The Experiment That Exposed What the Church Feels Like to Outsiders

A First-Time Church Visitor’s Journey and the Hidden Dynamics of Belonging and Exclusion

Image by mirsad sarajlic on iStock

I don’t know about you, but I have fallen in love with side hustling. I’m not alone. A recent survey found that around 45% of working Americans report having some kind of side gig outside their primary job. Like me, they enjoy earning a few extra dollars to supplement their income.

That is how I ended up becoming a mystery shopper.

A mystery shopper is a paid consumer hired to shop in stores and collect data. Think of a mystery shopper as an “undercover customer” sent in to observe, interact, and report on other customers and store employees. I had heard that a mystery shopper could earn a decent amount of money doing fairly simple tasks like checking if certain products are in stock or photographing store displays, for example. So, I found a mystery shopping app that had good reviews, downloaded it, signed myself up, and stepped into the world of undercover shopping. I’ve made over $1000 this year.

Not bad!

The whole mystery shopping phenomenon got me thinking. Could this concept be adapted to observe and review things outside the retail sphere? I wondered, for example, if I could…