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You can read the introduction, who I think is responsible, the current situation, and some things to fix it.

Today I'll answer the question on if I think it is broken.

First from the point of view of the members.  A resounding YES.  To many of us Christians have spent our money very unwisely (raising hand) and have put us in bondage.   Then a $15 dollar a week average is pathetic.  I'd like to say its that low because people are giving to other resources, but their not.  We are just way to strapped financially to be truly effective.

There are some Christians I know that are debt free (outside of a mortgage), I'm a bit jealous of them.  I'll have two bits of debt for many years to come in regards to my student loans and our mortgage, but we are not that far off (in the grand scheme of things) from having our debt evaporate in a quick manner. 

Now from the point of view of the church.  Another resounding yes.  WAY to many churches are on the verge of collapse due to their finances.  2009 will be super tough on these churches as people get scared and stop giving money, on top of others losing their jobs and being unable to give.  Churches really need to learn to live well within their means and have some amount of reserve to deal with unexpected, but sizable issues.  A family in a strapped state financially affects themselves primarily, a church in a strapped state financially affects many different families.

Now I've spoken bad about my first church a few times in this series, now I am going to take a second to praise them.  In the early years of my involvement there they were very bad with finances.  But the people in charge of the money were the staff members led by policies written by outside leaders.  They spent like drunken sailors.  Then when that church started to reap what they sowed and things fell apart.  Then some interesting things happen and a church that lived week to week previously had at least (and I'm pretty sure this number is low (very low)) $250,000 in the bank.  At this point the leadership was a much more conservative group of men.  One of them whose finances have always stunned me.  He had a job that is usually held by people that live very extravagant life styles, and honestly probably made enough to live that lifestyle.  But he didn't.  He led a life that seemed very normal.  Still in awe of this mans family.  So they started making wise decisions with their money.  I'm not sure where they are now financially, but I'd be willing to bet they are in good shape. 

So, yes its broken.  The question is, is either party willing to do the hard work it requires to fix it? 

Now to be true with this series, I don't think it is fixed if everybody started giving 10% to the church.  Only if people start giving a sacrificial amount to God.  Be it to their church, their favorite mission, whatever...  I think if everybody just gave the the church it would result in a very unhealthy dynamic where people just mark tithing off of their list, and don't give much thought to where or why. 

I also think there is some responsibility to give some money to your home church.  I've honestly been in a few seasons where my heart wasn't prepared to do that, and I withheld from my home church.  I think 'for seasons' that is OK, but if its a life long... I'll never give to a church, you have issues that need to be dealt with.

You can read the introduction, who I think is responsible, and the current situation.

Today I want to talk about what can be the fix (that is, if I think its broken... covered the next time).

In a previous post I pointed out the obvious first fix.  OPEN THE BOOKS.  I am not talking about the pie charts, but the opening of the transaction logs.  The church is supposed to be a bunch of brothers and sisters, not parents and children.  If brothers and sisters shared a budget, the full details would be openly available to all the brothers and sisters. 

Another item is to take input.  The great thing about a church family is that there is a lot of wisdom to go around.  After you open the books you are likely to get a lot of INFORMED opinions.  Now to be fair you'd get a lot of bad ones as well, but I really believe the vast majority will be good opinions.  

Follow the spirit of the church.  One of the bad traits of the church is that once something is started, it doesn't end.  However the spirit of the church moves forward, the money should as well.  If an activity or ministry has outlived its time, move forward.  Because what happens is that you have a group of people wanting to try something new and relevant but can't because the support isn't there, which then builds bad attitudes.

Teach about it.  Churches avoid two topics sex and money.  Sex just in general, and money unless things are going bad.  That needs to change.  However I think its a bit of bad timing to do it after a bad time.  I remember very distinctly in my first church the minister standing before the church and asking people to give $5 more per person this week to fix a problem that he admitted the staff caused.  I looked over to my wife and simply shook my head no.  Some may be thinking that this IS the time to talk about the issue, but I do strongly disagree.  To me its like a spouse who cheated on the other fessing up then telling the other spouse they need to be a better partner.  There is a point where you really lose the ability to take a high moral road on an issue. 

I'm sure there are more items that could be added here... what would you add?

This is the third post in the 'Churches and Money' series.  You can read the introduction and who I think is responsible.

Here is actually the article that spurred on this series. As I said in a recent post, the great thing about the Bible is that it is relevant, and financial issues are always relevant.

It says that 20% of Christians give no money to their church and that most fall way short of tithing (10%). This adds up to 133.4 Billion dollars 'missing' from the church. 

