28. Breaking Barriers: Pastors as Successful Entrepreneurs with Jon Sanders

To watch this on our YouTube channel click here: https://youtu.be/QwRA3N3GP-o

In this  episode host Katie Hornor interviews Jon Sanders, a pastor and entrepreneur, about his unique business that helps pastors identify their unique gifts, find their "zone of genius," and pursue fulfilling ways to serve God in both traditional ministry and the marketplace.

The three main points discussed in the episode are:

1. Challenging the Norms: Jon and his co-founder, Les Hughes, come from a background of pastoral ministry and believe that pastors can thrive financially. They encourage pastors to start their own businesses in the marketplace, creating income based on their unique skills and passions. They aim to shift the mindset that financial prosperity is incompatible with ministry.

2. Overcoming Mindset Blocks: Jon shares his personal journey of transitioning from full-time ministry to being a firefighter and starting his own coaching business. He had to work through internal objections and societal expectations around pastors being financially successful. Entree Pastors helps clients navigate these mindset challenges and provides business coaching alongside mindset work.

3. Embracing God's Calling and Desires: Jon emphasizes the importance of recognizing and embracing the desires that God has placed within individuals. He believes that when people delight themselves in the Lord, they can trust the desires of their hearts.

Overall, the episode highlights the need for pastors to explore entrepreneurial opportunities, challenge societal expectations, and embrace their God-given desires in order to find fulfillment and financial prosperity in their lives and ministries.

