1. Economics—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Entrepreneurship—Religious aspects— Christianity. 3. Free enterprise—Religious aspects—Christianity.
I. Title.
BR115.E3T595 2015
261.8'5—dc23
2014041350
Copyediting by James Fraleigh
Proofreading by Cape Cod Compositors, Inc. and Jordynn Prado
Front cover design by Jason Gabbert
Jacket design by Jason Gabbert
Cover photography by Spencer Avinger
Text design and composition by John Reinhardt Book Design
Printed by Lake Book Manufacturing
Distributed by Perseus Distribution
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Please contact Aida Herrera at [email protected]
This book is dedicated to you, the reader, for it is you for whom I wrote this book.
May you continue to be brave enough to seek Truth and the solutions that come with it!
Contents
Introduction: This Is Not Your Daddy’s “Best Life Now” Book
Part 1: Why Be an Evangelpreneur?
1: A Church of Believers in Bondage
3: Getting Out of Debt Is Never Enough
4: Who Really Controls You and Your Church?
6: Does YHVH (God) Love Murder?
Part 2: You’ve Got This: Don’t Believe the Lies
7: Lie of the Devil #1: Get Rich Slowly
8: Lie of the Devil #2: It Takes a Lot of Money to Make Money
9: Lie of the Devil #3: The Risk Is Too Big
10: Lie of the Devil #4: You Have to Be Special
11: Lie of the Devil #5: Don’t Mix Beliefs with Business
12: Step 1: Your Vertical Alignment
14: Step 3: The Opportunity Basket
16: Step 5: Putting the Recipe Together
18: Retiring Evangelpreneur Style
19: Money Is a Tool for Salvation
20: Called to Spread the Gospel
21: The New You in Your Old Church
22: Mugging the Woman With Two Coins
Foreword
I first connected with Josh Tolley about fifteen years ago at a coffee-shop business meeting. At that time he was twenty years old and embarking on his entrepreneurial education in the school of hard knocks.
I had already gotten my degree in that school, having owned over a dozen businesses by the time I was twenty-eight. My wife, Linda, reminds me how in the early years of our marriage I would wake up regularly at three in the morning with a new idea for a business. She called it “the idea of the month.” Yet at twenty-eight, we were still broke. But I never gave up on that dream. By age thirty-two we were millionaires, and it’s been uphill since then.
I grew up in an entrepreneurial family, my father being a self-employed millionaire. At a very early age I had a paper route and lawn-mowing business. At age twelve I got interested in the stock market, and began tracking and charting the price cycles of stocks. My father told our stockbroker to allow me to trade without his permission, and I began to invest my paper route money,