One of the questions asked in the above article is what would the church do with that kind of money.  One of the commenter's, Bruce, said a lot of how I feel.  The Bible says that those who are trustworthy with small things, are trustworthy with big things.  That God learns about who to trust the big things with by watching who does well with the small things.  Maybe a lot of churches aren't overflowing with money for obvious reasons.

What do churches do with the 'small money' they get now?  Staff, buildings, programs (and not the good ones).  Now get me here, those things aren't bad at their core.  But the implementation of them has generally been bad. 

Here is a bit of a secret.  I don't tithe, never have, and likely never will in the traditional sense.  I give a reasonable amount when I see reasonable use of the money to my church or just donate needed items to the church (being a geek, there is always something technical needed).  However I generally skip the churches weekly contribution and just give to a specific purpose.  In the past this was an easy decision for me because I didn't itemize my taxes, so giving to a non-profit wasn't necessarily a need.  This year it became a bit of a dilemma I had to face.  Money I now gave to people to help them out, would in fact hurt my bottom line come tax time.  I had to make a choice, and basically figured I had to come to grips with where the money was going... to God.  So I continued my old ways and give directly to those in need most of the time.  Plus that whole James 1:27 thing... is another way I give back to God.

In the past I was really convinced to give sacrificially to 'my church' and I did.  Only to find out staff members were making an unimaginable amount of money.  It is easy to preach sacrifice when you make 100K per year with top of the line health insurance and retirement benefits. 

To give a bit of a stat to this, in 2001 average weekly giving was just about $15 / week.  To be honest, that stuns me.  This is the people who give money, this is not counting the people who just don't give.  I know my first church had an average weekly giving of around $30 per member.  I am unsure of this stat in the next two churches I've attended. 

So over the time of my life I am going to lose a lot of tax deductions, but I'll have a better idea where things I give are going.

In my first post, I asked this question.

Who should take the responsible role in this situation, the church or the member?

I have always taken the position that the FIRST responsibility belongs to the church.  However since Christianity first, and foremost, is an individual call to purity the churches usually focus on the person. To me this is both true, and the wrong place to start.  People are going to be sinful.  Organizations should have certain aspects about them that are above moral dilemmas.  While I don't think you could remove all sin and struggles that occur with church money, I believe you could remove some of the common ones.

Open the books.  Open them wide (in this day and age there is no reason why something like this couldn't end up on the web).  Not just a pie chart here, I'm talking detailed monthly statements.  We spent $10 on toilet paper last month.  We pay pastor Bill $2000 a week.  The common argument here is that it will create many issues where people nit pick small items here and there.  Can you really ever agree on a fair salary for a minister?   To me, in time the church would rise above this.  Doing it initially would be a pain because its new.  But over time, you'd see the issues around it disappear, but the benefits to it last.  Plus, its clear that the current system isn't working.

Lets say that brother Joe sees that we are spending $5000 a month on heating.  Brother Joe knows a thing or two about insulation and small tips to save 25% off of a bill.  He comes to the church with a solution, it is implemented and now you have $1000 more per month.  This process could be repeated over and over again, the amount of savings could be enormous.  Another benefit would be that the financial scandals that engross many churches would become largely impossible.  No longer could a rouge leader skim thousands of dollars off the top.  People would know exactly where there money is going. I could go on about the benefits of this.

By doing this simple step you put the church above reproach.  The leaders would be so confident in their spending habits that anybody can see them.  Will there be disagreements?  Yes.  But that is life, there are disagreements now with closed books. When you are above reproach you can now call the members to be above reproach themselves. 

I think its a bit unfair to ask people to give thousands of dollars a year to an organization that isn't giving that person much power to see that they are being a good steward with their money.

Money and Churches.  Its an issue.  You ask anybody about why they aren't attending church, one of the top answers will be money. 

I've seen many examples of church and money difficulties.  Probably the worst being where a staff family made over 100K per year, when families making 15% of that were sacrificing to support the church.

So I want to cover a few bases in this series. 

1. Who should take the responsible role in this situation, the church or the member?
2. What is the current giving situation?
3. What do _I_ propose as a fix?
4. Do I even think its broken?
5.... we'll see where this goes, but for now just the first four.

This series will get a few people fired up. I have the first couple written and will post over time.

Over the course of a week I listen to several sermons.  Yesterday I was listening to Sam Barrington's sermon from The Living Stones Church. 

Sam said something that made me stop what I was doing and actually write down my thoughts.

I'll paraphrase here, but he asked the question; "If somebody, who had no interaction with churches or Christianity read the Bible and then, walked into church would they see it as what they read?"  Would the church they walk into mirror the church they read about in the Bible?

