You want me to manage what? My Money

Not only is it tough to talk about money in the church, but really in any situation. There is just something touchy about the subject in general. We all have guilt about some places where we spend money that others don’t. We all have places where we make cuts that others don’t. No one else truly knows our money situation. We make decisions regarding money everyday, but yet we know our financial position can change at any moment. Remember back to week one when we talked about the body? A sudden crazy disease could change our financial situation overnight, and every financial principal we have would be sacrificed to save our loved one. Just like with the body, there are ways the world has influenced us to think about money. This week we ask, “How does God want me to think about money?”

My parents set a good foundation for me about giving to God. I knew giving was important. Once I set it as a practice in my life, it became natural. I remember being excited after confirmation to get offering envelopes. I felt like I was truly an adult. Once the money went in the plate, it quickly moved out of my mind. I don’t even remember filling out most of the checks. Sure, I had questions about giving when it came to birthday money or graduation gifts. That was probably the biggest challenge for me to figure out. But then a new challenge came that I never anticipated. I knew growing up that the giving I was doing was helping to pay the pastor.  Well, now I was a pastor.

Somewhere along the way, giving had gotten more complex than it was when I was young. Everybody has bills, and everybody’s mind is getting slammed with excuses not to give. We all have stories, pastor or not, why someone else should give. You may think it is a no brainer that pastors give to their church, but as graduation and ordination day comes closer for Seminary guys, many are asking where should they give. This is a big question even for our fieldworkers (when they are brave enough to ask). In Seminary it is easy to claim to be a poor student, or that you have too much debt to pay down. But some guys raise the question, should I give to my fieldwork congregation or send it to my home congregation? On vicarage, students really don’t make that much, so then they ask if they should be giving it back to the same church that is paying them? As I entered my first couple churches as a youth pastor, where youth budgets are tight, it seemed to make sense to pay for youth expenses out of my own money, consider it offering, and just say I’ll figure it out at the end of the month. Yet, I always felt uneasy about this. During a conversation with some of my co-workers, they said something powerful, “I think you just pray about it, set your giving, and trust God.”

There are all kinds of fears in this world about running out of money. There are fears of how to prepare for retirement. There are fears about how to pay for weddings and college. There are pressures by commercials to live up to some American dream. This week our text is one of the most misquoted passages in all of Scripture. Yet Scripture is clear, “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” It isn’t money that is all kinds of evil, it is the love of money. This is an important distinction because it affects our mindset. If money is the root of all kinds of evil, but we still have to use money, we don’t know what to do or how to handle it. We can easily write it off saying, “I guess Scripture didn’t know we were going to need to use money.” But that’s not true, so having a clear distinction between money and the love of money is important.  Do you have a love of money? Can you part with it, or is it a passionate focus for you? This week we take time to ask what roadblocks are in our way when we talk about money and giving. We pray that God would lead us to be givers who trust Jesus will provide, and see the joy in giving.