Tag: funds

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Will you still have to Raise Support?

Like LL Cool J, I feel like this topic is less of comeback, and more like I’ve literally been here for years.

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about raising funds.

Perspective, when it comes to finances, is something I lose about every 15 minutes.  I need to be reminded of the truth on a regular basis.  I figure if I lose perspective, so do the people who support us.  Hopefully not as often, though.

So when we talk about moving, and among the first questions is the ticking time-bomb of “will you still have to raise support?” I like to pause and remind myself (and anybody standing nearby enough to hear) why support raising is not a chore, but a blessing.  A privilege.  Not a “have to” but a “get to.”

The short answer is yes, we are still fully supported by the generous contributions of concerned individuals and churches. There’s no central fund for paying office staff or field staff within Campus Crusade.

And I’m glad.  This way, we really rely on God even for the folks in the cubicles in Apex.  There’s still a department that does the hiring, but God does the confirming by doing what we can’t do, raise up the funds to pay the staff.  And as I’ve mentioned in the past, raising support is a constant reminder (in the midst of the money-driven “ethics” of western culture) that I am not a rock or an island, no matter what Paul Simon tells me, and I can’t do or have it “my way,” even if Frank Sinatra or Burger King urge me to.  Calling folks and challenging them to be on my team of ministry partners pushes me toward a biblical, humble, interdependence with others.

In answer to Colleen’s specific question about the difficulties we’ve been having raising support recently, what coming off campus for a whole semester did was help us see clearly what it might look like to be off campus.  So, yeah, the support struggles lately did help us to make the decision, but not because we are done raising support.  They just afforded us the opportunity to see outside of the “campus” bubble we’d been in for years.  And we liked it outside of the bubble.

So, until the next time I need reminding, you can always join our team of partners here.

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Is Your View of Money Satanic?

Being the one to challenge prevailing worldviews is not easy.

In raising support, that’s precisely what we sometimes do.  When I go on an appointment and challenge somebody to join my team at $100 per month, I am challenging their worldview.  God is using me (in some cases) to rub them the wrong way, because there is nothing more fundamentally American than the dollar.  I don’t make it my goal to offend, but I do make it my goal to challenge people to something bigger than the certainly-not-almighty green paper.

Like the video I shared yesterday points out, so many Americans are treasuring the wrong things.  Goals like bigger houses, more cars, and fatter 401(k)s are choking the spiritual life out of us.  Do I think those things are bad?  Not necessarily.  But if you got defensive at their passing mention, it might be a sign you are inordinately treasuring them.

Saving for the future is biblical.  Investing is thoroughly biblical.  Hoarding and investing so that you can find your security, happiness, and purpose in a fat bank account is satanic.

I’ve even said this myself, (using the excuse that we don’t have a huge income) but I am tired of the line “I don’t give much now, but I want to invest so that when I retire I can support X number of missionaries.”  Here’s a reality check: if we aren’t giving sacrificially now, adding some zeros to our paycheck won’t make us give sacrificially then.  The giving habits we form now will be the giving habits we have when we retire.  Jacqueline and I have had to wrestle with that, given our financial position now.  We’ve got money, but we have not always been the best about giving.  We’ve rationalized it, and had spurts where we gave sacrificially, but on the whole we have not been as generous as God calls us to be.

This is not a ploy for you to give to us.  Give to Jesus.  Do you believe the gospel?  Give like it.  Here’s some places I feel confident your money would go toward the furthering of the gospel:

As always, I’ll start.  We’re going to be giving to one of the above ministries (over and above what we already have), once Jacqueline and I pray about it.

After all, there’s no better way to spit in the face of a satanic worldview than to put God’s money where His heart is.

** Update** I added the clarification “sometimes” to the first sentence of the second paragraph and the parenthetical “in some cases” later in the same paragraph, because my wife said it might otherwise come off like we think everyone we meet has a poor worldview. And she’s right. I don’t want it to seem like I am looking down on anyone. My apologies for having misspoken.

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What if Raising Support IS My Ministry?

I’m so quick to let heresy come out of my mouth.

The other day on a support appointment I said “We can’t wait to report to our assignment and start doing ministry!” What a shame, that I would further the unfortunate stereotype that to challenge someone to worship with their wallet is somehow different from challenging students to worship with their lives.

Raising support is a ministry.  We are seeing God change the hearts of countless folks toward our ministry.  Even if folks aren’t able to give, the ministry we have in their life is reminding them that God is bigger than the economy or the news networks.  We so greatly appreciate those who would sacrifice and continue to give in such a crazy, uncertain financial world.  Your heart is clearly resting in Christ, as evidenced by the clear, consistent placement of your treasure in causes so close to His heart.

I have to continually remind myself that my only duty as a slave of Christ is to follow his bidding.  Though my heart beats to reach college students with the gospel, (and I firmly believe that God is passionate about that cause) right now he would have me reach others with the true “prosperity gospel,” that real prosperity comes not from money or worldly security, but from Christ.  In calling people to partner with us financially, I am calling them to a radical position where we collectively recognize that God is not about our financial bottom line.

