Side Hustles for Multiplication

A particular blessing is to be up before the household starts moving around.  I listen to my praise playlist or I go to the The International House of Prayer (IHOP) website (www.ihopkc.org) and go to their prayer room.  And I usually go through back issues of The Pentecostal Herald.  The Herald was a newspaper published by H.C. Morrison, president of Asbury College and founder of Asbury Seminary.  The newspaper is a gold mine.

There is a lot to say about all that you can learn, ways that your soul could be lifted up by reading The Pentecostal Herald.  I read the last couple years of the newspaper’s run, early to mid 1940s.  Earlier this year, I decided to go back to the beginning, or really to 1898 (maybe it started in 1890); I think 1898 is when Morrison started as editor.

I am in 1899 right now, and there has been a thread in the issues about missions, with testimonies of missionaries, articles about the impulse to missions, and then a very interesting idea. A side-hustle.  They asked people to put out an extra section of garden with some crop that could be easily sold at market, such as sweet potatoes, and then take the money earned from the crop and give it to missions.

What an interesting challenge!  That was 124 years ago.  Most of us don’t have big gardens, or any garden! Even though I am an old-fashioned yam-eater, it has been a while since I have grown sweet potatoes.  We almost always think of side-hustles as a way for us to make extra money for our own purposes.

When something is on your mind, you seem to see it everywhere.  Something that has been on my mind is that the best investment I can make is in eternity… so I was not too surprised that I would pay attention to a small article in the newspaper that encouraged people to plant a section of their garden, and give the income to missions.

I wonder if we could do something similar?  Is there some side-hustle we could work?  Do you have a stream of passive income that could be given to the work of missions abroad, or church planting here at home?