate Biblical ideas into practical marketplace realities. They start asking questions about how their faith should impact how they work.
- They become more dependent on God’s help and enter a season in which the depth of the spiritual life can grow.
- Because what they are doing is often connected to a passion, they want those who are in their life to pay attention and show interest and support.
And, starting something new can be a lonely experience. Many will go from working in a team to working alone for a great deal of the time. The people that they’ve relied upon for support are no longer in the picture, and they are learning and struggling with lots of new challenges.
Those who have been entrepreneurs for a longer period of time, in many cases have not found their church to be a place where they can get support. When we surveyed a group of entrepreneurs in 2024, we found that the majority didn’t even feel they could bring a business-related prayer request to church at all.
There’s a big difference between someone who is getting a regular paycheck and someone who has ventured into a lifestyle that opens up the possibility that they could not only be responsible for their own livelihood, but they could create a different kind of life.
And the numbers are massive.
The best estimates put the combined impact of remote work and at least some entrepreneurial activity at about 80 to 90 million unique Americans, over half the total workforce.
Andy Stanley says it this way, "If you want me to follow you on a journey, you have to come get me. The journey must begin where I am, not where you are or where you think I should be."
— Andy Stanley, Deep and Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend
The good news is this: Not only are they making life changes that they care about, it has the potential to get them moving toward a healthier spiritual life too. But they’ll need their church to be a place that helps them navigate these new waters because they'll be looking for an entrepreneurial church to meet them on the journey.
