Digital missionaries, should we charge for evangelization?

The phenomenon of digital evangelizers or Christian influencers is growing at a good pace and it is noticeable that it greatly influences the number of young people who “come out of the closet” naturally to show their faith, thus boosting the so-called Catholic turn. This phenomenon makes many Catholics happy and produces conversions and comfort to many believers. 

However, some people are beginning to worry that a portion of successful evangelists charge for the content they generate, especially if they already have a profession. This is a very reasonable concern, as everyone is reminded of those words of scripture, “what you have received freely, give freely”. 

The apostles and countless saints did not charge for their evangelizing activity. Faith is a gift, a gift, how can one charge for making it known? 

It should be said that this is not entirely true, since the Church (mainly the laity) support the clergy with their donations, and in Spain they also do so through the X on their income tax return. 

The priests receive as sustenance enough to live on and have their maintenance fairly assured (although we could also discuss whether it should not be something more, since many of them live with economic hardship to take care of their family burdens). Something similar happens with the members of religious orders, who seek their resources by asking for donations from the faithful and managing their patrimony. 

But Catholics naturally accept the cost of tuition in ecclesiastical faculties, because we understand that quality formation requires a solid financial structure. It is true that one could argue that evangelization is not the same as formation, but the truth is that this boundary is increasingly blurred in our days. 

What seems unreasonable to some

People understand perfectly well that if a successful evangelist gives a talk, he should be paid travel expenses, lodging and even reasonable compensation for the time invested. That is justice, not commercialism. “The laborer deserves his wages,” Scripture says. There are families, mortgages, gasoline and food to pay. 

The problem comes when some successful evangelizers ask for high amounts of money to come to a parish, a school, a university or an association to give a talk. In that case, some people shake their heads, are scandalized or reproach the speakers for asking for a lot of money to help people come closer to God. 

For a long time I thought this way, but a year ago I changed my mind completely. I think digital evangelizers or Catholic missionaries are truly successful do very well to ask for high amounts of money if “the market” of Catholic listeners is willing to pay for it, that is, if the content they offer is really good.

Just as a Catholic pays €10 to watch a movie at the cinema that entertains him for two hours, we should not be surprised if another person asks for €2,000 to give a lecture to 300 people. The question is not whether that is too much or too little money for a person for a job that takes him a few hours, the question is whether the value of his intervention is really good. 

How much is really good content worth?

How much should be worth a session that motivates a person to read the entire Bible because he or she has finally understood how important it is? And one that convinces young people about the convenience of not having sex before marriage? And one that explains the Mass so well that one begins to attend it daily? How much should be worth a conference that gets you excited to evangelize your friends and colleagues? And if it makes you deepen your prayer life or devotion to Our Lady?

Well, I think that if the session is really good, leaves a mark, motivates, etc., any Catholic would gladly pay 10 € to get such a positive good for his life and faith.

I insist: the issue is not the amount that attendees or organizers pay for a conference, the issue is whether that money compensates for the quality of the content. 

What is the life of a successful evangelizer like?

I understand that in an ecclesial context many people do things for free. It is logical that this is so, because there is a strong sense of mission and the least important thing is to obtain a personal benefit. This has been the norm among priests and religious, among other things because they usually have what they need to live. 

Of course, many lay people also help altruistically in their parishes, and even in recent times many couples with young children show great generosity by serving in Emmaus or Married Love retreats.

With all this in mind, one may wonder why a few people ask for a lot of money for evangelism. And the answer is better understood if one looks at things from the point of view of the successful evangelizer. These people start by going to parishes or groups close to their context, they do it gladly and without charge. 

However, since they do exceptionally well, they get two or three new ones out of every session they give. And of course, all the places they are invited to are great places, with good people willing to be trained, people hungry to improve their Christian life, etc. How can they try to charge for spreading the good? 

When one gives one or two sessions a month, without having to make long trips or nights away from home, the situation is reasonable, but when one receives more than 10 requests a month, one has to choose between several options. 

The first option is to say no to 80 % of the requests (something that neither those who invite them nor the guest himself usually like, since he loses a good opportunity to evangelize); the second option is to say yes to almost everything and end up exhausted in a few months, since it is not possible to endure such a rhythm of life; the third possibility is to try to find a balance between the effort made and the economic compensation received. 

Where do successful evangelists pull?

I have been closely following the activity of many digital evangelizers for two years and I have had the opportunity to meet about twenty of them in Spain. When you talk to lay people about how they make a living, you realize that they all face the same dilemma: say no to most of the invitations they receive, say yes to many things and end up exhausted, or start to professionalize their evangelizing work. 

