A hou$e in order

A hou$e in order

We must manage the organization where people gather to worship, be on mission, planting churches, sending mission teams around the world, supporting human resources, marketing, building permits, easements, fundraising, tax law, corporation regulations, irrigation, and fire codes are all part of creating a launching pad to raise up disciples who make disciples who make disciples. With such an enormous workload and such high stakes there are two pillars that every church must be concerned about. When a house has these two pilars in place, they can carry out their vision and mission. But only one and eventually it will fall, missing both and you should question why you are open.

Consider that half of Jesus’ parables, and many of his teachings and actions, reference money. We cannot naively gather our people, enjoy sweet fellowship, raise the rafters with our worship, preach until the altars are full, and yet not put our financial house in order. The foundation of our churches must be so firm that any financial, legal, or catastrophic storm cannot shake us. Storms come in all sizes. For a moment, can you picture what a storm might look like that just devastated a town in KY. A tornado leveled mass destructions for over a hundred miles. Imagine a financial storm like that in a church. What might such a storm look like?

Imagine a fictitious church where there were some people signing checks not paying attention to what they were signing, and another stealing tens of thousands of dollars, millions in debt, books not balanced, leaders not giving, but expecting everyone else to give… What you don’t have to imagine for very long is, if a church ever looked like this, they may not be around very long to continue giving generously, because their house is so out of order. Unless, God intervened and did a miracle of grace.

If a church culture like that were ever to exist, it could never give enough to missions to somehow right all that was wrong. That sort of thinking is similar to the prosperity gospel. Pastor David and I were discussing this today, in our pastor’s meeting. This “prosperity gospel” teaches that God wants believers to be physically healthy, materially wealthy, and personally happy and the more faith you have and the more you give the more you will be blessed. God does love a cheerful giver, but God expects his church to have its house together, and sometimes it takes drastic changes to get there so that we can guarantee to be a generous church for generations to come. You’d have to imagine that it might take a long time to get such a house in order because people don’t just volunteer that they are stealing and aren’t giving. Many people could just have this hope that someone else will fix it, or that the problem will just go away, but it will never go away, until it is brought into the light.

The late Christian leader Ed Cole said, “The characteristics of the kingdom emanate from the character of the King.” This same principle applies to how we handle money and multiple streams of revenue. When the pastor, elder, deacons, committee leaders, of a church exercise good stewardship, the congregation sees that example and will do the same. How hypictrical it would be to tell church members to keep their own houses in order when the church can’t seem to do it themselves.

As it’s been said, faith is caught, not taught and generosity and stewardship needs disciples modeling it for the church to really get it. Generosity isn’t always a private thing. In the book of Acts Barnabas was widely known for his generosity in the church. That sort of selfless generosity mobilizes and encourages the church. As ministry leaders model financial stewardship like Barnabas, those who are watching will “catch” the vision of generosity and financial health. It has to be caught and then implemented it in our own homes and communities.

As one generation watches and learns from the one before it, our churches can be sustained, multiply and grow as each new generous generation steps up to the challenge. I am encouraged to see where Trinity Church is today and where it is going because we have our house in order. We have Elders and pastors, trustees, and leaders who have their own houses in order, who live and practice generosity and are helping us live out that same faithfulness in our church.

Let’s look at a couple of biblical ways you get your house in order. Think of them as two pillars of any financial stewardship plan. The first is giving. We must ask ourselves, is our church giving to others, providing for widows and orphans, doing the kinds of ministry those within our church family need and creating a strong outreach needed in our communities to communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ?

The second is spending. Are we buying our wants and then begging our needs? Are we repeatedly running our bank accounts into the red or leaving bills unpaid? Or are we taking care to spend only what is within our means, leaving some leftover in reserve? If you are spending all you have, you are not going to have the money to give generously.

For some of us, mastering these two pillars might seem like an impossible, painful task but to be generous we need to master our spending. Think about that fictitious church that went through that unimaginable storm. The time it takes to discover all those things and then to recover. You could not get such a church to be more generous, just by preaching more sermons on giving. It would need the gospel to seep in and heal and give direction to reset and rebuild the pillars. Idols would need removed, accounts balanced, leaders with integrity put in place to lead, sin accounted for, debts paid, and on and on. This process would require giving less to guarantee that the church would survive and thrive or it would likely die from the generosity of many and the incompetence and sin of others. Whether the storm is as severe as our fictitious illustration or gets a little rain here and there, having these two pilars built up will help the church weather any storm.