God and Money: Is Making Money in Christian Ministry Okay?

We live in an amazing time when anybody can reach the entire world. The internet has provided Christians with a stronger resource imaginable to reach other people with the gospel. This is the best time to get involved in ministry.

Many people think the goal of ministry work is an impossibility in our modern age. After all, it seems like everyone is doing it and there is more competition today than ever before. However, this is precisely why now is the best time to begin an online ministry or join up with one already in progress.

It is true. Many Christians have some type of online ministry, even if it is just posting daily Bible verses on Twitter. However, how many are actually reaching their full potential? How many are even doing it well? How many are truly successful? Surprisingly, the answer is not many. This is what gives you the advantage. With so much opportunity for success, very few have actually taken full advantage of what is available to everyone.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. Not everyone is called or even interested in writing books, doing interviews, being on TV, and all the rest. That is why I want to produce a book anyone can find helpful, no matter what your level of personal interest is in pursuing these things. Whether you are interested in reaching every goal imaginable or just polishing up your social media outreach, this will be a book for you! I am hoping to have this book available in time for the Hear The Watchmen conference in Dallas, TX on March 22-25, 2018, where I will be teaching a workshop on this topic.

Find out more information at http://www.hearthewatchmen.com and make sure to use promo code Peck20 for $20.00 off your ticket price.

In the book and workshop, I will be sharing my firsthand experience in every area of Christian ministry. I have learned a lot along the way and have made plenty of mistakes. My hope is, in writing this book, I can teach you how to avoid the mistakes I’ve made and how to maximize the successes I’ve had throughout the years. You will be holding in your hands inside knowledge, never before revealed, on how to make it in Christian ministry.

I receive emails and messages all the time from fellow Christians asking how to go about publishing a book, or starting a podcast, or running a successful YouTube channel. This is what inspired me to write this book. I want to share with all of my readers how I managed to go from being dirt-poor, college dropout living out of a trailer, collecting disability, with no real hope of doing meaningful to a published author who is married with three kids, own his own home, and is on an upward trajectory in life. I say this not out of pride or ego, but to provide hope to those who are struggling.

If it can happen for me, it can happen for you too. The great thing is, it is not luck that brings success. It all depends on you and your own work ethic. I can provide you with the tools to help you navigate the world of modern Christian ministry, but ultimately your own success depends on you and God alone.

So what about God and money?

Ultimately, God has to come first in this line of work. At the same time, it is still work. It is perfectly acceptable to expect an honest pay.

On the surface, it may seem like these two things are mutually exclusive. There are those who will say you can’t make money and serve God at the same time. This is absolutely false. The truth is, you can’t serve God and money at the same time. The easy solution is to serve God and nothing else. You can make money, but that doesn’t mean you serve it. You can rely on money as a tool to do the things God is calling you to do, but it is still God who is calling you, not the money. Besides, if money is the main motivation, Christian ministry is not a good career choice.

If the thought of making money bothers you, that is fine, you can do all the things I will talk about in my forthcoming book completely free of charge. You will just have to find some other way to fund it. However, if you are like me and do not have access to the kind of money it would take to do something like that, there are plenty of other ways you can still be charitable at the same time as providing for yourself and your family.

This dilemma is something Paul addressed in his letter to the Corinthians:

1 Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? 2 If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. 3 This is my defense to those who would examine me. 4 Do we not have the right to eat and drink? 5 Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife,[a] as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? 6 Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? 7 Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock without getting some of the milk? 8 Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the Law say the same? 9 For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? 10 Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop. 11 If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? 12 If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. 13 Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? 14 In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.

1 Corinthians 9:1-14

After this, Paul goes on to say he personally chose to not exercise his full right to be paid and, instead, chose to do spread the word free of charge.

Therefore, you have every right to make money if you are providing a good or service, though you may choose to do it completely free of charge if you have the means to do so. Being that it is Christian ministry, there are good ways and bad ways to make money. For example, it should go without saying, but you would never want to charge someone a fee to tell them about the good news of Jesus Christ in an email reply. It costs you nothing to do and is only helpful for the other person. On the other hand, if someone wanted you to travel across the country to their church or small group in order to share the gospel, it is not unreasonable to ask whoever is inviting you to help offset your traveling expenses, especially if you cannot afford the trip on your own.

This is why it is important to take these things on a case by case basis and allow God to lead in all things. If you write a book, there will be times when someone can’t afford a copy and will email you, asking for a free PDF. However, in doing so, you know there is a risk they might distribute the PDF to other people for free by posting it online. So, what do you do?

Personally, I get these requests quite often and there have only been one or two times when I felt uncomfortable giving someone the manuscript for free. In those cases, I replied back saying I was not comfortable releasing the manuscript for free but I would be happy to answer any question they might have completely free of charge. This way, I expected if they wanted the information and simply could not pay for it, they could still have access to it without me having to take a risk. However, if they just wanted a free book and didn’t care as much about the actual information, I expected I would not hear back from them. They did not reply.

This is where personal preference comes into play. For my own ministry work, I try to make myself as available as possible to those who have questions. This way, if someone can’t afford a book or DVD, they can still benefit from the information. The way I see it, if someone is willing to take the time to write me an email or send me a message with a question, they earned my time to answer it.

One of the secrets about doing what we (I and others working in full time ministry) do, though it shouldn’t be a secret at all because we are all pretty transparent about it, is all the information we sell is available for free. We do interviews, answer emails, respond to private messages, talk with people at conferences and out in public, write articles such as this one, and none of us would try and charge someone to answer a question. Anyone can ask us anything and we are happy to answer to the best of our ability.

This is why it is imperative to never make money the main motivation for how you choose to run your own ministry. To have any kind of long-lasting success at all, God must be the deciding factor in everything. It is fine to sell stuff, but don’t ever sell what you wouldn’t be willing to give away for free.

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Josh Peck

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