This last option is the most risky for them and, moreover, in two ways. In the first place, they receive rejection and severe judgment from many believers, who do not understand that they charge large sums for their talks. 

Secondly, they face the vertigo of embarking on an entrepreneurial venture, something that is not in the general mentality of Spaniards, many of whom are accustomed to wanting a life as a civil servant and a secure job. And the fact is that living as a freelancer is neither fashionable nor safe, but yes, let others take the risk, it is their moral obligation... 

Numbers at a glance

Let's start by looking at the numbers. Let's take a hypothetical case. Someone asks for €1,000 for giving a session. No doubt it is a lot of money if we compare it with the minimum or average salary. Now, if that person gives 5 lectures a month, these would be the real numbers. 

With a total turnover of €5,000, the reality is that his pocket receives little more than half of what the clients pay, as they must subtract VAT, personal income tax and the self-employed fee. In the end, after this parade of taxes, the real net salary is approximately €2,800; in other words, for each €1,000 conference, the speaker receives €560 and the State €440. And this without forgetting that one would not be entitled to unemployment or to a sick leave or accident... 

If the lecturer had another job and received the lectures as a supplement to his salary, the situation would not be much better either, since out of the 5,000 € invoiced, he would be left with about 2,400 € clean, since the State would keep 52 %. It is true that this amount would be added to his salary, but it is also true that he would have a pretty intense life, as he would have to travel several times a month and spend nights away from home, making his pace of life unenviable.

So, if one takes into account all the economic variables, can it be said that asking for 1000 € is an exorbitant or immoral amount? Is it so big that it is enough to make one's father live or rather it is not crazy at all if one has to pay a mortgage, schools, alimony, etc? 

The lay evangelizer does not have the «safety net» of an institution (such as a diocese or congregation), but assumes the enormous personal risk. Think of what happens if you have an accident at any time, you don't even have sick pay.

Getting rich is not easy, even if it seems so

Suppose a successful evangelist decided to devote himself entirely to evangelism and gave two or three lectures a week, generating (apparently) a tasty €10,000 in monthly income. Of course, he would have to spend two or three nights a week away from home, with the consequent wear and tear on the family, which would mean that his spouse would probably not be able to work in order to take care of the children and the household adequately.

Do we really think that a person who does something very difficult to do gets paid exorbitantly if he earns 6,000 euros (after taxes) a month to pay all his family's bills? Will he finish paying his mortgage before he is 50 years old with that income? Will he live in conspicuous wealth? Will he buy high-end cars or go to great restaurants?

Let's think about it slowly, in any area of society, those who provide services that almost no one knows how to offer earn enough money to be comfortably situated in life in little more than 5 or 10 years. 

However, we want to burn out successful evangelizers in a few months by psychologically crushing them, telling them that they have to live poorly and with great uncertainty for the future. 

If one thinks about it, almost all successful evangelizers are so because they have great personal qualities, which are well recognized and remunerated outside the scope of the Church, that is, many of them are people who would earn a lot of money working in things far from the faith.

Do we really want to disincentivize those who can best evangelize to work on other things? After two decades of pondering how to reach young people or evangelize the digital continent, do we want the best players not to play the game? Isn't this doing the devil a great favor?

What I learned in a Catholic school

For 18 years I taught philosophy at a Catholic school in Madrid. It was undoubtedly a great school, both academically and in its spiritual formation (as an example, I taught about 25 students who later went to the seminary). 

And yet, three years ago I decided to leave, because I realized that very few students from that school were pursuing professional careers that had a high social impact. The vast majority became lawyers, engineers, consultants or bankers (worthy professions where good people are needed). 

The bad news is that almost none of them pursued humanistic careers or were engaged in professions that had an impact on the shaping of society: teachers, journalists, politicians, writers, actors, film producers, etc. 

If the majority of bright students who study in Catholic schools do not choose professions that influence the shape of society for fear of economic and social risk, it will be difficult to change society. 

If we train the best to aspire only to traditional sectors for fear of precariousness, we are ceding the spaces of cultural influence without even playing the game. The professionalization of the evangelizer allows Catholic talent to compete in the first division of opinion creation.

The bad thing is that now I find myself with something even worse, when I see how the very few successful evangelists who risk trying to live giving much needed messages to our society, are criticized by those who should support them.

For the sake of discretion I will not name names, but I was very sad to see that in the last few months two successful evangelizers have decided to return to the corporate world, greatly reducing the contribution they can make to the Christian cause. They have left because they were tired of being suspected of profiting too much from evangelization and will now devote a very small part of their time to evangelization. 

