Profits & Prophets, Episode 4: Curtis Hunnicutt

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Episode 4 is Curtis Hunnicutt, who runs a software company that helps missionaries raise support, plus a ministry doing clean water projects in Kenya and India, out of Sweden, of all places.

Curtis Hunnicutt was twenty years old and chasing money when his best friend Anthony, six foot nine and headed for the NBA, got diagnosed with leukemia and dropped to a hundred thirty five pounds. Anthony wasn’t scared of dying. He spent that time investing in the other kids on the cancer ward, while Curtis fell apart. One night on Anthony’s basement floor, Curtis read the Sermon on the Mount alone at midnight and gave his life to Jesus right there.

Curtis and his wife Matilda met at Hillsong College in Australia. They live in Sweden now, running a software company that helps missionaries raise support, alongside a ministry doing clean water projects in Kenya and India. The tension from that night never left. He’s an entrepreneur, building things, talking himself out of carrying it the way everyone else does. He keeps returning to a line from the theologian Dallas Willard: “We believe in Christ, but we don’t believe him.”

Three months after selling their house and buying a twenty eight thousand dollar RV to live on the road with church planters, Curtis got a text message. A man they knew had broken into his brother’s house, shot and killed his sister in law and his brother, then shot Curtis’s ten year old nephew four times before turning the gun on himself. His three year old niece was in the house. Curtis calls it a season of God “fortifying” his family, the same season that became the ministry he runs today.

Highlights

“After a while, a white sand beach is just another white sand beach.”

“They strangle each other, they pray together, they read scripture, they serve the poor. That’s church.”

“We believe in Christ, but we don’t believe him.”

“What is more of this actually going to produce in my life?”

If you’d rather skim

• 00:57 Meet Anthony: six foot nine, Black, headed for the NBA, married to Curtis’s opposite in every way

• 01:26 The leukemia diagnosis, and a hundred thirty five pounds

• 02:53 Reading the Sermon on the Mount alone on Anthony’s basement floor at midnight

• 04:50 Selling the house, buying a twenty eight thousand dollar RV, and “grapple chapels”

• 05:46 The brother, the text message, the murder-suicide

• 06:17 How that season became a ministry doing clean water projects in Kenya and India

• 08:02 The cliffhanger: does Anthony live? (And the two tall Swedes.)

• 11:42 “A white sand beach is just another white sand beach”

• 18:04 Dallas Willard’s version of the gospel: a kingdom you already have access to

• 24:21 The friend making twenty million a year who started drinking at noon

• 25:19 Why he built an autism center instead of a bar

• 27:23 What it cost him: the friends who stopped calling

About Curtis

Curtis Hunnicutt runs a software company that helps missionaries raise support, and a ministry doing clean water projects in Kenya and India alongside some church planting and coaching. He lives in Sweden with his wife, Matilda, and their three kids, six, four, and two.

He spent his twenties running sales teams and chasing money before his best friend’s leukemia diagnosis, and later his brother’s murder, pushed him toward planting a church and eventually starting the ministry he runs now.

• Substack:

• LinkedIn

• Oasis Project

• NGHBR

Profits & Prophets is a passion project. No sponsors, no paid tiers, no guest fees. Just conversations I wanted to have anyway.

Profits & Prophets, Episode 3: Ben Ooms

Also available on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube (video)

Episode 3 runs the show backwards. Usually I’m talking to business people trying to live out their faith at work. Ben Ooms is a full-time campus missionary at Purdue who joined LinkedIn nine months ago and started thinking like a founder. (His title on there is literally “missionary at Purdue,” which is not a thing you scroll past.)

His students intern at Google, Microsoft and Exxon over the summer. “They’re probably making almost half of what we do in a year during the summer.” Ben is the one discipling them about money. Purdue has fifty eight thousand students and, he says, the occasional Lamborghini in the lot. He’s twelve years into Cru but only got on campus this April, after a year of support raising. He asks students bluntly what they did with what they made. He never asks how much.

