Growing Pains 2 - coming to terms with money

This week in our “Growing Pains Series” we took up the issue of money. Preachers by and large (and I include myself in this) almost always feel awkward when talking about money in sermons. I think I know why. It has become part of the culture of Christian churches in the US (and maybe elsewhere) to talk about money once a year when it becomes obvious that more donations are needed to make the budget. Invariably, the preacher looks to texts that have to do with money and giving in the New Testament and then strains to make them work as a motivation for the people of the church to give more to the church. The problem with this is that most of the exhortations around giving money to the church in the New Testament have to do with specific situations of need, often associated with the needs of the poor. For example. the passages so often used in sermons on giving to the church are taken from 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 in which Paul expends and impressive amount of words about the profound needs of the impoverished church in Jerusalem. It is quite likely that the greater portion of the money would be used to help the poor in the church.

Further complicating the matter for preachers in our contemporary setting is the fact that there is no such thing as a church institution in the New Testament that looks like what we have today - with a professional clergy, paid staff, buildings to maintain, space to rent, etc. Moreover there is no specific language in the New Testament that would easily translate into an admonition for people to give 10% of their income to the “budget” of the local church. Having said that it should also be noted that it is not unlikely that many in the New Testament church community gave quite a bit more than 10 percent to help with the needs of the poor and the ongoing support of the apostles and their ministry. The problem is that we don’t know exactly what all of this looked like so it is just hard to make specific applications from that world to ours.

What is clear from the teaching of Jesus and the early church leaders is that the money and material resources of Jesus’ followers were to be available for the work of God’s kingdom and, in particular, the needs of the poor. Part of Jesus’ fulfillment of the words of the prophet - I have come to preach good news to the poor (Luke 4) - would come to fulfillment through God’s spirit creating a new humanity of people who looked not their own interests but the interests of others (Philippians 2). Through the new birth the Christian is awakened to a life of liberation from the being a slave of Mammon and is made free to serve God and meet the needs of their neighbors Mathew 6). The Christian’s relationship to money points to God’s economy in the world to come in that she comes to view her wealth not first by what she craves that she does not have but according to the needs of those around her (consider Barnabas an example of this when he liquidates assets for the good of the community - Acts 4).

Questions for discussion:

1. What sort of thought process do you use to help you think about how much you should give to the needs of others? Do you set a % and let it go at that? If you do, is that a good idea?

2. Giving to the needs of the poor is different in our cultural setting. How do go about giving to the needs of the poor?

3. Is it an imperative for all Christians to live simply and say no to some or all luxuries? How do you decide what a luxury is? What about the person who has a person on staff taking care of her home who hears a sermon on simplifying her life that causes her to dismiss her staff person simply because she feels it is a luxury she should not have but one she can responsibly afford - thereby making her employee unemployed. Was that a wise and loving move?