Why we should pay a lot and gladly

While it is not immoral in itself to charge a lot for competent work that people freely pay for, there are other reasons why it is in the best interest of Catholics to pay for good training.

If one looks at what has happened in the United States in the area of digital evangelization, one will realize that thanks to the monthly subscription of Catholic apps such as Hallow, Ascension Press, Word on fire, Formed, Catholic match or Exodus 90, millions of people are improving their formation, increasing their Christian practice or having streaming services with adapted movies. 

There are also numerous Catholic congresses for which a good entrance fee is paid and which have important sponsors for their organization.

But Spain is a country accustomed to piracy, to working in B, to having a very little entrepreneurial mentality, which tends to dangerously confuse the gratuity of the Gospel with the right to ‘everything for free’. It costs us horrors to understand that excellence requires investment and that talent, if it is not supported by professional structures, ends up suffocated by mediocre voluntarism. 

We have a sort of collective allergy to success in business and to rewarding outstanding performance. Charging above the average is labeled as greed, preventing the birth of projects with the necessary solidity to last beyond the enthusiasm of the first day.

We have a historical complex that makes us look at economic profit with constant moral suspicion. We prefer small, poorly financed projects that “don't look like a business” to real professionalization, forgetting that lack of resources is often the perfect excuse for our lack of ambition and commitment to the truth.

We are so allergic to ambitious and resource-driven speeches that not even successful evangelists will dare to share this article on their social networks. And I'm fine with them not doing so, they run the risk of being crushed by “friendly fire”. 

Excuses for not paying

Leaving aside that most successful evangelists have a lot of free content in networks, podcasts and videos on Youtube, freely accessible to anyone who wants it, I think there are often two excuses why we ask digital evangelists to charge little. 

In Christian communities of all kinds, we carry with us an explosive mixture of logistical laziness and moral complex. We find it horrendously difficult to get out of our comfort zone to seek sponsorships or manage tickets, and we disguise this lack of initiative with a supposed decorum. 

In the end, we panic to ‘pass the hat’ because we confuse humility with the shame it gives us, which condemns us to a self-satisfied mediocrity for not daring to ask for what a job well done deserves.

The fact, rather, is that many small groups in the Church are happy to take advantage of the successful evangelist to fill their halls at the expense of the disproportionate effort of the other party.

In many communities they want the successful evangelizer to speak to 30 people for 200 €, but when it is suggested to join forces by inviting people from the four parishes in the area, so that the speaker can charge what he deserves, then the refusals appear. It is easier to complain about the lack of commitment of others than to get down to work to achieve arduous objectives. 

The fact that last January a parish in Algete and Alpha organized “Llamados”, a formation and worship event that gathered thousands of people in a large pavilion in Madrid, is a good example of what you can do if you complicate your life.

The risks of professionalizing evangelization

Even if one is in favor of people making a living from evangelization, it does not mean that there are no serious risks that must be constantly fought against. 

The risk of lack of inner life. When the digital evangelizer neglects his interior life, the mission ceases to be an overflow of grace and becomes a production of content. What should be prayer becomes a script, and the silence necessary to listen to God is devoured by the constant noise of activity. In this scenario, the evangelizer does not transmit a Life, but distributes an emotionally attractive but spiritually sterile product.

The risk of lack of training. Even if one tries to communicate the truth that liberates, poor formation can lead many people into error. The danger is that the doctrine becomes an easy slogan and three nice ideas without much depth. Lacking intellectual and magisterial depth, the mission ceases to be a solid catechesis.

That the logic of the market corrupts the logic of evangelization. If the evangelist does not have the right intentions in his activity, he will become obsessed with metrics, links, discount codes. It is no longer about proclaiming Christ, the important thing now is to manage an audience. What used to be a mission becomes a professional career, or what used to be a testimony becomes a personal brand. When you are an evangelizer by profession you run the risk of the mission becoming a market. We all know that the market is very dangerous and that it plays with its own laws such as loyalty, scaling, monetization, differentiation and engagement. 

These risks and many others are real, but not facing them out of fear is not a Christian attitude either. Successful evangelizers will have to be helped to be authentically Christian, profound and not just follow the logic of the market, but to encourage them to give up their work out of fear of failure presupposes that God's grace cannot help them in their task. 

I hope there are many successful evangelists, in the digital world and in the real world. May many of them become wealthy and have money coming out of their ears. Then they can be like Lazarus, one of Jesus' best friends, and lay their money at the feet of the Lord's cause.