In the past, many wealthy pastors supported their multi-million-dollar lifestyles by writing best-selling books. But now, an increasing number of pastors are generating wealth through life coaching.
Charging anywhere between $29 a month to tens of thousands a year, these pastors are getting rich on their side businesses, and living lives rivaling many secular celebrities.
Pastors once lived in modest parsonages, which allowed them to survive on a meager salary. However, in the age of megachurches with mega-salaries, big-name pastors and ministry leaders often live in extravagant mansions and own second beach homes.
Now an investigation by The Trinity Foundation has uncovered another means by which these Christian figures are trading on the reputation that came through their church and ministry positions.
By offering their time for life and business coaching, it raises questions about whether these sessions are accounted as paid days off from a salaried role funded by church or ministry supporters. The following ministers and Christian speakers have employed this type of strategy.
Your tax-deductible gift helps our journalists report the truth and hold Christian leaders and organizations accountable. Give a gift of $30 or more to The Roys Report this month, and you will receive a copy of “Groomed” by Mike Donahue. To donate, click here.
Keith Craft
One of America’s wealthiest pastors is Keith Craft who leads Elevate Life Church in Frisco, Texas. Craft charges clients $84,000 annually to participate in his Life Mastery Mastermind.
Craft owns two houses in Texas, two vacation homes in Destin, Florida, a mountain home in Colorado, a yacht, and a Cessna 650 jet.
Trinity Foundation estimates Craft’s property holdings to be worth at least $13 million.
Before becoming a pastor and life coach, Craft recorded a Christian rock album and joined Power Team, a group of Christian bodybuilders that shared their testimonies on TV and to church audiences across America.
Craft is an entrepreneurial pastor having started businesses that include Servant Leadership, LLC operating Craft Yacht Charters and Kingdom Heir Aviation LLC, which owns Craft’s jet. The Cessna 650 is available for charter through Trinity Private Jet Charter.
Nicole Crank
Author Nicole Crank charges $16,999 for her Inner Circle Mastermind, and that doesn’t include all the travel expenses.
Alongside her husband, David Crank, Nicole is listed online as co-founder and co-lead pastor of Faith Church in St. Louis, Missouri. The megachurch has eight campuses, with two in Florida and one opening soon in Illinois.
The Cranks own a beach house mansion (over 11,000 square feet) in Ocean Ridge, Florida, worth $5.6 million, according to real estate website Zillow.
Hope Carpenter
While Craft holds expensive in-person coaching sessions at a beach house or his mountain home and Crank utilizes a 15-acre retreat in Tennessee, other life coaches provide lower priced coaching online.
Hope Carpenter, wife of televangelist Ron Carpenter, charges $29 per month and the first month is free. Hope is married to televangelist Ron Carpenter who pastors Redemption Fellowship in San Jose, California and Greenville, South Carolina.
Ron Carpenter’s personal website reports that he is a mentor to CEOs, but the website does not disclose a fee for mentoring or life coaching.
John Maxwell
John Maxwell serves as teaching pastor at Christ Fellowship Church which has eleven campuses in Florida.
Maxwell is a popular speaker at leadership conferences due to having sold more than 25 million books on the topic. The John Maxwell Company specializes in executive or business coaching, which overlaps with life coaching because communications skills are critical in both areas.
The John Maxwell Company provides a certification program for executive coaches, speakers and trainers. According to ThePricer, “The core tuition fee for the John Maxwell Certification is $2,495 when paid upfront.” When coaching, textbook and travel expenses are added, the total can reach $4,000.
What is a Mastermind?
Many life coaches refer to their coaching sessions as Mastermind events. Self help author Napoleon Hill popularized the concept with his book Think and Grow Rich.
Hill recommended that his readers create groups of likeminded people which he called a “master mind” to pursue personal and intellectual growth.
Hills writings, which popularized the law of attraction, have been embraced by both televangelists and occult practitioners.
Wikipedia explains: “The law of attraction is the New Thought spiritual belief that positive or negative thoughts bring positive or negative experiences into a person’s life.”
In his own books, which are popular among pastors and Christian leaders, Maxwell has frequently quoted Hill’s works. Pastor Craft published an article last year referencing Hill. And other life coaches who promote their work to Christians leaders also cite Hill’s work.
This article was originally published by Trinity Foundation.
Barry Bowen is a staff member of Trinity Foundation, a public nonprofit based in Dallas, Texas, that has been tracking religious fraud and helping victims for over 30 years.
