Video Transcript: What is a MinistryBiz?

Henry - So welcome back. We are waiting for the big reveal what is MinistryBiz?  Some of you went ahead. You know who you know who you are, but the rest of  us are waiting for the big reveal.  

Steve - So let's, let's ease into it with a few questions. Okay. So what is  MinistryBiz? What is ministry? Let's just start with that. Because obviously this is a hyphenated word ministry biz. So what is ministry?  

Henry - ministry as I think, still a large majority of people would think about it as  a career, job in ministry, a paid position at a church, maybe being a pastor in a  church, being on staff in a ministry somewhere, but it's commonly thought of as  you get a ministry job.  

Steve - So it's a paid position, offering full time maybe sometimes part time. But  at Christian Leaders Institute, we have a different view of what ministry is,  

Henry – Right. Ministry comes from the word diakonos, which means to serve to minister. It includes every believer, all Christian leaders, at their very heart are  ministers. So that we see it as for the volunteer, the part time and the career, as  a big, overarching, philosophical, worldview. It's who we are.  

Steve - But in general, I mean, at least historically, being in the ministry usually  was a full time thing. That's a little bit of what ministry is. Well, what is biz then?  

Henry Reyenga - Everything else. I mean, that's probably how people think of it.  Yeah. You know, when we were pastors in the church, there's the minister, and  then the people in the secular world, right. 

Steve - So the minister makes his living by doing the ministry and everybody  else makes their living doing business.  

Henry - Right. And there are some passages in the Bible, like the worker is  worth his hire, and then the Minister works for the ministry.  

Steve - Okay, so we have these two pieces. And now we're going to put them  together, ministrybiz equals ministry plus business.  

Henry - I want to start talking about that. And I want to bring us back to 1993.  So, in the very early 90s, Steve, and I sent out two by two by the Lord, to reach  people. We were both church planters. And we saw some of the downsides of  the sort of career path. Now, we are not criticizing this. This is God uses this and he used in a powerful way but we were young. And we saw that if the church 

was going to be a scalable, meaning, just able to just go forward with all hands  on deck, we needed to tack more or move in a direction that the Volunteer  Minister, the part time Minister, that ministry was a calling. It was not tied down  to an economic piece for career. That was a long explanation. But we even  though we had beautiful positions, we even like, try it out and going to real  estate school.  

Steve - Yeah, we left our churches. And we're going to start a ministry. So we  didn't have any money. So what do you do? So we moved to Chicago. Some  business guy had office space, and he gave it to us free. And remember, you got there first. You came from Oregon, and I came from Vancouver. And by the time  I got there, Henry had us enrolled in a real estate course and  

Henry – Well. hey, we're doing what we can. 

Steve - We, we didn't have any money. And so and real estate was a business  where you can meet a lot of people,  

Henry – Right. Right. So ministrybiz are things and opportunities that you can  minister but also you can do business. It blurs the line, so then it really opens  the door for part time, career or the volunteer.  

Steve - Okay. So what's the difference between ministrybiz and tent-making? 

Henry - It seems like if I think about tent-making commonly understood it would  be you get a job. So you can then be a minister on Sunday so you get a job so  you can be a Volunteer Ministers so The job pays for your livelihood. And then  you can preach on Sunday. They're often they're separated.  

Steve - They're just two separated things. You take a job, maybe that isn't full  time, but makes a lot of money. So you can make the money over here and do  the ministry over there. And I think that's typically how we thought of Paul. Right, right. And the whole tent making thing comes from Paul, who made tents. He  wanted to do his ministry for free. He wanted that witness  

Henry - in the Bible isn't it that way, though? I mean, he, he's a tent-maker.  

Steve - And he wanted to offer ministry for free. He didn't want money to get in  the way.  

Henry - But really, when you say, ministrybiz, connection there, 

Steve - you know, traditionally, I think we've thought of tent making is, those are  two separate things. You do work over here, you get paid, and then with your  free time you do the ministry. But if you read there's only a couple passages that talk about Paul's a tent-maker. And let's look at one of them.  

Henry - Acts 18:1-3. After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth, there he  met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy  with his with Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave  Rome, Paul went to see them. And because he was a tent-maker, as they were,  he stayed and worked with them as they were. I can imagine that just a little  difference with a little different nuance there.  