He joined LinkedIn to find people to meet with while raising support. His job, it turned out, maps onto business more than he expected. The pitching, the cold emails, the pipeline. “I can relate a lot more to the corporate world, the entrepreneurs, than I thought I could.” The thing he kept coming back to is the handoff. He gets students for two to four years, and then “they leave the college campus and they go into your world.” He wants working believers to be the landing spot.

His ministry partners give between 5 dollars and 750 a month. It goes into a Cru account, and salary, taxes and health insurance come out of it, so when less comes in than goes out, the paycheck is short. He’s still turned money down. A man who’d known him since childhood sat with him in Purdue’s Union, asked questions that felt like control, and wanted certain things taught. Ben said no. He has two kids, four and two.

Highlights

“I have a friend who might have been a freshman, going to a church plant, and they send around the offering basket. And he’s like, I don’t have much, but this is what I have. And he put in an Arby’s coupon.”

“I know they’re going to be making money. I don’t ask how much, but I wanna ask them to trust the Lord with their finances too.”

“It felt like there were strings attached, and I had to be like, thank you for the offer, but I don’t think this is best right now for you to give to our ministry.”

“I only have students for two to four, maybe six years. And then they leave the college campus and they go into your world.”

“I wanna be the bridge from campus faith to corporate calling.”

If you’d rather skim

• 00:42 Why a campus missionary joined LinkedIn, and the switch from getting to giving

• 03:50 Twelve years with Cru, a wife who does the same job, and what the work actually is

• 05:22 Fifty eight thousand students, twenty of them at his place each week for Nehemiah

• 06:06 My question about needing money before you’re allowed to go serve God

• 09:50 The Lamborghinis in the Purdue lot

• 11:52 The Arby’s coupon, and the church that framed it

• 13:54 What his students make in a summer versus what he makes in a year

• 16:16 Me, my first paycheck, four digits, and no idea what to do with any of it

• 19:43 Arrow prayers, and my complaint that it’s the right answer

• 22:51 Support raising as seed funding, and pitching the greatest product ever made

• 24:35 When the paycheck comes up short

• 28:06 “Have you ever turned down support?” I was not expecting a story.

• 31:00 His actual ask, and it isn’t money

About Ben

Ben Ooms is a campus missionary with Cru at Purdue, where he and his wife Hannah find spiritually interested students, share the gospel with them, and disciple student leaders one on one and in small groups. He graduated from Purdue, spent most of twelve years on staff in the South, and moved back to West Lafayette last year. Ten thousand freshmen arrive in three weeks.

He’s asking for three things, in this order: people who’ll pray (he sends an update every one to three weeks with a prompt), people who’ll give, and people already working in a field who are willing to be a landing spot for a student after graduation. That last one is the new idea and the reason he’s on LinkedIn at all.

• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ben-ooms-with-cru/

• benooms.com

Profits & Prophets is a passion project. No sponsors, no paid tiers, no guest fees. Just conversations I wanted to have anyway.

Also available on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube (video)

Episode 2 is Elisha McFarlin, a CPA in Tennessee who is building an accounting firm for the specific purpose of moving his family to Kenya. I found him on LinkedIn and watched his profile slowly stop reading like an accounting firm’s profile, which is part of why I wanted to talk to him.

He and his wife spent last year raising support to move overseas. Moving costs got covered. The monthly income didn’t. So he quit his job, left five years of CPA firm work behind, and started his own practice in December. The organization they’re going to, Naomi’s Village, houses a hundred orphans and educates five hundred students. What they told him they needed on site was a CPA.

For two months he marketed himself like any other remote accountant, while quietly raising support from churches on the side. Two columns. Then he made his whole page about why he was actually doing it. That week a stranger messaged him about a nonprofit and became a client he still has. “Once I brought them together, doors immediately started opening.” There are six hundred and fifty thousand active CPAs in the US, and he’ll tell you plenty of them are better at the work. “People are choosing to work with me because of how transparent I am about my mission, my heart, and my work.”

