The deck of Daniel Silliman’s Christianity Today piece reads: “Evangelical organizations including Wycliffe, CT, and Lifeway are giving up their buildings and developing new models for remote work.” Here is a taste:
A lot of office workers are discovering that new rhythm. A recent study of commercial real estate found that nearly 20 percent of all office space in the United States was vacant at the end of 2023. Rates are even higher in the Midwest, with 22 percent vacant in Indianapolis, 23 percent in Chicago, and above 25 percent in Columbus and Cincinnati. The rate of new construction across the country is down more than half.
Some of this can be attributed to changes in employment rates. The total number of Americans with office jobs dropped last year from 36 million to 35.2 million. But by far the biggest change has been the increase of hybrid work and the growing acceptance of remote-first employment.
The shift is very visible at evangelical nonprofits. Christianity Today, for example, has increased its staff by more than 25 percent since 2021. Currently, however, less than half of its 86 employees live in Illinois, and only 22 live within easy driving distance of the ministry’s longtime headquarters in the western suburbs of Chicago.
“We discovered we were perfectly capable of thriving as a media ministry with a distributed team,” CT president and CEO Timothy Dalrymple said. “In fact, being distributed brought a lot of advantages. It expanded our relational networks and our engagement with different regions and cultures. We were no longer monolithically Midwestern. We could hire the best people we could find, regardless of location.”
Read the entire piece here.