Penny-Pinching People to Hell

Okay, I’ve got to get this off my chest.  The church is not called to save dollars!  It’s called to save souls!  We can either spend all of our time trying to keep lose change or we can invest ourselves in changing lost lives.  The goal of every church should be to be penniless the day Christ returns.

Good Stewardship is Often Misunderstood

I certainly understand that we need to be good stewards with what the Lord gives us but stewardship does not automatically mean doing everything the cheapest, crappiest way possible in the name of the Lord.  Many times, the Lord calls us to love expansively AND expensively.  He calls us to spend ourselves, and our funds, on behalf of others.

Fish Stick Mentality

If you care about someone and invite them over for dinner, you don’t feed them fish sticks.  You make something nice to serve them.  Unfortunately, often in church settings, people have this weird fish stick mentality and they honestly believe that they holy thing to do is to be as cheap as possible.  Again, I’m not saying that we need to be serving lobster and steak all the time in our churches but there’s more to life than fish sticks.

Does Your Budget Make Too Much Sense?

At C3 one year, Ed Young said that if a business man can look at your church budget and understand it then you probably aren’t budgeting correctly!

We are called to invest the temporal in the eternal.  Our budgets should statements of faith.

Uncle B

Growing up, I had a great-uncle that we called Uncle B.  He was a nice enough fellow.  He never married and he lived a long life.  He lived in the same house for a long, long time.  I always enjoyed visiting him except that his house was so very cold in the winter.  He seldom turned the heat on and there was almost no food in the house.  I remember looking at his empty refrigerator and feeling sorry for him.  I would wonder at times why my family members wouldn’t help him out.  He loved peppermint sticks and they would occasionally bring him a small bag on them but that was it.  It seemed sort of cruel to me.

It was later in my life that I learned that Uncle B actually had money but he was too scared to spend any of it so he lived as if he was desperately poor.  I fear that many of our churches in America today are like Uncle B.  They act as if they are some of the poorest churches in the world when they’ve got money in the bank.

Use What You Have for the Lord

Let us determine to use what we have to further the Kingdom and change lives.  Let’s invest our talents instead of burying them.  Don’t let money or the fear of lack keep you from doing what God has called you to do.