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The Guilt Factor: Overcoming Shame About Making Money in Ministry

general tentmaking Jun 27, 2025

Picture this: You're at a church gathering, and someone asks what you do for work. You mention your business or side hustle, and immediately feel the need to justify it. "Well, I'm really called to ministry, but I just do this to pay the bills..." Sound familiar?

If you've ever felt guilty about making money while in ministry, you're not alone. It's one of the biggest barriers I see holding back tentmaking pastors and Christian leaders. But here's the thing - this guilt isn't coming from God.

Where Does This Shame Come From?

Most of this guilt stems from a misunderstanding that's been passed down through church culture for generations. Somewhere along the way, we bought into the lie that there's a hierarchy of callings - with "full-time ministry" at the top and everything else as a necessary evil.

We've created a false dichotomy between "sacred" and "secular" work. But look at the biblical tentmakers we talked about in our last newsletter. Paul didn't apologize for making tents. He...

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How I Got Started in Travel Hacking (and Unlocked $40,000+ in Free Travel!)

travel hacking Jun 20, 2025

Ministry is incredibly rewarding, but let's be honest about the financial reality many pastors face. Recent research shows that one-third of pastors don't even use all their vacation days, often due to financial constraints rather than lack of time. Today's guest post comes from Tim Walker, a pastor who discovered how travel hacking transformed not just his family's ability to travel, but became a legitimate tentmaking opportunity. His story proves that with the right strategy, ministry leaders can break free from the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle and create the margin they need for rest, family time, and ministry effectiveness. Whether you're skeptical about travel hacking or wondering if it's actually legitimate, Tim's transparent journey from financial struggle to earning over 3.5 million points will give you the real story. Over to Tim ...


For many years in ministry, my family barely made enough money to live on, and our paycheck-to-paycheck life meant that we never made enough mon...

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The Secret Funding Model Behind the Early Church

general tentmaking Jun 13, 2025

I've been diving deep into some fascinating research about how ministry was funded for the early church lately, and I stumbled across something that completely shifted my perspective on tentmaking ministry. It's the concept of "Kingdom Investors" - and honestly, it's got me thinking about how we've been approaching this whole thing.

The Biblical Blueprint for Kingdom Investment

You know how we always talk about Paul making tents? Well, that's just the tip of the iceberg. The early church was actually powered by an incredible network of Kingdom Investors - people who understood that their resources weren't just for personal gain, but for advancing God's kingdom.

Take Lydia, for instance. She was a successful merchant dealing in purple cloth (think luxury goods of her day). But when she encountered Paul's message, she didn't just get baptized and call it a day. She immediately opened her home, provided hospitality, and essentially became the financial backbone for the church in Philip...

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A 6 Month House Hacking Update

house hacking Jun 06, 2025

I recently shared a 6 month update on Travel Hacking and wanted to continue that theme today by sharing a 6 month House Hacking update.

We haven’t added an Airbnb to this property yet, although we’re still considering ideas.

Here’s some of what we’ve been working on in the last 6 months:

  • We recently submitted a protest for our property taxes this year which I encourage people to do each year. Initially when I protested, they didn’t offer me any reduction in value. As a result, I appealed to the board. While waiting on hold for a board hearing, another appraiser jumped on the call and was ready to negotiate. They initially offered $42,000 off the current assessed value. I negotiated them to $59,000 off. This resulted in a tax assessed value even less than the one from last year. I was pumped!
  • We’ve done some updating to our home & we believe the value has gone up significantly. We’re just over 2 years in, so we’re able to flip for tax free profit if we want, but we think w
  • ...
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A 6 Month Travel Hacking Update

travel hacking May 30, 2025

It’s been 6 months since I’ve given an update on my tentmaking adventures, so I wanted to start with an update on Travel Hacking.

I’ve planned some pretty cool trips over the past 6 months & have earned just over 1.1 million new points & miles in the process.

I’m earning most of these points by completing a minimum spend for welcome bonuses on new cards. Instead of optimizing our usage of our cards for various categories like groceries, restaurants, travel, etc, we are typically trying to work on hitting the minimum spend for a new welcome bonus. This is by far the best way to earn the greatest number of points in the shortest amount of time.

