Pastor + Author
Did you know that there’s a YouVersion Bible Reading Plan to go along with my newest book?
It’s seven days long and a great way to dig deeper and reflect on the 7 biblical truths that are on the flip side of the 7 lies that the world is shouting at us.
I want to invite you to start this reading plan today, and perhaps you can invite a few friends to join you while you’re at it!
Click here to get started.
But as I’ve been sharing over the past few weeks, it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. The seven lies of the gig economy all hold a critical role in the way that you see yourself, but they are not the way to see yourself because they all come up short.
They’re incomplete precisely because they’re half-truths. As a result, there are unintended consequences behind each and every one of them.
This is why you can’t let any of these lies become the primary lens through which you view yourself, and also why we’re so particularly vulnerable to these lies.
It’s tiring.
It’s a grind and a hustle just to try and keep up. And it’s actually a fool’s game because you will never feel caught up.
[Read more…] about A New (or Ancient) Way of Addressing the Lies of our Culture
It’s become a status symbol and the way to define ourselves.
The same is true with the rest of the lies of the gig economy that I breakdown in my new book, You Are What You Do: And Six Other Lies about Work, Life, and Love.
Our sense of meaning and significance have become tied to our experiences, our relationships, our knowledge, our stuff, our children and our past. However, the thing with each of these lies is that they all have unintended consequences.
(The following is an excerpt from the Introduction of my newest book, You Are What You Do: And Six Other Lies about Work, Life, and Love)
Just consider how commonplace cauliflower, podcasting, and Amazon Prime have become—and how quickly it’s happened.
Yet recently, you’ve probably tried (or heard of) cauliflower rice, cauliflower pizza crust, cauliflower buffalo wings, or cauliflower tots. And if you haven’t, your friends have. Now just to give you a sense of its meteoric rise, in a short span of three years, Green Giant has gone from harvesting five to thirty acres of cauliflower each week. That’s 100,000 heads of cauliflower every single day! And they are just one of the many companies that have hopped on the cauliflower bandwagon.
When I started listening to podcasts in 2008, it was a multistep process that required a computer. Today, however, with the ubiquity of smartphones, listening to podcasts has become so commonplace and normal that the question has shifted from “Have you heard of podcasts?” to “Which podcasts do you listen to?” In fact, in the last five years, close to half of all Americans and Canadians tuned into their first podcast episode.
Now that more than half of all American households are subscribing members, isn’t it odd to meet someone who doesn’t have it? It’s definitely become the exception, rather than the norm.
[Read more…] about Cauliflower, Podcasting, and Amazon Prime
For example, working a steady nine-to-five job isn’t normal anymore. And waiting until you’re retired to explore the world, try new experiences, eat delicious food and enjoy life isn’t normal either—if retirement is even a thing anymore.
What’s now “normal” is this desire that we all have for freedom and flexibility, which conveniently is exactly what the gig economy promises.
And contrary to common belief, this is not just something that affects those in their 20s and 30s. According to the research, there are people in every generation who have side hustles because this desire for freedom and flexibility has become our new oxygen. It’s the air we breathe and the water we drink. In fact, it’s become so commonplace that it’s no longer the exception—and it’s affecting everything and everyone.
[Read more…] about The New “Normal” and Why It Matters