It costs him. Older clients want coffee and a phone call, so he tells them upfront he’s remote only and sends them referrals to other firms. I asked if he ever second-guesses it. “You mean like every week?” He used to get paid twice a month. Now he plans a few weeks out and works backward to a departure date. “I’m not at the point yet where I’m able to plan four years in advance.”

Highlights

“She said that she really feels God is calling her to move overseas with her future family at some point. So if you’re ever interested in vetting a potential spouse, that’s a great way to throw something at them and see how they respond.”

“He was like, surely not. Certainly I didn’t hear you correctly when you said that this is helping you launch.”

“My mom says it well sometimes. She says being broke never helped anyone.”

“There are six hundred and fifty thousand CPAs in the US who are active. It’s very, very, very likely that you will find someone who has more experience, who is a better tax planner. But people are choosing to work with me because of how transparent I am about my mission, my heart, and my work.”

“I wouldn’t count yourself out just because you don’t get up on the stage at church on Sunday.”

If you’d rather skim

• 00:40 Five years of Tennessee tax season, and the conversation seven years ago that redirected all of it

• 01:19 His wife’s overseas test, and my one-word review of how he handled it

• 03:08 Naomi’s Village, and the town where two Trans-African highways cross

• 03:38 Support raising comes up short, so he leaves the salary

• 06:57 The plan he had in college: pause the career, be the guy along for the ride

• 08:42 A random job at twenty two, running a bookkeeping team in Uganda over Zoom

• 10:29 What it has actually cost, and the prospects he refers to other CPAs

• 12:43 “You mean like every week?”

• 16:38 The week he made it public, and the stranger who is still a client

• 19:01 Me on why I kept my agency and my ministry in separate boxes for two years

• 26:06 Money as a tool, the parable of the talents, and where the 10% goes

• 29:22 You don’t have to be Hudson Taylor to be useful on a mission field

• 34:17 Pizzas for Jesus

About Elisha

Elisha McFarlin is a CPA and the founder of Everstead Accounting, which does bookkeeping, fractional controller work, cash flow forecasting, and tax prep for small businesses and nonprofits, run entirely remote. The firm gives 10% back to organizations doing kingdom work.

He spent five years at CPA firms in Tennessee before starting his own at the end of last year. He, his wife, and their daughter are heading to Kenya to serve with Naomi’s Village for at least three to five years. He’s quick to respond and would like to hear from anyone interested!

• follow Elisha on LinkedIn

• check out his company at eversteadaccounting.com

• follow his missionary journey at mcfarlinsonmission.com

Profits & Prophets is a passion project. No sponsors, no paid tiers, no guest fees. Just conversations I wanted to have anyway.

Subscribe now

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Foreword

Super excited to share with you the first episode of Profits & Prophets!

For context, this was something I felt increasingly called to as I was connecting with people on LinkedIn. God really opened up random doors, and I was having all these great conversations.

Originally, it started out with me being curious about how other Christians in business wrestle with the tension between money and God. I think it’s one of the oldest and biggest tensions in the Bible. I started out trying to see how other people who are a little bit ahead of me were thinking as they navigated that tension personally. I’m one of the only entrepreneurs in my church, so it was hard for me to find people to talk about this with, as most people don’t have experience.

Through that, I realized this common theme: everyone I talked to always felt a bit insecure, like they didn’t have much figured out, but then they would drop this amazing insight that I thought was really helpful. I kept having these conversations again and again, and I realized it would be great to share these conversations and encourage each other to be able to run our businesses with integrity and intentionality.

Personally, I don’t know if my business would ever get so big that it becomes a significant temptation, but I’d rather not wait until then to find out I was woefully unprepared. That was the heart behind it.

