For the Love of Money

Maybe it’s a different world from where I stand.

I was talking with a good friend of mine during my recent travels across the country. She had moved the spring before from northern Virginia and commented on my relocation as well. “You don’t belong there”. She expressed her own observation at the area’s uncanny ability to ruin good people. The longer good people live there the more ruined they become. And while the person is still there, the quality of that person—their ambition, character, vibrancy—is lessened. It’s as if they loose perspective of what really matters in life. I think it’s a way of living that at once assuages our need and poisons our minds. And really what I think it is, is money.

In northern Virginia money buys us the life, the style, and the status that we need. There is plenty of it too. Some of the richest counties in America are in northern Virginia. The culture is rich and so the possibilities of being rich are endless and the status game says we should pursue such an end at all cost.

The problems of a rich culture are two fold. First that it ties our perspective into being rich like everyone else. Suddenly our lives become about wealth, gaining wealth, and living wealthy instead of living well. And second, in amongst all of the wealthy ‘comfortable’ people we loose perspective of need and are, as they say, fat and happy, and unable to see reality outside of our comfortable wealth. We don’t need God or people we have comfort and so does everyone else.

Because of the outside social pressures to be rich and the inner comfort gained from being rich our hearts become desensitized to the voice and call of God which often leads us to suffering and sacrifice. The exchange is, of course, for his eternal kingdom lived out incarnationally here on the earth. But who needs that? We have three services on the weekend and enough electronic equipment to rival a small film studio! Who wants God’s kingdom here on earth when you can have that?

It’s easy to pick on the mega church model and say that they love money. Even the unsaved think they love money. But the truth is that other people don’t love money. The truth is that WE love money. You and I living the missional life love money and we know this by the way we attack anyone who tries to challenge us on tithing. The instinctual bitter rebellion is a symptom of our idolatry. We know it’s wrong, otherwise we wouldn’t be so emotional, but we deny it anyway. We come up with reasons for why we are justified. We have two children. We own a home. We give in so many other ways….the list goes on but really it’s just a list of excuses to let us keep our idol. Let us continue to love the money that keeps us safe and comfortable. Satan doesn’t have to attack us—He just has to bless us.

Like an inoculation, a culture of wealth assuages even the most passionate, such that over time the authority and power we held as sons and daughters of Christ is given up. We don’t need authority—we are happy being complacent in our money.

That’s why I think it’s a different world from where I stand.

Oh, trust me, I love money too. But from where I stand I see a life that is defined by more than my status or my income. I see a kingdom where God provides for his children’s daily bread—literally. And as I watch people sacrifice and live in poverty for the kingdom of God but still not go uncared for I want to leave my money behind. I set up an automatic debit for my tithe. I don’t want to miss a month of giving. I don’t want to be lazy—I want to be about the kingdom of God. And from where I stand, that’s worth more than giving my future children ‘everything I didn’t have’, or going on that great vacation every year.

I think this must be the real world however different it is from another perspective.

So here’s to giving up the spoiled, desensitized, life. I want to feel hunger if it means investing in the kingdom. I’m sure the investment is worth it. My hope is that you’ll join me.

Sex and Money: Creating a culture of Giving

The Sex Taboo         

I grew up in the kind of church where you don’t talk about sex. It wasn’t ever the elephant in the room either. It’s like no one in my church had sex. They must have all adopted their children because as far as anyone was concerned they had all, as Christians, matured out of having sex. The first hint I had of it was in youth group when they made sure to lay down the law’s concerning appropriate and inappropriate behavior. Clichéd sayings like ‘boys are blue, girls are pink—don’t make purple’ were thrown out as clever ways of talking about sex without actually talking about sex. It was well understood that sex was bad and that it was private, and the stigma and the shame is stilled carried with us today. We don’t want to talk about it.

I think that’s something I’m getting used to in Missional Community living. How open they are of talking about sex. In some ways I think they go too far. In the midst of trying to appear cool, and hip (‘cause we’re open like that) they lose the ultimate value of what sex is. However, I definitely appreciate the open candid conversations (even if a little flippant and juvenile) over the absolute silence and avoidance like that of the old church culture. That is what is so awesome about being in community. Leaders can create a culture where the difficult subjects to talk about can be talked about. We live on mission with one another, why be ashamed of what we all know is going on? Why not just get it out in the open and experience real community through intimacy? Great!

The Money Taboo

This is why the topic of money is so interesting to me. It doesn’t seem very difficult for leaders to establish a culture where people can talk openly about sex (the huge taboo topic of the old church). But when it comes to talking openly about money, how people spend it, that they should be tithing, etc…it is much more difficult to bring it to the table of the community to discuss and exhort. Instead it’s talked about (much like sex was) in back rooms and private meetings. It’s almost like people don’t have money…they don’t have problems with it, they don’t want help with it, they don’t have any to give. Money doesn’t exist in the missional communities of God.

It is not hard for me to recall the stereotyped televangelist who promised that God would make me rich if I was obedient and made him rich. And I think as leaders in the missional movement we want to avoid that image as much as possible. We see the waste of the traditional and more consumerist churches and want to stray away from it—as far away as we can, even to the point of avoiding it altogether. Members of the missional community are happy to let us avoid it too. Burnt out from televangelists and churches that mismanage money, they feel that what they give in time and other resources (food, rides, leadership) exempts them from having to give their money too.  And what about those pesky pastors who are leading the missional community but not working like the rest of us? If they want a salary to pay for their time and investment they should get a real job, instead of expecting the community to provide for them.  (so there!)

            Leaders, uncertain how to respond, choose to keep silent rather than push the issue for fear of appearing greedy. Money should be no object in the Kingdom of God right? The problem, of course, is that it is an object. It is a tool, and if used improperly it hinders the growth of the kingdom and the believer. Leaders, then, ought to be the frame workers of this debate, inviting others into not just a culture of mission but also a culture of giving. So why is it hard for us, as leaders, to do that?

The shame and stigma around doing things for money remains. People who do things for money seem insincere or greedy in their relationships. Pastors who are asking to get support from their congregations are grouped into the greedy televangelist stereotype. They just want to serve the kingdom for money! Money management can also be a point of insecurity for the independent visionary type drawn by the missional community movement. It feels shameful to come asking for money—especially if we perceive people unwilling to give it. We’d rather just ‘grit and bare it’ than face being judged by others according to the stigma surrounding asking people for tithes or support.

The result is that when people have a need they won’t talk about it. And when no one tithes, it’s not our business to ask why. And thus money has become what sex was ten or twenty years ago: A topic instilling shame, defensiveness, and awkwardness for any who dare broach the topic in their communities. It almost seems more productive to just leave it out altogether out of fear.

As leader we need to change the narrative of our communities to be not just about serving the vision, but giving towards the vision as well. Yes we need their participation but we also need their money. The message of missional living is to become a disciple of Christ, that means to serve the community but it also means to give to the community. This means as we invite people into discipleship they should also be invited into giving (monetarily). We don’t force, there is no dues, just vision and an expressed need.

The discomfort of that sentiment is the entirety of the stigma, shame, and lies that we have adopted in our church culture coming to the surface.  The next few posts will address what I see are the main lies in an attempt to open the floor for honest reflection and discussion both on and offline.