When Are You Going to Get a Real Job?
Exploring 21st Century Indie Christianity
There’s a certain establishment snobbery that tends to hover around deconstructors, and I want to address a particular flavour of it—the kind that sounds like a concerned parent asking when their child is going to get a “real” job. It’s similar in tone to an essay I wrote a while back called Concerned Cups of Coffee, but this is even more foundational. It’s about survival—specifically, the belief that we can’t live the Christian life without the institutional church. Let’s get into it.
When Are You Going to Get a Real Job?
Exploring 21st Century Indie Christianity
by Daniel L. Bacon
There’s a question every independent artist hears at least once in their life. It usually comes from a well-meaning relative, a church elder, or someone who hasn’t quite grasped that making something true is already a kind of holy labor.
“When are you going to get a real job?”
In Evangelicalism, deconstructors hear the same question—only it’s spiritual. “When are you coming back to church?” “When are you going to stop wandering?” “When are you going to settle down and use your gifts for the Kingdom again?”
But what if we’ve misunderstood what real work is?
The Worship Industry vs. the Indie Artist
Contemporary Christian Music used to be full of songs about life—faith, doubt, relationships, struggle. Rich Mullins, Jennifer Knapp, even early Switchfoot wrote songs that resonated with the raw, unsanitised texture of human experience. But then something happened. Christian music became “Christian Worship.” Suddenly, anything that wasn’t vertically oriented—suitable for Sunday morning—was suspect.
Artists who chose to sing about horizontal life—our everyday struggles, hopes, and losses—were said to have “gone mainstream.” But in reality, many had simply refused to conform to the demands of the Evangelical Industrial Complex. They hadn’t sold out their faith; they had sold out of the system. And it cost them.
In the same way, spiritual deconstructors are often seen as “going secular,” or abandoning their faith, when really they’re stepping outside the ecclesial studio system. They’re producing something more independent, more experimental, and yes, more personal.
We are not leaving the spiritual life—we are taking it back from its marketeers.
Contractors, Not Congregants
Institutional religion often tells a single story: belong here, submit here, serve here. Anything outside is suspect. But those who deconstruct often find themselves called to a different kind of work—not one of rebellion, but of construction without permits.
We become spiritual contractors—building without the church’s blueprints. The result might not be a steeple, but it might be a home, a studio, a shelter, or a garden. Sometimes it’s not impressive, but it’s indwelt. It’s inhabited by the same Spirit that was once monopolized by the sanctuary.
And just like indie musicians, deconstructors tend to work small. Personal. Handcrafted. Not for stadiums, not for streaming algorithms, not for metrics—but for the sacred quiet of being real. Not because we don’t believe, but because we can’t fake it anymore.
The System and Its Unspoken Exclusivity Clause
Evangelicalism has an unspoken exclusivity clause: go through us, or not at all. Want to be called a Christian? Attend, submit, tithe, conform. Sing the right songs, vote the right way, participate in the machine. Otherwise, you’re “wandering,” “rebelling,” or “backsliding.”
But this isn't spiritual formation. It's market control. It’s a theological trademark.
Like the CCM artists who stopped writing “worship” and started writing truth, many deconstructors are simply refusing to give their hearts to a business model. We’ve realized that some of the most powerful spiritual experiences happen outside the church walls—in grocery stores, in therapy offices, in AA meetings, in quiet walks through ordinary pain.
We are not lost. We’re just unsigned.
The Real Job
When people ask, “When are you going to get a real job?” what they’re often asking is: “When are you going to re-enter a system I understand?” But the real job was never making people comfortable.
The real job is being true. Tending the soul. Questioning what must be questioned. Loving what deserves to be loved. Living a life that is inhabited, not just performed.
So no, we might not have 401(k)s or worship albums anymore. We might not have pulpits or platforms. But we have found the sacred in strange places. We have learned that God is not a brand, and faith is not a job title.
We are independent now. And the work is real.
No One Said Anything About Competing with the Market
Before we get too far into the weeds, let’s get something straight: we never said we were trying to compete with the market. We’re not building a better church brand, or a cooler theology, or a more palatable gospel. We’re not interested in out-marketing the machine. We're not interested in being the next big thing.
