Monetization - Loving Money

This morning I was reading 2 Timothy Chapter 3. Paul writes about a time when we will be "lovers of self, lovers of money...lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God."

 

What do you think about this?

 

What do you see around you?

 

What is the professing church modeling? How is the professing church living?

 

Have we monetized life? Have we monetized the professing church?

 

I suppose it’s easy for some of us to look at “name it and claim” types and say, “Well, they have certainly monetized the church,” but I don’t think this is that simple. What, after all, is the final arbiter of our decisions as congregations, denominations, parachurch ministries, and educational institutions? Is it really God’s Word, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ?

 

Years ago there was a man, Eric, in my small group who was a church trustee. During the preparation of the budget for the coming year Eric, (who had been studying Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God, along with others in his church), made the suggestion to his church that they prepare the budget not as they had done in the past, by anticipating tithes and offerings, but rather by seeking God’s direction for ministry and believing God to provide for that which He was directing. In other words, Eric suggested that his congregation base their decisions not on money but on the leading and provision of the Holy Spirit. This was all the more striking to me at the time because Eric was the treasurer of a large international corporation – in other words, he was at the top of the international  corporate financial ladder.

 

A few years ago Vickie and I were attending a church that we enjoyed, and we especially enjoyed the folks in our Sunday school class – it was good fellowship. Then a multi-million dollar building program reared its head. The congregation heard about the program during each service, via emails, and via YouTube videos. The fundraising was to culminate on Easter Sunday. It was distressing to us that anything should share the spotlight with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday. It was also distressing that at no time, and I mean at no time, was there ever any mention of the leading of the Holy Spirit, of prayer, or of the Word of God (such as the Great Commission) in the fundraising. Not in any printed matter, not in any video, not in any email, and not in any church service.

 

The fundraising was sucking up all the air in the room. Where was Christ and the Cross? Where was the leading of the Holy Spirit?

 

Since I had a pretty good relationship with one of the associate pastors, I asked him to have lunch with me. During lunch I asked him whether there had been any discussion of prayer, the leading of the Holy Spirit, or of Biblical vision, with the congregation (in case Vickie and I had missed something). After a few thoughtful moments he said, “No there hasn’t. The fact is that we hired consultants to help us grow and we are following their recommendations.”

 

Dear friends, to monetize is to descend into the pragmatic, and to descend into the pragmatic is pretty much to monetize. We descend from being a supernatural people into being men and women of the earth; we trade our garments of the Spirit for the rags of the carnal.

 

When we measure our lives, whether they are our individual lives, our congregations, our nation, by money – when virtually everything is measured by its monetary value, its utilitarian function – then we have become loves of money.

 

Take a slow and sober look at 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9, what does this teach us about financial resources within the Body of Christ? Why isn’t this preached? Why aren’t we living this out? It’s because it would require a tectonic shift in our thinking about money and about how to value life – our own lives and the lives of others.

 

Our American individualism gives us, we think, a free pass in the way we value money. It gives us, we think, a free pass not to think of ourselves as the People of God but rather primarily as individuals who put ourselves first – hardly congruent with Christ’s call to lose our lives for His sake and the Gospel’s – a Gospel, by the way, which emphasizes laying down our lives for others, a laying down of  life which entails meeting the needs of not only those around us, but of those far away from us (we see this in 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9).

 

At least the “name it and claim it” preachers don’t hide their agendas – let’s give them credit for that. They might not be respectable for some of us, but at least they are respectably transparent, even if they are deceived and deceiving. Pity that they have not been taught the religious nuances of being able to love money and still look respectable and proper.

 

The tentacles of what I’m writing about remain in me, and only the Holy Spirit knows the extent to which they have poisoned my own soul. I long for freedom from loving money, from having money as my arbiter. I will not deny I have experienced the power and seduction of money and the pragmatic.

 

What about you?

 

Francis Schaffer wrote that the greatest threat to the church at the end of the 20^th century would be “personal peace and affluence.”

 

Do you think Schaffer was right?