Steve - That, that somehow, I mean, it doesn't seem like Paul was doing the tent making and then doing ministry somewhere else. Aquila and Priscilla were tent makers. And they became powerful followers of Christ leaders in the young  churches that are growing. And Paul, met them at the tent-making.  

Henry - So you picture them sewing tents, and they're talking. And then Paul,  maybe brings up Jesus Christ. Jesus rose from the dead, and he had met me on the road to Damascus. Paul may have gave his testimony while he's doing tent making.  

Steve - So the tent making in the ministry work in separate places, they were in  the same place. And that's really what ministrybiz is all about. It's about doing  certain kinds of businesses that actually blur the line between making a living  and, and doing ministry.  

Henry – Now I want to take us back to the 1990s. Again, some of these ideas  we've thought about and prayed about in the early 1990s. And tried some things  like real estate school. But in some ways, I believe today is the time for blurring  the lines. Why do you think that is?  

Steve - I don't know? Why do you think that is?  

Henry - Well, back then. I thought the boxes were more clear. You were a  minister or you were bi-vocational in a separated place.  

Steve - Or you were just in business alone,  

Henry - or you're in business. 

Steve - And then people were I think trying to be a witness and best witness that they could be in their business. But generally, when people went to the  workplace, they didn't think of that as the ministry. Right.  

Henry - And, and even with the ordination program at Christian Leaders Alliance, where as a volunteer, you can be ordained, licensed or ordained. You can, in a  sense, blur that a little bit because you might have a corporate job, but if people  know that you're trained and trained, right, incredible, right? The lines are being  blurred.  

Steve - If you work for Facebook, for example, and you wear your clergy shirt to  work, little by little by little you become the chaplain of Facebook.  

Henry - Right. And as people have a spiritual issue, they started seeing, you  know, I need answers. And many of them have gone to some new age options.  They've gone through some other things. And they didn't satisfy and here they  know, well, you're a Christian minister or a licensed minister. Maybe they want to go to you and talk with you. Back in the 90s. The reason I brought that up I kind  of surprising before I ran into that big sort of popped in my mind. I do remember  the lines were very drawn and you didn't go out of the lines very much without  having a lot of headwind against you. Right. So why  

Steve - So why bother with this? I mean, why ministrybiz? Because I think  there's at least a couple of reasons. One, you have to make a living. That is a  reality Two why not make a living with a business that is also a ministry.  

Henry - So maybe we rethink opportunities,  

Steve – Right. We think how business and ministry go together, instead of  keeping them separate. Maybe we should start thinking about how they can go  together, right?  

Henry - And just be bold or bash it. Say, we want this, and I really gonna go for  it. 

Steve - No, no, you know, I think too maybe we've separated ministry for most of life, right? I mean, sometimes people think about church and Christianity is a  Sunday thing, right? And then realize, is Monday through Saturday as if these  things are separated from each other. And really, we are Christian leaders no  matter where we go, no matter what we do. And so maybe this emphasis on  blurring the lines is really the direction that we need to go. Right. 

Henry - Right. And it would really free people up. I remember many ministers,  career ministers, in our 30 Some years of doing this, where they almost became like cats at the zoo, where they were so career oriented in the people were sort  of problem in their ministry. And then they had fights with their elders, because  the elders were all trying to manage the Minister, that there would almost be like, they come in and almost hide out at times and very dysfunctional. Honestly,  there are some situations where they felt so trapped in their prophetic voice was so limited,  

Steve - That you know, the elephant in the room often is if I'm a full time  minister, and the church is paying me, and my job, according to Ephesians 4 is  to equip the saints for ministry. But they're paying me they think I am being paid  to do the ministry. We're paying you to do the ministry. And you keep trying to  get us to do it. Right. That's your job. We're don't We don't get paid. I have a full  time job.  

Henry - We're spectators. You're the player. 

Steve - Yeah. And so in some ways, it is really hard to overcome that. Yeah. So Paul had that problem. 

