How do you start? First, you hit up friends and family members for financial support. That will soon run out. Soon, they will ask that dreaded question: “Why don’t you get a job, Robert, instead of trying to be Pastor Bob?”
So, as soon as you hear the call of money pouring out from collection plates onto your kitchen table, learn to get money from neighbors and total strangers. It’s really simple.
Many take the basic Money-Raising Courses at Schism Seminary. But, the truly ambitious need a quicker return on their decision. “I’m not getting any closer to my Mega-Church and my Personal Lockheed Mission Jet wasting time in some classroom. I need money and I need it now!”
Why wait? Just practice going up to reasonably prosperous-looking people, introducing yourself, and asking for $20.00. “Sir, I am Pastor Bob, and my ministry has sent me out on an ambitious goal. First I have been directed to ask those to whom God leads me for a donation. I also feel a great urge to ask you to attend one of my services. God has led me to you and has told me to ask you for twenty dollars.”
Most strangers are too polite to tell you what your relatives have said dozens of times, “Get a job, Bob. Work for a living. Do something useful.”
You will find that some total strangers who, if approached correctly, will pull out their billfold and give you twenty dollars.
Then, get some sort of a vague commitment to attend your service. If you don’t yet have a few chairs set up in the corner of some mall hallway, get a phone number so you can let them know when you do. As you are writing down their phone number and email address for frequent follow-up evangelistic work, share The Great Commandment of Evangelical Ministers: “The most important thing we can do is believe in Jesus and The Bible. God will reward you a hundredfold for helping me to spread that message.”
Don’t just write their name down in some cheap spiral notebook! Be sure to get the well-worn leather notebooks that work best for blossoming Evangelical Ministers. You’ve seen them. They have “God’s Chosen Souls” in gold, Gothic letters on the front. And, like pre-washed blue jeans, they’re tumbled to look well-thumbed right out of the box!”
Don’t have an Evangelical Ministerial Notebook? Order yours from the Schism Seminary Bookstore. Now! That’s a vital first step. You can get a relative to pay for it by promising, “Once I have the Official Evangelical Minister Start-up Kit, I’ll never ask you for another penny!”
Then, as soon as you get it, shut off the TV in the basement and get out of your relative’s house. Go to a mall. Be there by nine. Talk to a person every ten minutes. Ask each one for twenty dollars. Close one or two out of every six. At the end of the first week, you show that pile of twenties to the friends and relatives who’ve been mocking you. They may be impressed enough to give you more!
Don’t rub it in. Don’t brag about not having to pay a single dollar of taxes on that money! And, be sure to tell them that God has told you to commit that money to your new storefront church. You don’t want them asking you to give back the money they lent you before you started bringing home the bacon!
Cash is coming in! That’s your beginning. “From tiny oaks, great acorns grow.” Or, it is, “From tiny acorns great oaks grow.”? Or, is it both? You may think that was silly, but it’s the sort of pseudo-profundity that separates the great Evangelical Ministers from the boring Mainline Ministers and overworked Catholic priests whose flocks you need to start herding into your own sheepfold.
