A recent study by Lifeway Research, sponsored by Exponential and Church Planting Fellowship, offers an important insight into Hispanic church planting in the United States. The Hispanic Church Planting Survey 2025 found that 79% of Hispanic church planters have held jobs outside the church while planting.The primary reasons were to provide for their families, secure health insurance, and reduce the financial burden on the churches they were planting by supporting themselves through outside employment.
What should we do with this information? One response is to ignore it, continuing to treat the 21% as the standard and the other 79% as the exception. Another is to criticize it, assuming that bivocational ministry reflects less commitment, less faith, or a less effective model. But perhaps there is a better response: celebrate what God is doing, learn from it, and help expand the road.
The 79% reveals that most Hispanic church planting in the United States - and throughout much of Latin America, where financial resources are also limited - is being carried out by covocational leaders. This is not a story of ministry succeeding despite covocational leadership, but often because of it. The same survey found that Hispanic church plants are seeing approximately 30 new commitments to Christ for every 100 attendees - roughly three times the national average for Protestant churches. God is clearly at work through these faithful planters. Rather than asking them to fit models designed for different contexts, we should adopt a posture of learning and admire their willingness to sacrifice for the sake of the gospel. The apostle Paul himself considered it a privilege to support himself through his own labor so that nothing would hinder the advance of the gospel (1 Corinthians 9; Acts 20:33–35). I often describe covocational ministry as the path of those willing to do whatever it takes to see Jesus proclaimed and His kingdom made visible in every neighborhood.
But celebration alone is not enough. We also need to adapt our structures, training, and support systems. We need to expand the road so that many more leaders can play their part in God’s mission. That is the vision behind Covocacional: developing pathways for Latino covocational church planters to propel them forward in God’s mission to see gospel saturation across the US and Latin America.