Henry - He did,  

Steve - I think he noticed. And I think maybe that was one of the reasons why he decided to be a tentmaker, I'm going to, I'm going to do my ministry biz and no  one can accuse me of being not in the real world. I'm working hard. And so  please join me in working hard. And I know you have a job, I have a job, too.  Right. So we're in this together. I'm not like separated from you, we're we're on  the same team. Because I think when you're a full time minister, a lot of times  you feel sort of isolated, a lot of ministers feel isolated, they feel out of touch  with people. And the people often feel that, too. I mean, that they're not into the  real work. I mean, if you traditionally you know, we went to college for four  years, we went to seminary for four years. In other words, we were taken out of  real life for eight years, right? And then we come into lead a group of people,  and we're like these strange people that are not connected to life. That's and  that's one of the benefits of Christian Leaders Institute, you don't have to get out of the real world. Right? You you, you're taking classes as you do the things you  normally did.  

Henry - You know, I think too a lot of the ministers, because they're not in real  life, it changes who they are, too. Where it almost in many traditions, in I mean,  our own tradition growing up, the minister was called a Domini. So they on the 

other side, they feel sort of like (unintelligible) minister, but on the other side,  they can almost get into an ivory tower. So they're almost in some people put  them so much on a pedestal. And we see that too, with so many ministers today  who have fallen. They're on a pedestal and, you know, they preach so well. And  their ministry is so effective. And 1000s of people call them Papa, called a  minister. And then what happens it almost creates a place where Satan gets  involved, where everything creates sort of a professionalism and And yeah, so  that's the other side. Now again, having said all this, understanding our heart,  we're not criticizing career ministers. In fact, many of you are going to be career  ministers. That's going to be your calling and you'll be paid. We are in ministry  and our salaries come out of our ministrybiz that shades more on the ministry  side. Right now. We're just trying to talk about the big ideas. Like what's it going  to take him reproducible Christianity worldwide?  

Steve - So let's, let's give them a few examples. Like Well, what, what are some  examples of a ministrybiz? Okay. So number one, church planting  

Henry - You bet. I mean, we know that we were not really both church planters.  But we got in church planting right away, we had to learn how to do things like  knocking on doors and doing telemarketing, telemarketing,  

Steve - we did, we made 20,000 phone calls into our community. four week  period,  

Henry - we did too. We went to John Wayne, some great believer who had  figured it out how to make phone calls  

Steve – We had six, six lines or six phones in a room and we have volunteers.  Yeah.  

Henry - Okay, so to mobilize the volunteers is a great skill, and to make the call,  

Steve - and you and you have to arrange funding, you have to you have to get  trained people, you have to do the marketing, you have to provide the product,  which is the service, the music, the programs, the things for kids.  

Henry – If the program is lame, nobody shows up. right.  

Steve - You know, make this business. It's like starting a business. I mean, I  didn't know that. I was in a traditional church before that. And then I went off to  plant a church. And all of a sudden, I'm reading books on management. And,  and I remember getting the magazine Inc., you know, people that are 

entrepreneurs starting things, because that's what it was, it was starting your  own, and your livelihood is dependent on it. Right? If I don't get this going in two  years, I don't make a living here. So it was very much like starting a business.  So it's sort of a ministry biz. You have to create this thing. And, and it's a  ministry, but it's also your livelihood as well.  

Henry - It was fun. Those are great times door to door presidents of the  Chamber of Commerce Founding President of the Chamber of Commerce, but  all because of what you're saying. You had to pay attention. Now there's an  argument to some had pushback on that is is that too much marketing? Is that  the too much entertainment? And I didn't see it that way. Because A, I'm not the  most entertaining person in the world. But B, it was we're engaging. I really saw  that, that there are times when our program was zero, but our engagement was  high in the Holy Spirit used it. Yeah, call Well, church planting on it is just talking  to people. Right? Yeah.  

Steve 18:29 So church planting is we have courses on that. We can if you want  house church planting, right, if you want to plant a church, we can help you do  that in this type of ministrybiz. This is sort of an easy traditional one, and we're  going to shades on the ministry side, the shades on the ministry side, and we're  going to share some that many shade on the business side that aren't obvious  at first. Okay. So number two life coaching. So that's a new thing. Okay. 30  years ago, there wasn't this thing called life coaching. Now, it's very popular. It's  out there in the secular world. And we have a whole system of life coaching.  

