Thread #35: The Power of Money
“Money is morally neutral. It’s just what you do with it that makes it have power.” Jesus will not allow us to entertain such a naive view of money. He even gave it a name as though it is a rival spiritual power at war with God and His work in our hearts. We need money and what it can buy for us, but when we get too much of it money has a way of owning us and filling us with fear. In business we talk about “golden handcuffs” material benefits that tie people to jobs they hate and can cause them to spend their short life in ways they later may regret. Hear more on this week’s Thread.
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Q & A with CQ regarding fundraising
Q: Have you ever thought of getting a job on the missions field?
A: Well, once at Christmas I got to be a “tired traveller” in a TV commercial for Cebu Pacific airline. It took about an hour and I got $1000! (Sweet!) I used it for Christmas gifts. Some people actually work for oil companies as their mission opportunity, but in my case, we have always been servants of the church. If I started investing my energies in the workplace 50-60 hours a week, I would have very little left to give. We always felt we were to stay 100% focused in the ministry and have never operated a side business that might distract us.
Q: Is it awkward to have a relationship with someone who supports your family directly?
A: Not really. Our need for support is not about us. If it wasn’t for the Lord’s instruction to serve we would be home working normal jobs. We are here because God has work He needs someone to do. We are happy to do it, but in order to carry it out we need others to help carry their corner of the load. Ours is to live in these environments and do the front line work. Theirs is to make sure we stay cared for so we don’t become casualties or have to return from the field out of lack of funds. We want the kind of relationship we would like if the roles were reversed and we were American workplace professionals. If I was in the states working too, I would want a close connection with at least one missionary. I hope we can make going to work each day more meaningful and important for those who are investing in reaching the lost in Asia.
Q: What’s the “good part” part about raising funds for your own family’s needs and for the many other missionaries and projects you support in Asia?
A: Actually, it all depends on how you look at fundraising. I have a cause and I am passionate about it, so if I get a chance to talk to someone anywhere I’m going to do it. Schools, medical missions, church planting, leadership development, media operations–these all cost money and that’s part of the mission too so I have actually learned to enjoy getting people out of the stands spectating and onto the field as co-laborers in the harvest work. All of us have money, opportunities, influence and a circle of at least 50 relationships that we can put into play to help in the spread of the Jesus movement across the unreached world. It is exciting to see someone enter the game for the first time and then suddenly they have a purpose in making a profit beyond getting a bigger house.
Send us your questions by commenting below and we will answer them in the next post.
Raising a family with no set salary
What’s it like to raise a family of six kids knowing that you will have no salary for over twenty years? That’s been our lives so far. The first four years in Jamaica we lived on a “faith missions” basis. That basically means that you pray a lot and run to the mailbox every day and hope 
It was a nail-biting experience and we had very little money–BUT I have to be quick to add that God was always faithful to feed us and meet our needs. In time, most of our support actually came from the young Jamaican church we pastored as it grew larger. The good people brought us food from their gardens and an occasional chicken. We grew a lot in our faith. Since we were only a phone call and a three hour flight away from our parents that system worked for us in that season.
Moving to Asia in 1990 with a minimum 10 year commitment required a more organized way. The Church of God had a new system of “self-funded missions” which was a lot more work but was actually a quantum leap forward in funding. Here’s how it worked:
* Regional Field Director approves a budget for you. You raise it.
* Travel to churches for offerings to cover the startup funds in cash.
* Ask church members to make monthly pledges for your living expenses.
* Come home every four years to re-visit these churches and ask the people to renew their support.
This system required a lot more from us:
* We had to find pastors willing to open their pulpits to us (nobody knew us).
* Needed to live on the road with three small kids for about a year. We went through chickenpox & stomach flu while in the homes of others. (May God reward all of them richly for their love even when our kids vomited on their carpets!)
* We had to get past the embarrassment of asking people for money.
* We had to guard our own hearts against being extra nice to people out of financial motives.
* Most of all, we had to keep our children from being corrupted through fundraising.
Our walk with God and our ministry in His Church has always been sincere. We don’t want our children to begin to see it as “a show” or to ever view people as a source of money and nice things. Money is a very powerful force in everyone’s life so this issue has concerned us deeply through the years. Your anointing flows from your innocence and we never want to lose ours as a family.
Some missionaries complain about the workload, citing that other missions fundraise for their field staff, but we don’t mind. Some people even turn to professional fundraisers used by large ministries to avoid the work. We don’t want this either. We want to develop genuine relationships with our support team. If someone cares enough to sacrifice financially to keep us in missions, that forms the basis of a unique heart bond. This community has been one of the greatest rewards for serving in missions.
We are determined to be faithful missionaries and have prayed for faithful supporters. God has granted that. We have been missionaries now for 25 years. On top of all the daily provision from partners, many tell us that they pray for us every day. That floors us. We are supported, not by strangers answering form letters, but by people who genuinely love us.
The Dark Side of Money
Knowing about the power of money can help you stay free of its dominating power.
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Giving to Get
Mature believers come to know that giving is the key to everything. Marriage, career, ministry, relationships—you name it! Givers are the happiest people in the world. Giving is its own reward because it makes us noble and even “wealthy” just by engaging in it. When we give it always sets in motion a chain of events that seeds the earth to bring blessings back to us. God is so good to have built the universe that way.
In generations past Christians gave out of love for the poor, to show gratitude to God for His abundant blessings or to obey the scriptures and become a part of the Kingdom of God going forward.
Then Oral Roberts came along. His tent-revival ministry was characterized by great healings and many people coming to the Lord, but when he became one of the first ministers to go on national TV he also brought to the body of Christ a new concept, “Seed Faith.” While in the longer explanation it meant something like what I described in my first paragraph, in practice it basically signaled a change in the primary motivation for giving. Bro. Oral and then countless TV and Radio ministers after him encouraged the rise of a radical self interest in the act of giving to the Lord. I don’t think anything has done more damage to the cause of Christ in the last two generations than that one new doctrinal emphasis: Giving to get something out of God.
Haven’t we really already gotten something out of God? Hasn’t He done enough for us for a lifetime? Do any of us truly doubt that we will have food, shelter and clothing from His hand throughout our lives?
“Giving to get” is beneath us, brothers and sisters. We will certainly get. We will “get” even beyond all that we deserve because the Grace of God has been poured out on us through Jesus Christ. God is debtor to no man. No one has ever given even a cup of cold water without God marking them for reward. But giving the cup of water just to get the reward perverts the gift itself. We should give because we love the thirsty child or because the child is made in the image of God and then just leave the rewarding up to our amazingly generous God who sees what is done is private and rewards it in public.
Let’s be lavish givers just because it’s good to be so, and let God sort out the rest.