English 
Spanish 
10 Responses
The phrase “wealthy pastor” is an oxymoron. No one should get rich from spreading the Gospel. One cannot serve two masters.
Payday someday by the righteouss judge who had nowhere to lay His head and was buried in another man’s tomb.
I’m very disappointed…they have no fear of their actions..no respect for God.🫣☹️🙏😇
Business people hire mentors all the time. I can see the need for Christian leaders to mentor Christian business people so that Christ is honored in the business world. Christian mentors could help answer questions like, “We have the right to take this action against this person, but is it the right thing to do?”
But then I think of the state of American evangelicalism today and it gives me second thoughts. Dave Ramsey probably mentors executives. I wonder if he as ever advised a CEO to forgive another’s debts or sell assets to give to the poor. I wonder if he has ever counseled a successful business owner to set aside a certain percentage of jobs for the disadvantaged or disabled.
I am so glad Barry wrote this piece. I have become aware over the last year of a number of pastors getting into the “life coaching” business and I hav been suspicious there are big bucks involved. Thank you!
On its face there is nothing wrong with life coaching, assuming it’s done correctly. The clinical field of therapy has been under attack for decades because of the LGBT lobby – I know, I refused to get licensed after I was told by the state of CA I would have to bless homosexuality. I refused.
So there is a huge push NOW to do coaching. Ask Tim Clinton and the AACC who is now pushing coaching like never before. It’s because a lot of trained therapists can’t do their jobs and/or refuse to be bullied by the state and are being silenced or forced out of the field. As a result of that, I am a certified advanced Christian life coach – I’d rather be a licensed therapist, but that’s not possible with my ethics. All that to say, guys like John Maxwell make a FORTUNE selling their overpriced coaching programs to “business execs” – I know a handful of Maxwell coaches.
Pastors who do this have various reasons. Some don’t want to earn a masters and do the work, like I did. What scares me is not that they are choosing to make money another way, but how much they charge and also how clueless they are about trauma, family systems and abuse. Anyone can say they are a “coach” but few are good coaches who actually help people. And many of these guys are just there to sucker people into their neverending program of bloviating nothingness.
More pastors could be added to the list one of them being Edwin Raphael McManus pastor of Mosaic LA.
One last comment from me here is that there are “Only big bucks” if you’re a business player. The people I know who are in the field are barely making anything, myself included. I know a pretty good female influencer who has taken over a decade to figure out how to make a living at it and she’s doing well. But that took time and she didn’t ride on the coattails of Maxwell or anyone else.
Nothing wrong with mentoring, coaching or pastoring. And being compensated for one’s talent.
But ministry is generally a full-time job with late-night calls from hospitals, jails and funeral chapels. This article address the so-called elephant in the room:
“By offering their time for life and business coaching, it raises questions about whether these sessions are accounted as paid days off from a salaried role funded by church or ministry supporters.”
How do these pastors find time to operate their side hustles? Most ministers have trouble balancing work and family life without other obligations. Are they fully devoted to the needs of their flocks, or are their loyalties divided between church and business? Are they employed on a part-time basis by small congregations that cannot afford to pay sufficient wages for staff? Or located in very high cost-of-living areas where a spouse must also work? And shouldn’t some of the pastors’ extra income be returned to churches that, by providing salaries and benefits, developed the skills and reputations now offered for hire?
I’ve been a preacher for a couple decades. I have always struggled financially because of the salary given by the church I serve. Thus, I have compensated by substitute teaching one day a week, driving uber, amongst other things (just to keep the bills paid.) Most of my colleagues’ stories are the same. And yes, I do counseling/coaching weekly (for free), because our flock want the preacher’s advice, so I give it. I’ve never once even thought about charging for that part of the ministry. (Admittedly, people take advantage of the free nature of that, and don’t honor the preacher’s time.)
At the same time, I appreciate this article, cause there is a select 1% of preachers who do stuff like this. I don’t mind them making side money, as long as they continue to shepherd their flock. I think we all know the answer to that is “no.” That’s one of my struggles with some of the megachurch models. The lead guy is so hands-off, he’s no longer shepherding. Money is driving his thoughts more than people. 98% of churches/preachers are doing good things. I get it, there’s a select few amount of churches in the American system that is simply non-Gospel-driven. And it makes me sad. Boy, I can’t imagine how sad it makes heaven. I digress.