Tentmaking Tips

This is an important metric to track on your journey toward financial independence.

Your freedom number is the amount of money you need in investments in order for the return on investments to equal your living expenses.

Once you hit this number, your investments will pay your monthly expenses and you’ll become work optional.

Work optional just means that you can choose whether or not you want to continue generating more income since you don’t need it to sustain your lifestyle.

Many people think the best way to calculate your freedom number is to multiply your yearly expenses by 25. This is based on the 4% withdrawal rule in early retirement.

For example, if your annual expenses are $60,000, then $60,000 x 25 = $1,500,000 becomes your freedom number. Once you accumulate $1.5MM in investments, you can likely retire financially and live off your investments.

By reducing your annual expenses, your freedom number gets smaller, and you can...

Some of us even grew up in churches were many of the staff were paid full-time.

It’s easy for us to assume that our experience is the norm.

But it may surprise you to learn that many churches, perhaps most churches globally, don’t operate this way.

There just aren’t the funds available to pay a pastor full-time.

Most of us live in a context of great wealth. But most of the world doesn’t live in that context.

And the early church certainly didn’t live in that context.

Tentmaking is the norm. Funding pastors full-time is the exception.

It may not have been the norm in the church you grew up in, and that’s ok.

But, even in a Western context, there are thousands of bi-vocational pastors. They serve in churches where they get very limited pay, if any at all.

So, the first way I’d answer the question, “Is tentmaking a distraction?” is to say:

Far from being a...

I tell them I’m glad to help. Then, I direct them to the free resources we offer like:

• Our weekly Tentmaking Tips newsletter

• Daily tweets/threads about earning extra income

• Step-by-step guides to earning thousands in extra income and free vacations

But it’s usually the case that they want to pay extra for additional courses & coaching.

I tell them about some of our paid products and then share the ways they can get those free as well.

After all, if I’m teaching hacks to get free travel or live nearly free, shouldn’t I give hacks for getting my paid content for free? Ha!

Here are the ways I tell them they can get any or all of our courses for free (and you could too):

1. Follow my step-by-step guide to earn an extra $1,200 quickly and apply that to any or all of the courses

2. Refer 3 friends to any course and get all of the course...

So many, in fact, that perhaps you will find it could be preferable to full-time paid ministry in some cases.

Here are 10 advantages (in no particular order):

1. Reduces church budget

   Especially when you’re planting a church or serving in a small church, the salary of the pastor can be a significant percentage of a budget. And even if you serve in a larger church, the salaries collectively are likely a large percentage of the budget. If you were to remove your salary, or even part of it, that could greatly lessen the strain on the church budget.

2. Sets an example of hard work

   Paul gave this as a reason for tentmaking when he was working among the Thessalonians (2 Thes 3:7). There was a laziness problem in the church and he wanted to set an example for the church of what it looked like to work hard in order to honor God.

3. Not a hindrance in any way...

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:

1. “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...

I encouraged you to focus on just making your first $1,000. I want to share a number of ways you can make your first $1,000 tentmaking.

1. Redeem Credit Card Rewards for Cash

   I wrote a PDF guide which explains this process called "Make an Extra $1,200 Quickly" that you can download here. The gist is that you’ll apply for cards with high welcome bonuses, earn those bonuses in the first three months, and then redeem the points for cash. I think this is likely the easiest way to make your first $1,000.

2. Earn Checking Account Sign-Up Bonuses

   It’s common for banks to offer cash rewards for setting up a checking account with them and completing certain qualifying activities. You likely won’t get all $1,000 by setting up one account but if you set up accounts at multiple institutions, you could likely come close. For example, right now at Chase, they are...

I’ve got good news.

The gifting that many people in ministry have is exactly what’s needed to be successful in a side business. You need to love people & serve them well. And you need to help them solve a problem they have. Most of you are already great at that!

Christian counselors help people overcome fear by strengthening faith in God and taking small steps of increasing exposure to that fear over time.

The solution to fear is not to suppress it, avoid it, or deny it. It’s to trust God & gradually be exposed to the fear over time until your fear is diminished.

The same is true with tentmaking.

The best way to overcome the fear of tentmaking is faith & exposure. Trust God & start doing a little bit of tentmaking. We’re not talking about quitting...

It’s a good question.

I certainly didn’t “have” to. I was paid full-time by our church and the elders were glad to continue paying me. There was no financial struggle involved.

So, why do it?

I’ll give you 4 reasons.

1. It’s a joy to do ministry for free.

   When we moved back to Lubbock after graduating from seminary to start our church, we had no income. Our sponsor church was unable to help us financially, so we had to raise our personal support and also a budget for the church.

   We had many generous people give to help fund a salary for me and my family and a start-up budget for our church.

   Once our church started, all of the tithes and offerings went directly to church ministries because my salary had been covered for the first 2 years. I loved this!

   After 2 years, the church had the funds to bring me on the payroll, and while I was grateful, I really enjoyed not being on the payroll. Soon after coming on the...

That’s simply not true. Tentmaking is not an all or nothing proposition. Some people want to continue getting paid by their ministry but want to generate some extra income from tentmaking for family vacations or other extra costs that might not fit in the budget. Tentmaking allows you to generate additional streams of income & how much you make in tentmaking is really up to you.

2. Tentmaking will take way too much time.

This is also a myth. I generate full-time income through tentmaking and it takes me a few hours each week. From the beginning of my tentmaking journey, I made sure I never spent so much time that I felt distracted from my ministry. I wanted tentmaking to be like a hobby and I only...

I’d love to help.

By tentmaking, we mean earning money to support your ministry from outside your ministry. This could be supplemental income if you already have a ministry income. Or it could completely replace a ministry income and you could derive all of your income outside of your ministry.

Here are 4 steps to begin a tentmaking journey:

1. Determine how much extra income you need

Are you just needing an extra $5,000 each year? Or are you needing part-time income? Or do you need full-time income? This will help you decide what types of tentmaking opportunities to pursue.

2. Determine how much time you have to generate this extra income

Do you only have a few hours available each week or could you spend more time? Depending on the type of ministry you’re in now, you may either have quite a bit of flexibility to pursue tentmaking on the side or you may have...