money, money, money
Ah money! You know I am becoming convinced that money is a huge challenge for the Church. We seem to have bought into the idea that it is a subject we can’t talk about or even explore. When we do so we are so much more comfortable making motherhood statements or talking about someone else’s attitude towards money.
And then I see Jesus talking about money quite a bit. I see Jesus saying that the way we use our money is a spiritual issue not only an economic one. When he says that “where your treasure is, your heart is” - I gulp because he is talking about me!
I preached about money on Sunday. It is always an interesting subject. Here were some of the tensions that I explored in how we approach money at Churches - perhaps you have some more.
Tension # 1 - Money is private v’s Jesus teaching on money being a core issue for discipleship
Tension #2 - Collection for Church’s costs v’s offering to God
Tension #3 - Fund raising v’s Spiritual Discipline
Tension #4 - Comfortable v’s uncomfortable
Why is it that we always want to talk about the first group?
August 23rd, 2004 at 7:15 pm
tithing v it all being Gods
August 24th, 2004 at 12:13 am
This is most certainly true…
For about the last 4 years, we have been on a long, hard adventure in stewardship. The previous lead pastor publicly stated from the pulpit, “Pastors should not talk about money,” and for his 12-year pastorate, that was that. Needless to say, “stewardship” was an issue with a massive “negative charge” to it. The mentality was fundraising, for the sake of meeting the church’s budget, and it’s private, and if anyone felt uncomfortable about it, then obviously the church was doing something wrong.
After almost 5 years now of teaching whole-life stewardship, the joy of giving, the need to sacrifice for our spiritual health; giving positive examples, empowering laity to speak confidently and humbly about money, we’ve made huge progress. Not only is giving incredibly higher than it was, but people have much more positive attitudes towards stewardship.
I’ll warn you, though: it was a painful road. There were a lot of hurtful things said and done, especially at the beginning, to resist this trend. This is a powerful idol. Proceed with prayer, patience, and boldness.
Peace,
Evers
August 24th, 2004 at 12:52 am
Of course, part of the problem is that the only people who usually talk about stewardship or tithing are churches who:
a) aren’t meeting their budget; or
b) are in the middle of a building campaign
While it’s nice to talk about the pure motives, I suspect that we’re not being honest with ourselves.
And do you notice that you never hear about a church saying “we’ve got too much,” give your money to another charity this month?
August 24th, 2004 at 1:57 am
There has been a tendancy to view churches like corporations. In fact, most are incorporated for very good legal reasons: limited liability, in case someone slips on the stairs and tries to sue.
However, this reality has seeped into the mentality of the churches. They become long-lived, multigenerational - basically, immortal - institutions. The people who fill them are either ’staff/employees’ filling predefined offices, or they are ‘client/customer/patients.’ The difference between the church and the corporation, then, is that the church can’t compel the customers to pay.
Yet the church has the budgetary needs of a corporation: buildings, programs, salary. A church that isn’t meeting payroll and facility maintenance is thus ‘in the red.’ A church that is trying to expand may actually sell bonds, or hold some sort of IPO - issuing offices and honors to get peripheral members ‘more involved’ with a ’sense of ownership.’ This is church equity.
Many things need to be discussed, certainly, from the pulpit. Money is a big issue for people. People need to learn not only stewardship, but also generosity and financial independance (and spiritual freedom from financial idols).
But the churches themselves also need to learn about stewardship - and community.
The church needs to be rethought, to figure out what is the immortal organization and what is the temporal community - because there are clearly church ‘offices’ and so on - but that ecclesiology is too much even for a post of vast, unparalleled length.
The church should be a place that helps regulate ‘the ebb and flow of the tithe’ rather than a sinkhole for money. The reason that people giving charity, person to person (like on the street, to beggars) is a bad idea is that there are people gifted with wisdom for such a thing.
These people, in community, existed even among the disciples and apostles. They do nothing more and nothing less than take other people’s free gifts and help figure out who IN THE CHURCH COMMUNITY (not just random people) deserves to be on the ‘roll.’ Whatever the case, the early church never was in the business of providing welfare to non-christians - it is a trap that the liberal social gospel led to in the 1800s.
Already, this is a controversial concept. Things get more complex when one discusses church ‘missions’ including evangelism, worship, etc. These may demand facilities and staff.
Even in the early church, there were gifts taken to support the itinerant ministers who were far away (though, when near, they were simply housed by members and did ‘tent making’ to support themselves in part).