Here are the bonuses we’ve worked on since the last update:

  • American Express Business Gold - 200,000 points
  • American Express Business Platinum - 250,000 points
  • Capital One Business Spark (x2) - $4,000 or 400,000 points
  • Citi AA Executive - 70,000 points
  • IHG Business - 200,000 points

We planned the following trips (u

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The Surprising Impact of Tentmaking Ministry

general tentmaking May 23, 2025

When the Apostle Paul made tents to support his ministry, he established a powerful model that's increasingly relevant today.

As someone who leads both a local church and a wider movement of 800 churches, while also running an online education business, I've discovered that tentmaking ministry offers some pretty amazing benefits that go way beyond just making extra money.

Here's what this journey has taught me about bi-vocational ministry in today's world.

1. Global Ministry Encouragement

Let me be really honest - when God spoke to me about training 1,000 church planters worldwide, I had no idea how this would play out. I didn't want to be the guy calling people to step up, knowing that few would become salaried staff, but not having walked that journey myself. In nations where churches simply can't afford paid staff, where people can barely survive themselves, my journey has opened up incredible conversations. It's amazing to see church planters' eyes light up when they realize

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A New Partnership

general tentmaking May 16, 2025

It's such an honor to be joining Chris in shaping tentmakingpastors.com!

I'm Simon Holley. I lead King's Arms Church in Bedford, UK, and oversee the Catalyst Network of 800+ churches across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

Catalyst are in an exciting season, called by God to train 1,000 church planters. These will take many forms - traditional churches, house churches, DMM-style churches, and even 'under-a-tree churches' (as many of our African congregations are!).

Here's the reality: most of these future leaders will need to be tentmakers. The places and models they're called to make this inevitable. And I knew I couldn't be the guy calling others to do something I wasn't willing to do myself.

But I faced a major obstacle - I didn't believe it was possible to effectively combine ministry AND tentmaking! Sure, I'd run several 'hobby businesses' in my spare time. The most successful reached $30k annual turnover, which wasn't bad for a few hours a week, but it wasn't en

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Back from a Break

general tentmaking May 08, 2025

I’m back!

Actually, we’re back!

I took a 6 month break from writing these weekly newsletters & I’m going to resume again with help from my friend Simon Holley, a fellow pastor & tentmaker in the UK. Check out his bio on the Tentmaking Pastors site here. 

Simon oversees a network of churches across Europe, Africa & the Middle East. As a tentmaker, his focus has been on helping people use their skills, passion & expertise to develop online coaching programs. He’ll tell you more about this in future newsletters.

My vision with Tentmaking Pastors has been to help pastors, missionaries & Christian leaders supplement or replace their income with tentmaking like the Apostle Paul.

Simon shares that vision & adds an additional component of helping leaders “around the world,” not just in the US where I’ve been a tentmaker. Our plan is to continue to help leaders in developed countries, but we also want to write & develop resources to help leaders in the developing world as well.

We’ll

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Is College Hackable? Part 2

life hacking Nov 21, 2024

In the first email of this series, I shared a number of ways to “hack” a college education to reduce the price.

I invited newsletter subscribers to share any additional “hacks” they’ve used.

One of my good friends and fellow pastor at our church, John Bradshaw, responded back with some other great “hacks” that his family used to put their kids through college.

He shared 3 additional “hacks” and I’m going to quote him here:

  1. Stay at home - Don’t go to UT Austin (in the case of someone whose family lives in Lubbock). Stay in Lubbock, go to Tech, and live at home (one of my kids did this). And your community college point from the last newsletter makes this even better. Go to South Plains Community College (again using Lubbock as the example) for two years and then go to Tech.
  1. Apply for every scholarship available (there are a ton) - When one of my daughters said she wanted to go to Hardin Simmons (a private school) we said, “That’s great but we can’t pay for it and we don’t...
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The Tax Benefits of a Donor-Advised Fund

life hacking Nov 14, 2024

I was listening to a podcast last week and the host was talking about the benefits of using a donor-advised fund for your charitable giving.

I had heard of these before but wasn’t quite sure how they worked.

I started doing more research and quickly became convinced that I needed to add this tool to my financial life. I just set mine up this past week.

Let me share with you a high-level overview of what these are and how they might benefit you.

What is a Donor Advised Fund?

Let me quote Fidelity Charitable:

A donor-advised fund, or DAF, is like a charitable investment account for the sole purpose of supporting charitable organizations you care about. When you contribute cash, securities, or other assets to a donor-advised fund at a public charity… you are generally eligible to take an immediate tax deduction. Then those funds can be invested for tax-free growth, and you can recommend grants to any eligible IRS-qualified public charity.

This definition gives at least two of t

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