2 years and 9 months later, I asked for the last reduction all the way down to $0.
I was off the payroll and it was a dream come true!
You’re probably thinking, “Are you crazy?”
Haha. Yes, a little.
Our church was doing fine financially during those years. The elders were glad to continue paying me full-time. Other staff continued to get paid full-time.
But, in the Feb 2017 email, I gave the elders 2 reasons I wanted to come off the payroll. It was a long e-mail, but I’ll share a little of what I wrote to them here:
- “We are beginning to cast the vision for ordinary men & women to start making disciples & planting churches themselves. You heard me talking about this in our Meltdown series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) & you also saw this vision that I shared with our staff for planting 50 churches in 2017! If we want to reach our country, there's no doubt that we need to commission all believers to make disciples & plant churches & not just paid pastors. We need businessmen thinking they can make disciples & plant churches & they don't have to quit their jobs & go into ministry to do it… As I begin to cast the vision to businessmen in our church to see themselves as disciple-makers & church planters, I want to lead the way. I don't want them to think they have to be paid by a church, like me, to do those things.”
- “Once I started processing the The Great Evangelical Recession book, and I saw the giving trends in the American church, I was disturbed by how much money it's taking us to do ministry, how much money is spent on salaries, and how a lot of that could go away in the next 10-30 years. If our church is wise, we will start preparing for that now. Some of us may need to be bi-vocational in the future. And I don't like asking people to do things I'm not doing myself. I like to lead the way for my team. If in a great recession someone's salary eventually needs to be cut, I want mine to be cut first.”
That’s the “why” I wanted to come off the payroll, here’s the “how.”
In 2017, we flipped 6 houses.
In 2018, we flipped 14 houses.
In 2019, we flipped 46 houses.
I was off the payroll by the end of 2019.
And I remained in full-time ministry through those years & continue in full-time ministry to this day.
You may be thinking, “How in the world did you flip that many houses while in full-time ministry?”
Answer: It’s the “Hacking” part of Flip Hacking.
The “hack” was that by 2018 I had hired a team to flip the houses for me & I just ran the business in 2-3 hours each week on the side.
And I’ve been doing it ever since.
Our team now flips houses in 3 major markets and, since 2020, I’ve trained many pastors, missionaries & Christian leaders how to also do this to supplement or fully replace their ministry income.
Some are making an extra $20,000 per year.
Some are making an extra $60,000 per year.
Some are making $100,000+ per year and have come completely off the church/ministry payroll, like I was able to do.
I love that my salary at the church every year now goes back into the ministry. That had been a dream of mine since the early days of our church.
And I love that I’m able to show business people how they can make disciples & plant churches without being paid by a church or ministry.
This is the key to multiplication — empowering all believers to get involved!