Henry - Many of you may have taken Steve's three credit class called Life  Coaching. Great class. It's one of the most popular classes now. It's a new trend in terms of helping people get their goals. It's not counseling, it's not necessarily  pastoral care although pastoral care can be involved in it. It's life coaching, but  life coach, Minister, coaching if  

Steve - you're working with someone that you believe the Holy Spirit is inside,  this is a Christian. And so then you're helping them get in touch with who they  are. How God has created them to be. And it's basically asking them questions  so that they can figure out what to do in their lives, in their marriages and their  families in their workplace, whatever it is. And so it's a whole different way of  trying to motivate and help people succeed in the way that they wish they could.  But they're stymied by the lack of support, they're stymied, by not knowing what  to do, we live in a world with a million choices. And a lot of people just can't cut  through the noise, and figure it out. So this is, this is a growing thing. And  someone like you, who has an interest in helping people, if you just took these 

courses, you learned how to do it, you could be a volunteer life coach, but you  can start actually starting your own little business.  

Henry - So it could be perfect for a retiree who does not need income. But as a  calling, you have experience, you put that life coach piece in there, we're talking  about powerful volunteer ministrybiz, or part time, like you say, and I even think  

this is going to be a career opportunity. And as you take the class here and  Christian Leaders Institute, I think there's some great possibilities.  

Steve - What do you need to start up. See it's not you don't need to buy a big  truck, you know, all kinds of equipment. While you can.  

Henry - The truck drivers, you can do like a life coaching ministry, while you're at truckstops, somewhere in Montana.  

Steve - Or you could you know, truckers have a lot of free time. You could just,  you know, put your phone into your truck system and do some life coaching as  you go down Highway 95. But we're, we're talking about hands free life  coaching. Yes, hands free life coaching. We love it. Hands free life coaching.  Yeah, keep the hands on the steering wheel. So life coaching is one of those  things where you're making a living, but you're also doing ministry. Number  three,  

Henry - hold it here. Now Bible covers Bible Bible covers. Now. We have some  here. Here's a Bible in the industry. But here I see there's a cowboy. Kneeling,  Christ, Christ, Cross cowboy fellowship  

Steve - in Oklahoma, so what we knew we have a unique thing. When we  worked for the Bible League, and then they got rid of the whole USA  department, one of the ministries was Bible placement. And so we have access  to the Bible placement. We printed up 50,000 New Testaments without a cover.  And then all these ministries, churches, ministries from all over the world  ministries to every little niche in society. There's the dentists, there's there's  policemen, there's firemen. There's a guy who trains horses, truck drivers truck,  oh, truck driver is huge. In fact, I just did a New Testament that has like a study  Bible, and all of the words are directed to our truck drivers. So so you're going  down the road today, this verse may help you etc., etc. So we have all these  different Bible products. And so as part of your ministrybiz, you're helping  ministries or churches, or individuals use the word of God as an evangelistic  tool. And how you would get paid is every single Bible that you that you get  someone to do the cover, you know, we'll help that on the Bible, and we'll put the cover on the Bible, we'll do the shipping. All you're doing is is finding out who 

needs these things and what they need. And then we do the rest. And you get a  commission. And I met I met a guy from Zondervan two years ago, and and all  he does is call churches. And they have Bible products over at Zondervan like  this, and they'll do covers. He told me that he did a million of million dollars of  gross sales in that last year.  

Henry - And we have a variety of products on here. This is the scene when we  left I left the Bible League a couple years before Steve did and then get another  one but the Bible League gave us this opportunity because they knew they  weren't going to do it anymore, in a lot of ways, you've been doing it personally  out of your garage. Yes. So now you're bringing to our students an opportunity  that they can tie into. That's pretty cool. This was the cover that we did at  Christian Leaders Institute in 2014. I remember doing this and then on the back,  I noticed 100,000 Christian leaders by 2020. And the Lord has brought up  300,000. I mean, that get to 14 about, you know, it'd be amazing if we could get  100,000 people involved and now it;s 300,000 our freedom without, without  being excited. Jesus Bible and other products real quickly, what are some of the  products in this ministry biz. I know, in the class, you're really gonna get into  other  