What facilities does a church need? What glorifies God? Many people reasonably conclude that the cathedrals glorify God - but the construction of St. Peter’s in Rome was so costly that it strained the resources of a church that basically controlled ALL OF WESTERN EUROPE! The fundraising for that one structure prompted Luther to initiate the reformation that shattered the church.
Now, we have cities with 50 church buildings or more, many of which are occupied by dead congregations filling 10% of the seats 1 day a week… but those are endowed into perpetuity. The full churches, on the other hand, are entering deep into debt because they feel they need bigger buildings. Something is out of balance. The early church didn’t even have special buildings - but
house churches are often a governance disaster, as power struggles coalesce over control of the building and facilities.
I agree, the original post brings up a few good tensions… but this topic taps into much bigger problems, including the mission of the church, church authority, and the basic conception of the church itself. It will be interesting to see if this can be discussed without becoming an ideological battle.
August 24th, 2004 at 10:10 am
One of the things that annoys me about this stuff is that the traditional model of the “pledge drive” or the “stewardship program” emphasises that the only time we talk about giving is when we are trying to talk about giving money to the church.
However, in a lot of ways we get away from the general idea that financial responsibility is a part of our spiritual disciplines, and as important a part as regular prayer, bible study and community building. At least that is the way that I think about it.
In our gen x congregations, our leadership is struggling with this idea - how do we approach the idea of the use of our money when we have these two aspects in tension. As a leadership we do have some questions about the financial sustainability of what we are doing, and about the need to support our broader church mission and ministry which is funded out of our giving. But at the same time, we want to communicate about the fact that consumerist selfishness in relation to money is a difficult thing to resist for many young adults who are earning decent wages for the first time. The former is an organisational question, the latter is a spiritual/cultural question.
August 24th, 2004 at 10:26 am
two things involved here.
1) we are stewards for God’s money so are we being good stewards?
2) The church is there to edify christians and to evangelise to pagans.
Is it doing that?
Sermons on money like any other topic should be regular to edify us in our attitude.
August 24th, 2004 at 11:26 am
Bryan, as a Church that has significant money in the bank (which we are using over the years for ministry) - we are still talking about the spiritual significance of giving.
August 24th, 2004 at 12:51 pm
I was talking about money and “prosperity”. the funny thing is I left my sermon notes at home and discovered that I had to do the whole sermon entitled “rich Dad poor Dad” without them. Somehow I managed … thank God. Thanks for listing out the 4 tensions you see in this matter.
August 24th, 2004 at 1:17 pm
one tension just popped in my head … how about GUILT v’s GRATITUDE
August 24th, 2004 at 1:33 pm
nice one Sivin. I will add that one and yours too Hamo. Any others?
August 24th, 2004 at 4:50 pm
I have just finnished a (subjective) annalysis of the written comments about Phil’s message and 92% were about “money is private”, “the Church’s costs”, “fundraising/planned giving programs” and “we want to feel comfortable”.
Only a handful of people talked about “offering to God” and “spiritual discipline” and no one had anything to say about “Jesus teaching on money being a core issue of discipleship” or “It is ok to be uncomfrotable”.
August 24th, 2004 at 11:07 pm
You pastors make me sick.
August 24th, 2004 at 11:39 pm
Only a handful of people talked about “offering to God” and “spiritual discipline” and no one had anything to say about “Jesus teaching on money being a core issue of discipleship” or “It is ok to be uncomfrotable”.
I thought that was a given.
September 22nd, 2004 at 3:07 pm
Lance,
Where did that come from??
It is a same when churches “pump up’ the giving message when money is low, but i have never been a member of a church that only preaches about money when that is the case. I have been fotunate i guess to be a part of churched that teeach the principle of giving, not just tithing but giving. And making sure that that principle is understood and doesnt just relate to money.
We are to prosper, and unless we are shown how, how will that happen?
We did have the unfortunate incident of a young pastor who got carried away with giving messages before the offering, and one week someone else did it, and instead of a ten minute message said “lets to give to God eh??”. More than doubled the offering.
People see their leaders heart. Whether it is to teach and train them and bless them and others, or to pay the bills. Either way, it is necessary. if you want to utilise a building, you got to pay for it. No emotion there. No spiritual principle. Thats practical.
God is so practical. And yet over and above the practical, he blesses us spiritually. Little principles, big pay-offs! (Thats a great sermon idea by the way…)