Connect with Jon at www.entrepastors.com

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Transcript

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Are you tired of feeling like you have to hide your faith in order to be successful in business? Welcome to the Flamingo Advantage podcast. We're Christian Marketing and Client Experience Coach Katie Horner leads you to embrace your uniqueness, to see the marketplace as a mission field and your business as an act of worship. Welcome back to the Flamingo Advantage podcast. I'm your host Katie Horner and we have another very special guest with us today. We have been interviewing primarily women up until this point. However, our guest today is a man. He is a pastor. He is an entrepreneur. He is a father and a friend of mine through a mastermind that we're in together and has a very unique business. And so I'm excited to be able to introduce you to him and his business. This particular business helps pastors to think and act and thrive as prosperous entrepreneurs so that they can serve people from an overflow of abundance. And I just think that is such an amazing and unique way to build a business. We're going to find out from him how they are building their business and how they're helping others to build their business as well. And so thank you so much for being with us today. John Sanders, welcome to the podcast. Katie, thank you so much for letting me hang out where the ladies normally talk. This is awesome. Thanks for having me on the show. I know our audience is a mix, but we've just had mainly a female guest up until now. I'm excited to get some men in here too. We're also going to be interviewing Dan Miller, Greg Gray, some others coming up soon. So you guys want to stay subscribed and watch for those as everybody's bringing some interesting insight and uniqueness to the show with the different businesses that we have. But talk to us a little bit about how this business came to be. Your business, the whole purpose is to help pastors start a business. And some people think that there's a real dichotomy in that that maybe those two things shouldn't coexist. Talk to us a little bit about the method of being honest. Yeah. Yeah. So I grew up in a pastor's home and led a church planted and led a church for many years. And I've been in and around pastoral ministry my entire life. I'm on staff at a church now where I preach about once a month and it's an awesome gig. I love the church. Our co-founder of Andre Pastors, my friend Les Hughes, is also a very similar story. Grew up in and around pastoral ministry, and he's way older than me, so he's got a lot more years of experience in this. But he and I both come from that background of pastoral ministry working in the church. And while we both love it, we've also both experienced and come to recognize there are a a lot of flawed mindsets out there around the subject of what is ministry and is it okay for a pastor to thrive financially? We believe the answers yes. And we think the way to do that is not to just ask their church for more money through the offering plate. But to go out into the marketplace where you can create that income through multiple different businesses, you know, based on how God is wired and shaped you. And so that's what we do at Entrey pastors about a year and a half ago, less than I came together and launched on trade pastors. And what we primarily do is encourage and support pastors to do exactly that, to get out in the marketplace and launch a business of their own that is creating value. And it can look like a lot of things that we can get into that. We have pastors doing all kinds of different stuff as far as what those businesses are. But ultimately, we want to help them do well financially. We believe that that when that happens, it is a win-win for them and the churches that they serve and takes a lot of pressure off. But there's a lot of baggage that we deal with around all of that, not only from the side of the pastors, but also the side of people who sit in the pews. And what do they think about all of this? So we do a lot of work around mindset as well as some business coaching with the clients that we serve. I love that you're doing this. Very, very near and dear to my heart because it's something I've lived through not as a pastor so to speak, but as in full-time ministry, my husband and I were in full-time mission work prior to starting our business and becoming full-time entrepreneurs. And so I know firsthand the comments. But your in ministry, how do you have time for business? Isn't that taking away time for ministry? And oh, well, if you're starting a business, does that mean you're no longer trusting God to provide for your needs? and all of those kinds of things that we do have to work through as ministry people who find God leading us to other ways of ministry. I don't see work as secular and ministry as sacred. I believe that God has called me to be a witness for Him in every place that I go during my life. I don't think I can separate that. It has to be blended as a part of who I am. And I love that you guys are also seeing that and teaching that, teaching folks how to do that and sort of coaching or counseling those pastors through that transition. And I know that you're helping them answer some of those questions as well because it comes up all the time, right? Yeah. And one of the things too, I think, is does God only provide certain ways for certain people? And answering that from a, you know, it's almost a personal, personal belief, personal perspective thing. But tell us about some of the things that you have had to work through and how you answer those questions when they come up for you. Yeah. So for a little bit of, contrary pastors is kind of based out of my own journey and less would say something very similar because of some of his experiences as well. But, you know, I served 17 years as a church planter, lead pastor. And by the way, I left a career in the fire service. I was a full-time firefighter, and I really sensed God calling me out of that to go plant a church. I argued with him. I told him all my reasons why this was a really bad idea. But eventually, I surrendered after trying to outrun him. And so I went into ministry loved it, you know, loved serving that capacity. But then I had this crazy opportunity many years later to go back into full-time firefighting while I was still leading a church. So here I am now at what many would look at as a successful church pastor. We planted a church. It's grown into six different locations. And now the pastor wants