I sat there and thought about it, and I have to say no.  Not at all.  Not a bit.  When I read the Bible I see some resemblance to a structure, but nothing like what we have today.  No matter what denomination you are talking about, from the Catholic church to the 'independent' Churches of Christ.  The church today is about Sunday morning.  We hire ministers, we prepare throughout the week to have a good Sunday, then we meet for about an hour or two.  We go home and that's it.  But I'll also say that they weren't 'serving their community' either.  In fact, I'd say they were serving each other wholly and fully.  Which then won over the rest of the community by their love for each other.  Did they serve their community by loving their neighbor?  Yes, I'm sure of it.  Did they count on the bigger church to facilitate that?  No. 

It was just one of the moments of clarity for me.  A moment of clarity I needed.

I was recently listening to a sermon from the Loveland Christian Church about Proverbs 22:6,

Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.

Now one section of this sermon really hit me.  It was about what role the church plays in training a child and Brian Richard, senior minister, shared his story about how his church trained him as a child.

He gave 3 things a church can do.

1. Give Opportunity.  He talks about how his church allowed him to preach at 16!, teach children classes, teach VBS, serve communion, collect offering, and lead worship.

2. Speak into their potential.  THIS ONE hit the hardest for me.  Don't just think that a child is a natural leader... TELL THEM how you see their leadership playing out as they get older.  As adults we know how life skills play out later in life.  So if you see this persons compassion leading them to a counseling ministry, speak that into them. 

3. Live out the life style in front of them.  Well duh :-). 

This good part starts with about 8 minutes left in the sermon.

Look at these numbers from a recent Barna Research Study.  It does at least show that born again republican evangelical (people like me) have divorce rates slightly lower then others... however its kind of like being the tallest midget.  Or the winner in the race to the bottom :-/

This is a big question.  Lots of different answers depending on the person.
For the non-Christian, they miss church because they don't know the power of church.  But this post is more directed to the Christian.
Churches tend to think when people miss church that its that persons problem.  They have issues.  They are not committed.  In many cases, this is correct at its root.  But if you know me, you know that when it comes to stuff like this I first and foremost put the responsibility of this on the church.  So why do people miss church?
1.  They don't feel at home.  Would you be motivated to wake up early, gather the children, to go to a church where you feel you just attend?  
2.  The church doesn't meet a need.  You've got marriage, financial, or children issues that face your life every day and going to church hasn't helped this a bit.  So after six days of fighting those issues, what motivates a person to wake up and go to church on the seventh day?
3.  They need a break.  I've been a Christian for 10 years.  My family has skipped church twice.  Now various parts of our family has missed church due to illness, but twice we just stayed home.  The first time, church life was not peaceful.  The church was going through a lot of turmoil and I needed a break from that.  The second time life was going at break neck speed and we were worn out.  We stayed home.
Now a church leader may try to justify their church by saying the following:
1.  They are not committed to Christ.
2.  They have issues.
3.  Their priorities are screwed up.
The hard part about those three is that they are probably right!  But if a person feels like they are going to a family that will meet the needs of their family, they will make it a priority to show up.  So if as a leader you see somebody missing a lot of church ask yourself if they think they feel like family.  Ask yourself if their needs are getting met at your church.  Don't start off pointing the finger at the person, thats a false starter.  
I just wish that churches would learn to start asking "What could we do more of to help them?" rather than asking "What's their problem?"  Anytime a church can take responsibility of an issue it should. EVEN if its not really their fault.  I think we as a church write people off way to quickly.  We don't fight hard to bring out the Christian in that person that is really there.

This has been on my mind for some time and I’ve only now had the time to put my thoughts to pen.

God or Satan? Who is to blame when things don’t go well compared to our plans?

I’ve actually seen this in every church I’ve been a member in, things go bad and its obviously Satan working against us because things are just not going awesome.

But is it obviously Satan or obviously God? OK, before I even crack open my Bible to give this some credibility I say its obviously God. What??? Yes that is what I said. If things don’t go like you want them I put the ‘blame’ on God.

God is the beginning and the end. The alpha and omega. He is the great I AM. Without God nothing is possible, with God everything is possible.

When it came to Job the devil had to get permission to harm Job in any way. However the scriptures that stick out to me are:

Romans 8: 31b-32:
If God is for us, who can be against us? 32He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

Acts 5: 38b-39
For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. 39But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.”

If God is for something it will not fail. If God is against it then it may fail and I think people would serve God well by not blaming Satan, but by asking themselves what are thing doing against God’s will!

I think with this approach you look much less arrogant and you will only improve your ‘failing’ or ‘struggling’ effort. You can always improve to be closer to God’s will. If you think not, then think deep because you have just exposed the root of your problem.