Joel here was the inspiration behind this podcast, as he invited me to share my testimony on his YouTube channel, and I actually had a great time. I actually never listened to podcasts, so that was one of my first experiences. I realized it was just a friendly conversation, and I’m having these all the time already. I figured, why not just record them and share it with others? No idea where this will go, but there was enough interest behind it. A lot of people actually signed up to be interviewed to share their thoughts and stories on this matter, so I guess we’ll keep going until God tells me to stop!

P.S. I just added everyone to this new section of the newsletter but if it’s not your cup of boba, you can always unsubscribe to just this section and continue to get my other pieces on How to make less money and AI for Jesus.

Without further ado…

Joel spent five years building a boxing channel, and then shut it down in a single afternoon. It had started as two evenings a week on top of his day job, then three, then four, then seven nights a week with one or two interviews a night plus five-hour live watch-alongs on the weekend. His wife started calling herself a boxing widow. And it was working. A sponsor was circling, there was talk of merch, someone was about to come on full time. Then he heard a voice say “now, that’s it. You stop, you’re working for me.” He told the guys who helped him run the channel that God had told him to stop. “They must have thought I was an absolute lunatic.”

He quit in year five, right as the money was arriving, which is the most expensive point he could have picked. I asked him what that was like and he didn’t describe it as a loss. He described the five years as an apprenticeship: streaming, YouTube, how to hold a conversation with a stranger on camera. Skills he built interviewing boxers, now used on a channel where people share the worst parts of their story live, often for the first time. He came back to the naming a few times too. It’s Pieces of Jesus, not Pieces of Joel, and he was blunt about why: “it would have failed miserably.” He put that against the more common route, building a platform first and adding faith once you’re big enough to survive the hit. “Mine’s in the title. I’ve got nowhere to hide from day one.”

He makes no money from it. He works a nine to five in customer service taking complaints all day, and he prays before every call, just give me the words to say. The subscriber count isn’t in the thousands and he knows it. His measure was “he left the 99 to go for one, he didn’t leave 999,000.”

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Highlights

“I literally turn up, I press live and the Holy Spirit takes over. It’s not scripted. I don’t have anything written down. I don’t even know people’s stories half the time. I just know their name.”

“It’s called Pieces of Jesus and not Pieces of Joel, because it would have failed miserably.”

“I’m not the brightest person in the world, so God has to be very clear. If you’re in a shopping centre and there’s a really low hanging sign, he hangs it a little bit lower so I walk into it to see what it read.”

“Jesus didn’t walk the earth and walk into comfortable situations, did he? If he was here now, he wouldn’t be in the churches, he’d be out on the streets.”

“Let’s not just lean on him when we need. Let’s lean on him and hug him when things are great too.”

If you’d rather skim

• 00:58 Joel’s story, and why it was droplets rather than a lightning bolt

• 02:21 Five years of boxing interviews, seven nights a week

• 04:16 The voice, and the decision to stop

• 08:13 What it actually cost him, and how his team reacted

• 13:49 Where he draws his lines, and why he doesn’t shut critics down

• 15:18 Faith-first vs. platform-first, and why the name mattered

• 22:44 The nine to five, and praying before every phone call

• 24:41 Social media as a mission field instead of a cesspool

• 27:54 My laptop dies. Joel is unimpressed 🤣

• 31:50 Guests sharing their testimony live, for the first time, to family who didn’t know

About Joel

Joel Green is based in Essex, England, and runs Pieces of Jesus, a live channel where people share their testimonies, their good news, and their struggles, usually without any script and often without having told the story before.

Before that he spent five years running a boxing channel, which he shut down overnight. He works a nine to five in customer service. He’s available for a conversation or for prayer, and says so to anyone who asks.

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-green-50987539b/

• Pieces of Jesus - https://www.youtube.com/@PiecesofJesus/featured

If you got something out of this, go subscribe to his channel!

Profit & Prophet is a passion project. No sponsors, no paid tiers, no guest fees. Just conversations I wanted to have anyway.

Subscribe now