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Getting a job
In this article Peter Foster describes his story of going self employed to support himself while serving the Church plant in Dublin.
In July 2008 I moved with my wife Michelle (7 months pregnant with our son Jan) and daughter Ema (2yrs) from Kingston, London to be part of the church plant in Dublin. I was giving up paid employment with my church in Kingston and wasn’t too concerned about not securing work before we left as unemployment in Ireland was lower than in the U.K. I was also willing to sign up for temping agencies as soon as we arrived.
Our arrival in Dublin seemed to coincide with the start of the recession! Unemployment was on the rise and relevant job adverts rare. After four months I realised I was going to have to sign on for unemployment benefit. The benefit I was eligible for only lasted 12 months and during that time God began to work in my heart about the next steps.
People in the church here soon pointed out things I was good at, I.T. and playing guitar, and a few people suggested I could go self employed, but I would often say “going self employed is the last thing I’d want to do”. However two different families in the church approached me about giving their sons guitar lessons and two others gave me their computers to look at and fix - work I was happy to take on.
At the end of the 12 months unemployment benefit a job interview came up after meeting a family on a beach in Dublin. It was clear now that my season of unemployment was coming to an end either through getting this job or by going self employed. The interview was o.k. but on the way back from the interview I got a sense from God that the job wasn’t where my heart was or who he’d made me to be. In the following weeks I had two separate prophetic words that God was encouraging me to ask for my “heart’s desire”. Something similar was also spoken over me as I left Kingston.
As it was, after weeks of chasing, it appeared the job I had the interview for had been scrapped and both Michelle and I set our efforts on going self employed, Michelle as a Childminder, myself as the ‘Local Computer Expert’. We suddenly had to learn and utilise a whole new set of skills in advertising. For me it was both online and putting business cards through letter boxes. At first it was frustrating not to see immediate fruit from the advertising. The first response I had, the caller left their number for me to get back to them, however it turned out to be a prank call as the number they left was for Tallaght Garda Station (Police)! Anyway after a week or two work started to come in. Michelle got work as a childminder for a school age child for before and after school and during the holidays. For myself it seemed God was bringing the customers to me. Right at the beginning I had three different people chasing me down the street wanting me to come in and fix a computer problem. Word of mouth also spread and I even did some work for a former Olympic runner and World Champion.
I have now been self employed for 6 months and am still facing challenges of quiet days now and again but by the end of the month God always brings in the right amount of money we need. I also took two weeks out designing my own website and getting a car up and running to use for the business. These were two big steps of faith as they were things I needed to do but obviously came at a cost both in time and financially.
Another challenge I have found being self employed is the need to charge people for the service I provide. As a Christian, love provokes you to do a lot of things for people without charge and I’m often thinking that if I didn’t actually need to make money to pay the rent, bills and food I’d be doing this as an act of kindness.
Unemployment in Ireland is currently 14% (bearing in mind it was 5% at the beginning of 2008) and still rising. I get a lot of customers commending me for starting up on my own but the truth is I wouldn’t have done it without the prompting of the church here and the Holy Spirit.
Comments
By James Bell on 08/01/2011 at 12:10
I just wanted to say that this is really encouraging.
I’m about to move to London to join a church plant there, and its getting tricky at the moment. I have until the end of the month to move and still no job (or accommodation) have materialised.
Your article is a nice bit of encouragement at the right time. Thank you!
James