Steve - New Testaments. This Jesus, you know, there was New Testament, but I was thinking about a new person who has never read the Bible opening of the  New Testament, and like, not understanding most of it. So I worked on getting  other products like this Jesus Bible is where Jesus shows up in every single  book of the Bible. And it's only 150 pages. So if someone wants to know what  the big deal is about this whole Jesus person, in 150 pages, they'll hear all his  parables, all the stories where he shows up in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,  Numbers, Deuteronomy, everywhere, there's just a short couple of verses that  help people see how Jesus shows up everywhere. That's one of the products  another is, I know, people have a hard time getting through the whole Bible. So I took the whole Bible, and I bridged it abridged it to 1/3 the size. Okay, so and  then there's all kinds of notes explaining what this is what that is, so that a new  person actually can get the whole gist of the whole Bible. You know, before he  attacks the whole thing, and gets lost in, you know, Chronicles or something like  that. And so they're all these different, there's just different, you know, I have a  30 second Bible. Some people like they don't like to read, you know, you throw  any kind of Bible at them, and they just get bogged down. This is 30 seconds.  It's a verse, A thought, and a question. And there's 52 weeks 52 topics, what the  Bible says about this, what the Bible says about that, that's very popular,  because people, you know, they have 30 seconds. All of these things can have  a specific cover made for whatever ministry, whatever church that wants them.  And so it's a real easy sell, because churches are looking to give visitors, they're

looking to inspire their members to give their neighbors something. And the  Word of God is probably the best thing you can give,  

Henry - you know, what I would do, if I were like, I would blur to have these. I'd  get into church planting doesn't need to hurt. So then in church planting, I would  then get my cover cover with my church's name and logo and all that. And then I would also do a Bible ministrybiz, where I'm shading and I'm supporting Ministry  of church planting partially by this and I'm also passing a Bible to my community  for it to reach people in evangelism. Right? So can you like combine two efforts  a little bit, of course,  

Steve – In fact, you can do this with any of the ministry businesses that we're  talking? 

Henry - Life Coaching. So you're a church planter. Yes. Give us a church planter. Who is a Life Coach. There's a Bible Exactly.  

Steve - Or you can even do this actually. Alright, so we have another one. This is going to be interesting.  

Henry and Steve - Coffee business.  

Steve – So we're getting further and further afield.  

Henry - More typical traditional business type topic.  

Steve - Right. So why why is coffee something that we specifically can offer as a ministry  

Henry – well I have my Christian Leaders Institute coffee mug here. Well coffee  is a conversational type of occasion. You're not just drinking now. Yes, it's in the  morning needs your first cup of coffee. But people love to have a cup of coffee  together, right? house churches, coffee, churches. Fellowship and people have  

a cup of coffee. It's almost like and I've seen that you know it's almost like if you  took away the coffee I remember one time the coffee pot broke. And after church and fellowship and people are going to get their coffee in the coffee pot is broke. I remember there was a grumpy people enjoy that fellowship. Right? And now in 

as a church planter. It's funny, because how many meetings you have at a  coffee shop, right? So I'm excited about this. I mean, probably Christian Leaders Institute there's a lot of meetings. But well, you've seen that Christian Leaders  Institute that we are promoting ministry brews coffee. How we got into it is a  business man who loves ministry, who has a large roastery in large grocery 

does high quality coffee they buy from all over the world. Excellent company  loves Christian Leaders Institute and we will give a price for a whole variety of  coffee and teas and coffee products that you can both have as a fundraiser so  you can  

Steve - right so we we we use it as a fundraiser for Christian Leaders Institute  right ministrybiz and then you thought why not give other people the same  opportunity.  

Henry - Exactly So we have bulk prices so if you're just a volunteer, you can  promote at a really good price. bulk coffee to a church who wants high quality  top notch ministry brews coffee, or if maybe you want to do part time, and so it's  a better price. But maybe you even want to do a coffee shop and we even  negotiated with the roastery how you can get rock bottom wholesale prices if  you are going to buy like 30 pounds of coffee and are so many you get this with  free shipping. So we have a class called coffee shop, coffee ministry, coffee  businesses and  

Steve – It's not one thing it's many options. You know starting a coffee shop is  almost like church planting. Right? I read that I read some people are doing front yard coffee shops like little Kool Aid stands like people come and yeah, coffee  and coffee. Yeah. Or they set up a little cabana in the backyard, the side yard.  And so there's a lot of different ways in that class, you'll learn all the different  ways that coffee can be one of these ministrybiz things.  