But Evangelicalism always assumes competition. It can’t imagine existence without dominance—without market share. Which is why the second someone steps outside its ecosystem, the assumption is that they’re building a rival product. A knockoff faith. A boutique spirituality.
But many of us didn’t leave because we wanted to “disrupt” church. We left because it had already stopped being about people.
Go ahead—protest vehemently. Say, “No, that’s unfair. The church is all about people.” But ask yourself: When you think about church, who are you thinking about?
Not individual faces. Not names. A demographic. A target audience. A market niche. An age group. A giving tier. A volunteer pool. The Next Generation. The Unchurched. The Dechurched. The Returners. The Seekers. The Influencers.
We are thinking about people in categories, not people in pain.
The moment church becomes a system that needs people to stay afloat, it stops loving them. It starts calculating. Optimizing. Monetizing. It doesn’t say, “Who are you, really?” It says, “What can you contribute to our mission?” And ironically, the “mission” becomes selling Jesus to the very people who already wanted to know Him—but are now reduced to leads in a pipeline.
So no, we’re not trying to compete. We’re just trying to breathe again.
We are not inventing a new gospel. We are re-entering our lives.
We are not abandoning community. We are resisting commodification.
We are not planting churches. We are planting ourselves—rooting into reality, where God is not a product and people are not buyers.
The Freedom of Not Selling Anything
Maybe the most freeing moment of this whole journey wasn’t leaving church. It wasn’t discovering new theology, or surviving the disorientation, or even reclaiming my voice.
It was realizing I didn’t have to sell my brand of Christianity anymore.
I could be good. I could be kind. I could be helpful. And none of it is a hook to sell Jesus.
That may sound simple, but if you’ve lived inside the Evangelical Industrial Complex, you know how deep that shift runs. Because we were trained—subtly, persistently—to make everything we do strategic. Every relationship, every kind act, every moment of listening—it was all meant to lead somewhere. Somewhere spiritual. Somewhere convertible.
We loved people, but we always hoped it would count for something, as if loving them wasn’t enough. “Planting seeds.” “Being a witness.” “Winning the lost.” It was less about being with someone and more about moving them—one more step toward the sale.
But now, something has changed.
Now I can hold space for someone’s pain without silently hoping they’ll ask me about Jesus.
Now I can help a neighbour without feeling like I failed if I didn’t pray out loud at the end.
Now I can say, “I’m with you,” and mean exactly that—not “I’m with you until you believe what I do.”
This isn’t moral laziness. This is moral clarity. It’s love without an agenda. It’s service without strategy. It’s kindness that exists because kindness is good, not because it’s a means to an end.
And ironically, this is where Jesus actually starts to show up again. Not in the elevator pitch. Not in the strategy. Not in the platform. But in the presence.
He was never a product. We just made Him one.
And now that we’ve stopped selling Him, we’re finally starting to see Him again—unexpected, unbranded, unbothered by our departure from the showroom floor.
Conclusion: What We Gained
We were the employees of the month.
The salesmen and saleswomen of the gospel.
The pride of the company.
The children raised in ideal Christian homes.
We memorized the scripts. We mastered the tone. We led worship, led small groups, led altar calls. We hit our numbers. We met our metrics. We were everything the system wanted us to be.
Until, like Paul on the Damascus road, we were struck blind.
Not by rebellion. Not by resentment.
But by God’s voice.
A voice that didn’t come from a stage. Or a sermon. Or a study guide.
A voice that said, “You are mine. But this machine is not.”
So we stumbled. We wandered. We left the showroom floor and walked into the unknown, still haunted by the guilt of leaving—still unsure if we were losing everything that mattered.
And then, along the way, came Ananias-types. Faithful servants of God who didn’t ask us to return, but helped us see. They didn’t offer answers—they offered presence. And in that presence, our eyes began to open.
What we saw wasn’t a brand. It wasn’t a job.
It wasn’t a platform, a movement, or a ministry.
It was Christ.
Not the one we sold.
The one we missed.
The one who walks dusty roads with nobodies.
The one who breaks bread with the unbranded.
The one who doesn’t need to be marketed to be revealed.
And now, like Paul, we count all of it as loss.
Not bitterly. Not triumphantly. Just truthfully.
Because what we’ve gained isn’t a better position in the company.
We’ve gained a person.
Not a mascot.
Not a message.
A presence.
And that’s not something you can put on a billboard.