money

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Amazing God, Amazing Friends

God is so amazing!

I hope you know how incredible He is. Let me tell you what He just did for us.

On March 23 I mentioned that we had no money to pay the end-of-month bills. That’s because we haven’t received a paycheck since the end of January. This happens pretty regularly, especially lately. In this economy, supporting a ministry is low on most people’s priority list—after essentials like food, shelter, and taxes. We used to have an emergency fund, but after six years of erratic income, that’s gone. That’s all right—God is faithful. He’s also creative.

So, the end of the month was coming, and I had enough money to pay the credit card bill (food, fuel, some utilities, medical bills, and the like) or the mortgage—but not both. After years of practice, I don’t often stress over situations like this. I get excited. God’s going to come through, and it’s going to be awesome!

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Spending Influence

A friend of mine posted a link to the following article on her Facebook page:

Made in America Christmas: Are You In?

The average American will spend $700 on holiday gifts and goodies this year, totaling more than $465 billion, the National Retail Federation estimates. If that money was spent entirely on US made products it would create 4.6 million jobs. But it doesn’t even have to be that big. If each of us spent just $64 on American made goods during our holiday shopping, the result would be 200,000 new jobs.

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Working for Free

What ever happened to paying for work?

The website announced:

Obama for America invites artists from across the country to volunteer their creativity to support President Obama’s plan to create jobs now, and his re-election campaign to keep fighting for jobs for the next four years.

Seems that artists aren’t included among those who need jobs. (See the Graphic Artists Guild’s response.)

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Worth Reading…

Every so often I come across a post on another blog that is so much better than anything I could write on a particular topic, I just have to share it. Actually, I come across superior blogs all the time, but if I told you about all of them, you’d have no reason (or time) to read mine. I’m normally quite selfish about these things.

However, “Jamie the Very Worst Missionary” (see blog roll at left) has expressed an important concern about short-term missions that should be required reading in every church. I just can’t keep this one to myself.

So, here you go. Read “Using your poor kid to teach my rich kid a lesson.” And when you’re done reading that, go ahead and read some of her other posts. And then read her husband’s posts on his blog—in fact, I highly recommend his series on the what, where, why, etc., of short term missions according to the gospels (to find all the posts, just type “short term missions” into his search box).

See you next week. I hope.

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Sharing Home

As I’ve mentioned earlier, our finances aren’t in the best of shape. Extremely sporadic paychecks make it difficult to budget—how do you know how much you can spend on something like food if you have no idea when the next check is coming? Then there’s the matter of tithing. You can’t tithe on zero.

Last January, I wrote about how to give to God when we’re broke. I mentioned giving away things we already own, and giving our time. There’s a third way we’re currently giving to God that I overlooked when I wrote that article, even though it’s one we’ve been doing all along: we can practice hospitality.

Desperation Leadership Academy (DLA) is our church’s year-long, full time program for young adults aged 18 to 25. As our website proclaims to prospective students, “It is one year of spiritual training that will put you in an environment to accelerate your love for Jesus, His church, and a world that desperately needs Him.”

Since these students come from all over the country (and some years, even from overseas), they need a place to live here in Colorado. To make the program more affordable, the students are housed by members of the congregation, called “home sponsors,” who sign up to provide room and board for one or two kids from September through July.

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Mission Myth 4: Gimme Money

I’ve been commenting on an article by Shane Bennett that appeared several years ago in Missions Catalyst.

In his two-part post on Top Ten Myths about Missions , Bennett explained:

I want to understand how the average Lou and Sue, sitting in the pew, think about missions stuff. … From what I’ve seen there are some serious misconceptions floating around in our churches, at least some of our churches. We could call these collective assumptions, beliefs that simply don’t reflect reality, “myths.”

If you want to read all ten myths now, check out the article online. You can see my other articles on this topic by choosing God:World under “Categories” on the right-hand column of my blog page.

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Throwing Money

In my post last Friday, I stated my opinion that the best way to help the poor and unreached in far away places is to send money.

I don’t want to minimize the importance of hands-on ministry—how being personally involved is so much better than merely throwing money at a problem. We have so much to teach one another, and the Holy Spirit produces fruit in our lives as we share our lives with others.

But we also need to reach out across political boundaries, languages, and cultures. Sometimes the only practical way to do this is to “just” send money.

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Responding to Panhandlers

I don’t know about you, but I always struggle when confronted by someone asking for money. Whether they’re sitting at an intersection with a cardboard sign or they approach me on the sidewalk, I get the same conflicted feelings:

  • Give them money. Jesus said to give to those who ask.
  • Don’t give them money. They’ll spend it on drugs or alcohol.
  • Give them money. God loves the poor.
  • Don’t give them money. They should be working!
  • Give them money. The Bible says we are to love our neighbor.
  • Don’t give them money. There are soup kitchens and homeless shelters for that purpose.

I either end up giving a half-hearted offering that won’t solve their problems and only leaves me feeling slightly less guilty, or I just avoid eye contact altogether. Neither response feels right.

It was with immense relief that I read the following article in “Christianity Today,” written by a group of people I respect, a group focused on exactly the sort of issues I’m struggling with here. I trust their wisdom in this area.

Please click on the link and read the short article,

“Give to Street People? Don’t”

by Ron Sider, Gary Hoag, and Andy Bales.

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Giving When We’re Broke

Pete and I enjoy giving financially. This doesn’t make us super spiritual, and I’m not trying to brag or impress anyone—it’s just that we both find giving to be lots of fun. I am quite sure our attitude is a direct result of God working in us, rather than anything we achieved for ourselves. It’s a gift from the Holy Spirit.

However, as I wrote a few months ago, we’re currently “treading water” financially. We haven’t received a paycheck since October. Since there’s no income, we have nothing to tithe on, and we’ve cut our discretionary spending to zero. It’s frustrating.

Well, frustration can be the impetus to start thinking more creatively. Sunday afternoon, Pete and I sat down together and said, OK, we can’t afford to write checks. How else can we give? Sometimes our culture is so focused on money, we miss other things we can spend. A bit of soul-searching was all it took to come up with a few ideas:

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