With this particular ministry of challenging folks to financial partnership, I need to be so careful that I don’t totally blow it by my financial lifestyle speaking louder than my words.  A tragedy of American Christianity is that pastors and leaders who would claim to be honoring God are falling prey to the same greed and consumerism to which the watching world is enslaved.  We need to have a wartime mentality toward our spending and lifestyle.  I’d highly recommend all folks (and especially vocational ministers) read the new introduction (link downloads a pdf file) to John Piper’s book “Let the Nations Be Glad,” as it was the stimulus to rocking my world, this morning.

So I repent of my heresy.  I am doing ministry when I make phone calls to develop financial partners.  Right now, today, I am in full-time ministry.

What about you?  In what ways have you allowed heresy to infect your view of God’s call on your life? Comment below.

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When Would I Tell You to Stop Supporting Our Ministry?

Check out Exodus 36:2-7.  And take notes.

I was blown away by two things:

  1. The people were so committed that they gave more than enough.
  2. The workers were so committed they told them it was more than enough, and to stop giving.

I wrestled this morning with the point at which I would tell folks to stop giving to my ministry.  Then I wrestled with the difference between the old covenant and the new in this regard.  See, in the old covenant, it was a “come and see” issue.  Folks from other nations came to see the favor God had bestowed on the Israelites.  The tabernacle, and later the temple, were places where the nations looked on in amazement at the glory of the only living God, Yahweh.

That changed in the new covenant.  Now the faith is a “go and tell” issue.  The gospel is to be taken out, proclaimed among the nations.  We are the temple.  And we show the glory of God not by how lavishly we live, but by how we no longer need riches to define us.  The nations see the glory of God in the face of Christ, who sacrificed his very life for his enemies.  That sacrificial giving of time, resources, and our very life is our new model of glorifying God.

So how does that affect the “more than enough” issue?  In the old covenant, once the tabernacle was finished, there was no longer a need for that specific type of giving.  In the new covenant, we never finish showing off the true and living tabernacle, this side of eternity.  Like giving to a war effort, you don’t stop making bullets until the war is over.

So I’ll never stop asking you to give to our ministry, until the war for the hearts and minds of students is over.  But I’ll also never stop repenting of the lie that finances are the point.  Jesus is the point. That’s what is so dangerous about prosperity theology.  We make the mistake of old covenant thinking (look how big the house/car/Rolex is that Jesus blessed me with!) without the wisdom to see that we live in the war-time mentality of the new covenant.  And nobody wears their Rolex to battle.

The hero of Exodus 36 is not the people who gave so much, or the workers who told them to stop, but the God who graciously revealed himself to hard-hearted people.  The tabernacle made of fine linen had nothing on the God-man who came and “tabernacled” with his people.

What about you, are you living in the war-time mentality or do you, like me, often fall prey to the old covenant way of thinking? Comment below.

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An Open Letter to Single People.

“I’d love to give to your ministry, but I’m single.”

More than one person has laid this line on me.  I’ll challenge them to partner with us financially, and then they will (with a serious tone) tell me that the reason they don’t/can’t give is because they are single.  Like giving is something that only the grownup married people do.  I have a news flash for you, single folks (and as may become apparent, this news flash does not apply to single parents).  You have more expendable income now than you might ever for the rest of your life.  Yeah, you are single and have less income.  So you can live with three roommates and pay 250 bucks in housing costs per month.

I look back on the financial situation I had as a single guy and marvel at how much money I had.  Mind you, I was pulling in a cool $16,000 per year.  I was by no means a high roller.  But I paid off 16,000 dollars in student loans and bought an engagement ring all within 3.5 years of graduating college.  There were months that, because I was committed to getting out of debt, I would throw 900 bucks at my student loan.  You can do a lot financially as a single person if you put your mind to it.

These days my rent is 4 times higher, my food expenses are nearly tripled, and there are entirely new categories on the budget, like “childcare,” “kid’s clothes” and “life insurance.”  Yeah, I have more income, but it only doubled, and believe me, my expenses way more than doubled.

Your lack of financial discipline is related to being single (your behavior most directly affects only you at this point), but to be honest, as one on this side of a wedding day looking back, I need to let you know how ridiculous you sound when you use singleness as an excuse not to give.  If you are anywhere near average, just your out-to-eat budget each month could fund a dozen compassion children.  And don’t get me started on shoe budgets and entertainment expenses.  I know, you have to spend money out to find “the one.” But don’t use that as an excuse to be a poor steward of what God has given you.

I am not speaking as one who has it all figured out.  The only reason as a single guy that I paid off loans so quickly was that I had a significant auto-draft taken from my paycheck each month.  It was discipline by default.  I’ve just had one too many people tell me (in a list of reasons why they can’t give) that they are single.

The habits you make as a single person, especially when it comes to finances, will dramatically affect your marriage.  Money fights and money problems are among the leading causes of divorce.  So while it’s just a cute shoe collection as a single person, it may be a huge source of arguments and strife later in your marriage. One of the best things you could do now would be to take an honest look at your finances, and maybe even bring in someone to help hold you accountable to be giving, saving, and spending sacrificially.

And before I get angry comments from single people who are giving and are financially responsible, let me be the first to say that not all single people in America are a fiscal wreck.  I recognize also that the folks that have given me this excuse were just looking to soften the blow.  I primarily wanted to rebuke the underlying sentiment that would make it OK to pick this particular excuse.

Singleness is a great time to give sacrificially.

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