to go be a firefighter and a pastor. And so I had a ton of stuff. I had to work through in my mind, Firefighting isn't really entrepreneurial, but it's still that theme of I'm going away from church. I'm going out into the world to earn money doing something that's not ministry. And by the way, my church was, for the most part, very supportive, pretty healthy church. Most of the, the opposition and objections came from between my own two ears. It was a lot of the, the voices that I was hearing from the past of just life growing up in the church. And so I had to work through a lot of that, that really God is not the one that has built this dichotomy of serving me inside the four walls of this building called the church is sacred and then anything else outside of that is some secular thing that you have to reconcile that. He helped me see time and again that every square inch of this universe belongs to Jesus Christ and we can take that ministry mindset and that ministry calling to everything we do in life. So I'm grateful to say that many years ago I took that opportunity. I went back into full-time firefighting. I sense God was saying, "If you want to be both, you can be both. Here it is." And then later on I had an opportunity to launch another business as a coach that kind of came out of a podcast that I had been doing for a long time. So again, that one was not as hard to work through, but now I started to deal with like, is it okay for me to actually be profitable? For years in pastoral ministry, we just lived kind of hand-to-mouth. At Entre pastors, we call it the starving pastor. It's kind of this thing. Nobody says out loud because it sounds terrible, but it's kind of a real narrative in the church world of we're not real comfortable with a pastor who's thriving financially. We all are pretty comfortable and have a mental framework around a pastor who's barely getting by financially. Well, we live that for many years. And so when I started to now as a result of having two incomes and now a third business of coaching that started to become fairly profitable, I had to work through that once again. Like, is this okay for me to be making decent money and not to have financial panic every two weeks in my life? You know, and hoping that there's enough paycheck at the end of the pay period. Anyway, all of that. Like, I've walked that journey. So when we meet our clients that are struggling with that stuff, less than I both understand where they are. We've heard those voices. We've had to work through some of those hang-ups on our own. And we really feel like we're in a good place to kind of guide them down that pathway and show them. There is a path forward here. And it's healthier and more life-giving than you ever could have imagined. And we're thrilled to help people find that. Well, I'm thrilled that you're doing it. And for those of you listening, if you know somebody who needs to hear this message, So a friend of yours that's in ministry, please share this with them. Help us get the word out that there is a safe space for people who are looking at how do I continue to provide? What if God is calling me from a ministry into a quote, unquote secular position? And how do I get the help? Because so many people in our world don't understand it and can't get beyond some of those limiting beliefs for whatever reason. You need to find someone who can encourage you and show you the steps and help you to get your mind set in the right place to be able to do that. And Andre pastors is a great place. So please share that with them. The thing I loved that you said there, John, you talked about how I wanted to go into the fire department. And I think that's an important piece for people to recognize a lot of times, I think we struggle with, does God want me to do this? There's something I want to do. And I just keep remembering the verse about God giving us the desires of our hearts. And I believe that that can be applied in the way that God plants within us the desires that He wants us to have so that we can walk them out. And so if I'm feeling like I want to go and do this that doesn't qualify in the world's definition of ministry, and yet it's something that gets me into connection with other people, I believe God can use that to both fulfill desires in our hearts as well as give us opportunity for ministry. You know, the great commission is to go out into all the world and preach the gospel, not go bring the world into a building to preach the gospel. And so I think that that sometimes we get too caught up in, is this God or is this me? And what if it's both? And what if it's okay for you to follow those desires and let God give you opportunities to minister in the marketplace to find an ocean field in the marketplace? Yeah, Katie, I'll tell you a quick story of an unlock that we had with the pastor one time just in a coaching conversation. It was such an encouragement to kind of see that light bulb come on. I have really loved that verse for a long time, don't Psalm 37 for delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. I know scripture also teaches that our hearts can be desperately wicked and you know, I get that and that verse can be taken out of context to. and be manipulated. But here's the thing. Let's just look at what it is saying. When we delight ourselves in the Lord, this is what we really helped us pastor with. When I'm delighting myself in the Lord, I can trust the desires of my heart. Why do I want the things I want? Why do I care about the things I care about? We can choose to believe it's because I have a God who created me on purpose for a purpose, and he put those desires so when I'm delighting myself in him, He is a good god and says I'm going to give you the very thing that you've been desiring so it takes discernment and wisdom and we need to recognize that it's good to have a you know multitude of counselors around us and all of that. But still there is something to that we ask our clients to answer the question what do I want because we don't think that's an unspiritual unholy question or a selfish question I think it's a powerful question what do you want because I believe that in by the way even if we get past the material stuff. Even if I just gave you endless run, like anything you want you can have, that list is going to run out pretty quickly because we're going to get to the real desires of your heart. What do you really want? Okay, we got you the boat you've been wanting. You have the car you want, but what do you really want? And I'm telling you, somewhere in there is the voice and