Does your church give you money?
August 28th, 2005 | by mbhunter |Our church, New Life Community Church in Stafford, VA, put forth an unusual exercise of faith in an effort to pay down its mortgage against the church’s real estate.
The church cut a check for up to $200 to every regularly attending family who requested one, in the fall. The families, if they accepted the check, would use their abilities to make more money, and would return the amount originally given, with any gain or loss, to the church around Easter. The church leadership went ahead and invested several thousand dollars directly in its congregation, accepting the obvious risk of financial loss. Throughout the next months, there were events organized and business ventures begun — yard sales, spaghetti dinners, vending machines, online bookstores.
The biblical reference for this exercise is found in Matthew 25:14-30. A master gives three of his servants one, two, and five “talents” (sums of money), “each according to their ability,” and then goes on a journey. The servant receiving five talents puts the money to work and earns five more. The servant receiving two talents puts those to work and earns two more. But the servant receiving one talent hid his master’s money.
After the master returns, he rewards the two “good and faithful servants” who exercised good stewardship with their talents, and they “shared in their master’s happiness.” The “lazy” servant who hid his master’s money had it taken away from him, and did not share in his master’s happiness.
We all aren’t blessed with the same abilities, but we are expected to use what abilities we are given. The church was concerned more with the congregation’s spiritual growth through the stewardship than with how much money was made. Many of us became better stewards through the exercise.
(Oh yeah, by the way, the mortgage was paid off.)
5 Responses to “Does your church give you money?”
By nickel on Aug 28, 2005 | Reply
I wonder how many people actually used the $200 to make additional money to give back, versus those that just dug a little deeper in their own pocket. I’d be curious to know how enterprising the people were, as opposed to be simply charitable (not that there’s anything wrong with the latter).
By Sarah on Aug 28, 2005 | Reply
Interestingly enough, a good portion of the sermon yesterday at church was on that same passage in Matthew.
I like the way your church thinks… that’s a very gutsy thing to do and I’m glad they value the members’ spiritual growth enough to do it. Like nickel, I’d also be interested in seeing more details if you have them.
Love the new layout, by the way. Very fresh!
By mbhunter on Aug 28, 2005 | Reply
Nickel and Sarah — it was a combination of both entrepreneurship and charitable giving. Some of the “enterprising” activities were as I mentioned — spaghetti dinner, etc. The church leadership was very careful about not turning it into a “stewardship superstar” competition. The people who put on the spaghetti dinner, for example (the pastor’s family) explicitly would not say how much they made, because they did not want to foster competition or make people feel like they were not doing a good job. (I suspect they did quite well with the dinner, BTW.)
It’s also possible that some people just “turned their $200 into $300″ by adding $100 of their own. I don’t know, and it wasn’t really the point to find out.
We (my wife and I) used our seed money to do some crafts and to buy things to re-sell on eBay and in yard sales.
Sarah — glad that you like the layout!
By Paul Derham on Apr 9, 2006 | Reply
I think that’s a great idea. I was once part of a church leadership team. We were put in pairs and given $100. However, we weren’t allowed to “work” or “gamble” to make it multiply – we had to think outside the box an make the money multiply itself. One of the pairs just gave their $100 to an investor and said it was for charity and, knowing that he fancied himself a good investor, they just said they wanted the investment back – he could keep a percentage of the profits. Well, after 6 months, we’d raised an awful lot of money for the church. I’m part of a new church plant now (www.kingdomlifechurch.com.au), and am looking for creating ways to raise money for the church. Any other interesting ideas?
Paul
By Josh (iFalconr) on Jul 14, 2006 | Reply
That’s a great story to hear. Thanks for the post!
iFalconr’s Smart Bargain Finder