When people ask me what my job is, I am not sure what to tell them.

They are probably just making polite conversation and don’t really want me to explain to them that I actually have 4 jobs and then talk them through in detail what I do in each.

It used to be a much more straight-forward question.

I spent 4 years working full time for a church. I did youth ministry. It was a straight-forward one-line answer that made sense to people.

I could have stuck with it. I could have had a life that made sense, all the while making my living my doing a really fun, worthwhile ministry.

But then God got involved.

He called me to move to Manchester and get involved in church planting.

My sense of Geography isn’t great, but even I knew that it would be difficult to hold down a youth ministry job in North London while church planting in Manchester, so I handed in my notice and joined the ranks of the unemployed.

This left me 4 choices:

Wait until somebody offered to pay me to church plant. Though it does happen sometimes, I suspect I would have been waiting a long time.

Find generous personal supporters or pitiful parents. I could probably have begged, stolen or borrowed enough money to live off, and I was actually given some money to help fund a church plant, but somehow this option seemed unsustainable.

Starve. I could pretend that rent and food and bills and stuff don’t exist. I could even spiritualise it by suggesting that because I was doing God’s work, he was obliged to sort it all out for me. This option didn’t really appeal.

Figure it out. Find a way to make some money while church planting. If a church planting movement is to pick up pace, then this will need to become the norm.

It seemed to me like the two ways of making money are getting jobs and starting businesses.

So I got 4 jobs and started a business.