the imprint of God on your life, we want to help you discover that. Certainly that can look like being fulfilled in a pulpit ministry, preaching the gospel, leading a church, shepherding people, yes, and it can also be fulfilled in multiple other ways out in the marketplace where you are fulfilling God's call upon your life and He's giving you the desires of your heart. So I love that you brought up that verse. I get excited about it. Yeah, it's exciting for me too. And I think one of the things that we walk through our clients with is that like zone of genius. And some people don't like that because it feels too prideful like what am I get at, you know. But what is is the thing that God is uniquely gifted you to do, that when you do it, it lights you up. I think of the Olympic runner, Eric Little, he said, when I run, I feel God's pleasure. Like what is it that you do, that when you do that thing, you feel God's pleasure, right? And for me, it's teaching and it's coaching and it's helping people have those breakthrough moments that allow them to do what they were created to do, even better, right? And I assume it's similar for you as a pastor with this gift of coaching and teaching. And it's okay for us to enjoy that. The other thing is, I think our culture is taught us for so long that ministry is sacred. You can enjoy ministry, right? You do it for free because it's God's work and whatever, but work is hard. Work is something we have to dread. And I don't think that's the case. Because Ecclesiastes, 222, 224, nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his work, right? Like, I believe God created us to enjoy those things that he's gifted us to do well And when we can do it for him and for the benefit of others, like that's where the sweet spot happens. Yeah. One time I heard it teaching on the Sabbath as this, like work is such a gift of God for us that we view Sabbath almost like a parent telling their kids, it's time to put your toys away and sleep. And the kids like, I don't want to sleep. I want to play with my toys. And it's that good father who knows that the kids need rest or they're going to be cranky. right so our father loves us enough to say you can work for six days have fun playing with that and then i want you to have a day that you just rest and recover and focus on me because it's for your good but the point is not so much about the Sabbath and that is is it is the relationship to work that i love that man i don't care what direction i'm going when i wake up whether it's to the fire station or to work with on trade pastor stuff or i also have a little handyman business whatever it is that i'm doing i'm having a blast man i love getting to build things and pouring the people and grow businesses and systems i love it and i think god smiles when he sees his kids doing the things that he put in their heart to do so yeah it's we just help pastors work through that it's not just pastors by the way we have other church staff and missionaries and just king-minded people kind of in our camp, but that if kind of fallen under that umbrella of ministry needs to be delivered for free or no low cost because it's for the lord and if you're gonna make a living from it that's okay but it better be a pretty meager living those are the people that we serve with this stuff man we want to set you free and it's not all about the money But it's about recognizing that the money is not, doesn't need to be this negative thing that you've been told it is. Like let's help you get some of it so that there's some margin in your life, and you can really, without a lot of distraction, get to the life, this abundant life that Jesus has created for you and called you to. So it's exciting stuff that we get to do with our people. Exciting for sure and and the whole the whole money thing, you know, it's about thriving It's about living with that abundance mindset like you said does your father own it all is he the king of kings Right are you his ambassador and his child with access to the whole kingdom? Then we should not be wanting for things we should not be starving Pastors or ministry people the money is a tool that we get to use here in earth to be able to do more of that work for him And I love love love your excitement and the way that you're serving these people if you're listening again We want you to send you over to John and Leslie's podcast the entree pastors podcast go and find that on your podcast app The boundary pastors calm is where you can connect And they also have got like a get started guide They run challenges every so often to help pastors and missionaries and be able to bring in some of that extra income They have a business launch academy that you can find access to there go find them all the things on tree pastors.com John, it's been a pleasure to talk with you today. I just want to know What would you like to leave our listeners with if there's only one thing they remember from this discussion today? What's the most important thing to take away? I love that question and it's freedom I often encourage people that we have way more freedom in Christ than we've often been told that we have freedom to live the abundant life that Jesus made possible. So I don't know what that means for you. It's not freedom from the Lord. It's freedom in the Lord. It's as we lean into him. We find that freedom to become who he made us to be. And that is not just apply on Sunday morning inside of church that applies to every part of your life and work is such a huge part of our life. So I hope that in that you hear a message of like, man, what what would my life look like to build a business with the freedom that I have and so whatever that means for you just lean into that but we encourage our community with that often you have way more freedom than you think you have that you've been led to believe so go live in christen experience that freedom today. Thank you thank you my friends wherever you're listening leave us a comment if this has been helpful again share with someone you know who needs to hear this remember that you do have freedom and you have a message that god wants to share for his glory. and to light you up and to do more of that work in the kingdom. We'll see you in the next episode. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend and consider joining our free listener community at theflumingoadvantage.com. Remember my friends, your message matters and your voice is needed. Don't be afraid to let your flamingo show.(upbeat music)(upbeat music)(upbeat music)(upbeat music)(upbeat music)(upbeat music)[ually