Tentmaking Tips

A few weeks ago, I wrote a newsletter about my daughter graduating quickly from college.

A pastor I know had been worried for months.

He wanted to start building income outside his role, but he was dreading one conversation. Bringing it to his elders (the senior church leadership team for those of you from other traditions!)

He'd run every version of it in his head. The awkward silence. The raised eyebrow. The question about whether his heart was still in the church.

Eventually, after we chatted, he just did it.

It went nothing like he'd imagined. His leadership team listened, asked good questions, and were genuinely supportive. Not reluctant permission, actual support. They understood the pressure he'd been carrying, and they wanted to see it lifted.

Together they even worked out how to communicate it well to the wider church, so nobody would misread it or feel blindsided.

He told me afterward that the fear had been worse than the reality by a long way.

That's often how it goes. We assume the people around us will see this as a compromise before we've even given th...

More and more pastors are discovering something that sounds backwards at first.

Tentmaking doesn't make you a worse pastor. It can actually make you a better one.

Here's why.

- It makes you more relatable. Your church stops seeing you as someone floating above the ordinary pressures of work, money and family. They see someone doing ministry and juggling the same tensions they juggle. That closes a gap that most of us pastors are unaware of.

- It forces you to build team. You can't carry everything as you used to, so you learn to delegate, trust others, and let go of control. That's a skill most pastors need anyway, tentmaking just makes it non-negotiable!

- It relieves financial pressure. Pastoral ministry is stressful enough without family money worries (either for now or for the future) sitting underneath your mindset. Take that weight off and you often find you have more, not less, to give your congregation.

- It gives you fresh material. Real work in the real world hands you ...

I wrote a few years ago talking about whether or not college is “hackable.”

My wife walked into the post office this week and said, “I’d like to buy 1,000 stamps.”

A while back I was trying to do three things at once.

Preaching training for pastors. Helping people build online coaching programmes. Helping others write their first book.

All three came from real experience. I'd done all three myself. And none of them were landing.

I'd mention the preaching training to one person, the coaching programme build to another, book coaching to whoever asked what I actually did. Nobody quite knew what I was for. If I'm honest, some weeks I didn't either.

So I sat down and picked one. Just helping professionals and pastors get their first coaching offer built and launched, nothing else for a season.

Within weeks people started saying yes. Not because I'd got better at any of it. It was the same knowledge and experience I'd always had. It's because for the first time, people could see clearly what I was actually for.

That's usually how clarity works. It's not adding more, it's taking away until one thing is left standing.

If you're circling a few diff...

Paul made tents.

Not before he was called. Not instead of his calling. Alongside it, for a good chunk of his ministry.

He didn't see it as a compromise. He didn't feel the need to explain it away. He worked with his hands so the gospel could go where it needed to go, without him being a burden to the churches he was planting.

We've turned that into something he'd probably find strange. Somewhere along the way "sacred" and "secular" got split into two boxes, and making money outside the pulpit landed in the wrong one.

But Paul wasn't funding a distraction. He was funding the mission.

If you've ever felt a flicker of guilt at the idea of earning outside your ministry role, that's worth sitting with for a second. Where did that come from? Is it scripture, or is it something you picked up from a culture that never had Paul's problem to begin with.

You're not compromising your calling by building income around it. You're doing exactly what he did.

Standing with you,

Simon 

I remember years ago as I was pastoring Experience Life that my cousin said to me, “Chris, you should get your real estate license. You never know when you might be able to help put a deal together.”

I think your seriousness about financial freedom can be measured by how much money you invest each month.

Nat had a passion and an idea.

He wanted to help dads with young kids navigate the pressures of early childhood. He knew the problem. He'd lived it. He cared deeply about it.

But there was a gap between who he was and what he was building.

Here's how he described it:

"Simon's really helped me to engage with people, to understand their language, the problems that they're facing, so that my idea doesn't just stay like a good idea, but become something that really meets people where they're at and helps them along their journey."

He launched a pilot program with seven people on it and is now well on the way to becoming a tentmaking pastor.

Not because he had it all figured out. Not because he was a business person. But because he took what he cared about, got clear on who it was for, and took one step at a time.

This is something I see a lot with pastors and Christian leaders.

The passion is there. The calling is there. But somewhere in the gap between who you are and what you're ...