A Pastors Painful Self-anylazation at Stewardship Time

I sat down the other day to update our family budget. This is a fairly normal occurrence, particularly with this being the time of year for our church’s stewardship season. I do typically try to sit down once a month or so to look at what we are bringing in as a family, what we are sending out and just where it all goes.

I don’t know what this process is like in your family, but for us this can easily become an exercise in futility. With a full house of 6 people, 4 of whom are continually outgrowing every item of clothing and toy we purchase, as well as inhaling every morsel of food that comes into the house (sometimes even before it can make it from the grocery bag to the pantry) it is way too easy to end each of those months with a negative number. And after you have seemingly cut everything to the bone and you still see little to no improvement, it can honestly get just downright depressing.

I recently heard about a group of individuals though who got me to thinking. I really haven’t made up my mind exactly where my thoughts fall out on this, but I am certainly drawn to their passion and commitment. That in itself isn’t a claim that their path is right or should be normative for everyone, after all there are lots of very cracked pots out there who are passionate and committed to some whacked out lifestyle or another. However, I am certainly convicted by the fervor with which they pursue the welfare of others and are willing to back it up with their lifestyle.

This group of people have committed to cap their family budgets at or below the median U.S income and then give the rest away.

U.S. census figures for 2007 list the U. S. median income at $50,740. For the state of Alabama that number drops to $40,596. For our specific area, here are how the median income numbers line up.

>

	median income	difference from state median	difference from national median
U.S.	$50,740
Alabama	$40,596
Jeff. Co.*	$44,908	$ 4,312	$-5,832
Shelby Co. *	$67,031	$26,435	$16,291
Pelham*	$54,080	$13,484	$ 3,340
Hoover*	$61,982	$21,386	$11,242
Vestavia*	$70,623	$30,027	$19,883
Homewood*	$45,431	$ 4,835	$- 5,309
Birmingham*	$26,735	$-13,861	$-24,005

(* most recent available figures from 1999)

So here is how it works. If someone living in Hoover makes the median income of $61,982, they would commit to capping their family expenses at the national median of $50,740. That would then leave an annual difference of $11,242 to give away, to your church, to a reputable charity, to save one child from a future of forced prostitution and rape for profit by adopting an infant girl from Thailand, India or one of the many African countries. You get the idea.

2 Cambodian girls, under age 12
recently rescued from brothel by International Justice Mission

“But wait,” you say. “I can’t cut my expenses by $11,000 a year. How would I pay my mortgage, my car note? How would I fund my 401K?” And there is the rub. It now begins to meddle in the area of preference and lifestyle choice. Really what we are saying is that we are unwilling to choose a Hyundai over a Lexus or one particular house over another in order to then give the monetary difference away.

But many of us don’t see it this way. We are surrounded by a culture who lives much the same way we do. We think nothing of the car we drive because everybody in our neighborhood drives something similar. We think nothing of the house we live in because everyone around us lives in a similar home. We look just like everybody else.

Now let’s look at this same concept, financially conforming to the standards of those around us. Take this and move it to the realm of moral standards and holiness. Do we conform to the standards of those around us? I read a CNN article recently advocating the end of monogamous marriage relationships because, according to the “experts” these relationships had outlived their usefulness and benefit to society. Do we as the church then chunk marriage because those in the broader culture advocate such a choice?

Remember, I am thinking out loud. I am not declaring a “holier than the rest” club nor am I saying that if you really love Jesus you will adopt this kind of lifestyle.

But here is the question, what would the world have to say about an American Evangelical church that actually lives this out? In what ways would God’s glory be revealed in our city and to the nations if a group of formerly narcissistic, idolatrous “stuff” worshippers began to sell their homes and their land and (gasp) downsize?

What would the employees of a company have to say about a CEO who shows up at work in a 2005 Ford Taurus instead of his shiny new Benz….and then explains why, for the sake of the gospel, he has made this choice? What if, instead of that new flatscreen you have been drooling over for Christmas, you as a family made a conscious choice to support a mother and an infant in a third world country through Compassion International. For $20 a month a mother and child unit can be supported with food and infant formula, vitamins, proper vaccinations and other helps.


I am truly not one to use guilt as a motivator…..very often. Actually I probably use it more than I care to admit, but it is mostly isolated to my parenting rather than my broader ministry, and it is always a sin for which I have to later repent. (Sigh.) I believe that guilt by itself is anti-gospel and only a short-term motivator at best, but can we truly sit at peace in front of our shiny new technological altar and worship the sacrifice of countless lives that our whimsical purchase could have averted? What will it take for revival to arrive on the scene?

What will it take for Christ’s church to take her rightful role as a counter-cultural voice that causes the broader culture to then claim, “I don’t agree with everything that they say, but simply by the way they live their lives you’ve at least got to take a valid look at what they are claiming.” Or, as the pagan Roman Emperor Julian put it, “Nothing has contributed to the progress of the superstition of the Christians as their charity to strangers...the impious Galileans provide not only for their own poor, but for ours as well.”

May God grant us the grace to hear his voice, the strength to respond to his call and the wisdom to discern how to go about the task.