Money, Money, Money!

I was reading an article by a popular pastor and church that said they needed almost 1 million dollars to finish out the year not being in the red.  They said that donations were down that month and there needed to cover deficits.  Now, a flurry of ideas popped into my mind, but the one that I think was most founded and best to share was how prosperous times can often elevate our sense of “need”- and how that translates to the church.

We need to experience lowness

When we think of needs, it’s often defined by how well the economy of our country is doing.  Nobody thinks of living in a shack if jobs are plenty and pay checks are cushioned.  You would only think of living in a shack if you were in such dire situations- let’s say that you were lost in the wilderness and a storm was moving in and you found a lone shack to hunker in.  That shack becomes our necessity.  We would thank God for finding such a shack.  It is enough.  Ask that same person if a shack is enough when they have a steady job paying a decent salary, and that answer changes.  The fact is, we need to experience lowness to get a real sense of what our needs are.

The Church’s overhead

Let me first clarify that by “Church” I am talking about local churches.  Now, I don’t think that we have enough information to critique specific churches on how they use their money.  We can’t know for sure and we don’t have enough information to levy any charges specifically.  However, I think we can speak from a broad perspective, and it’s easy to see how our culture’s view (especially American culture, since I live in it) on wealth and needs affects how we operate the Church.

Back to our “shack in the wilderness” analogy- if the Church were facing tremendous peril like much of the early church did, I think we’d have a different view on what’s necessary.  I think we’d see less of the 1 million dollar “need” and would focus on the true need to actually do the duties of the Church in proclaiming the glory of the risen Christ.  If the Church were in dire straits, it would call attention to the need of simplicity- but not for simplicity’s sake- a way of church life that’s not dramatically changed by a change in economics.  I think that we have such heavy reliance on economics that the dynamic of our church lives would radically be altered if the economics suddenly spiraled.

Building up vs building out

I don’t think that the answer to the problem of Church’s facing financial crunches is to do church in a shack.  I think that we can use abundance to the glory of God.  And I don’t think that mega churches or things like that are even wrong.  I think there will be times when God raises up a mega church (the first Church was pretty mega!).   But one thing that I think causes a problem for us in the area of our overhead is the natural desire to build up instead of building out.  I think we can see this in our lives- we’d rather upgrade the car, house, the computer, the TV, the cell phone- than keep it modest and share out the wealth to others to the glory of God.  We practice this personally, so it’s no wonder that we can spiritualize this principle, take it to the church and have a fascination for building bigger churches rather than building out and planting new ones.  I think this is one thing that we can do in aiming to require less just to survive.