Henry - Just something to know, church planting. And life coaching is a global  enterprise. The Bible ministry or covers ministry and the Coffee ministry is a  USA only. And you know when I say that it kind of breaks my heart, I know that  this can be a beautiful opportunity to everywhere. And if you're not in our  country, we still invite you to take the coffee class or who knows what you could  come up with in Africa even. But what we're trying to do, it's really blurring that  paradigm just to say, look, all of us are in this together.  

Steve - Well, I think even an enterprising person in some other country, we can  help you do what we did. I mean, I just had myself and you know, the Jesus  Bible, I just did it the you know, if you're in a country, and it's a different  language, you could take that and find the Bible and use these verses and make your own Jesus Bibles. Right. So it's possible that we can somehow get it going  in other countries, you'd have to be one of these people that really, you know,  wants to make something happen 

Henry - committed to curious doing. Yes, why not? So let's talk a little bit about  what are the benefits of signing on this thinking in terms of your ministry? What  are some of the benefits that you can see?  

Steve - Well, I think the biggest benefit is, instead of that traditional view, where  you, you work really hard at a job, and then you try to find free time to do  ministry. A lot of good hearted people are trying to do that. But what happens is  they spend a lot of time in their business, trying to make a living. And then they  spend a lot of time in ministry. And what happens is their family suffers, their  health suffers, and they're burning the candle at both ends. So what this does is  combine those two efforts that the ministry work and the business work more  closely together. And so you don't have that dichotomy and that burnout factor.  

Henry - Do you think there's a benefit for evangelism in this?  

Steve - I think I think that's the second thing that you you know, Jesus said, Go  and make disciples, and a lot of times it will full time ministry. I just talked to my  associates guy. And he was saying that that, you know, since he became a full  time minister, he has not, he doesn't he doesn't have non Christian friends, he's  

basically spending most of his time with Christians, in the community, with other  churches in our church. And he just doesn't have the time, you know, the needs  of a church can be so great that you spend all your time with the church. So  where's your witness, whereas with a ministrybiz, you're out there, you're out  there all the time. And you're, and you have credibility in the community.  Because a lot of times, community, people will look at ministers and say, you  know, they're just strange people that they're isolated. They, they live in an ivory  tower, they don't know what the real world is, like. People that have to make a  living, and all of a sudden, no, you're one of the people, you're just like them.  And then when you say something, and it works for your family, and in your  marriage, they're looking at someone like them. And so maybe this whole  Christian thing will work for me too.  

Henry - You know what I have noticed, we have gotten explored on the whole  license and ordination track. And now I have a program with recommendations  with training. But in developing this program, many of you have told me this  narrative, that your in a work, someone asked you to do a wedding. And the first  thing you did is like, what do I do? What do I do? So you type on licensed  ordination, do a wedding and you find, you know, like the universal church or  one of our churches that does ordination, you have a heart for the Lord. So you  want in the sense, you're blurring the lines, you feel the Holy Spirit asking you to blur the line. So what you do is you sign up and get a piece of paper, but in your  heart, you know, I'm not confident, I'm not trained. But the other option is, you 

know, seven years of seminary, four years of training, that option is not going to  be before you. And then somehow you found out about Christian Leaders  Institute, and you found out about the ordination opportunity, and all of a sudden  it starts opening the door. So now 1000s have participated in that. So at that  level, even if you're not going to create one of these businesses, and your at  business, traditional business, you can become licensed or ordained. And I  guess maybe in the US, it really is in the word ministrybiz. Its ministry is our  business. No matter what, whatever you do, and ministry is our business  because Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. And he is the only hope for this world.  And He is the light of truth in the way and we are agents and that's what it  means to be a minister. So is there anything else we have forgotten in this  presentation?  

Steve - Well, we'll get to it. So,  

Henry - stay on board. God has a plan for your life and we are excited to be part of it.