A stubble-faced, leather-skinned vagrant approaches me and asks, “Can you spare some change?” It’s nothing new, but the last few years the faces have been getting younger, the requests more frequent and my responses less certain. A popular sign reads, “Will work for food.” Sometimes it’s true. Sometimes it isn’t. (Unless I have a job to offer, how can I know?)
(A Finance Column written for New Man magazine, published June 1997)
If you have enough food, decent clothes, live in a home that shields you from the weather and own some kind of reliable transportation, you are in the top 15 percent of the world’s wealthy. Add some savings, a hobby like hunting or fishing that requires equipment, two cars (in any condition), a variety of clothing and your own house, and you have reached the top five percent.
You may not feel wealthy. But that’s because you’re comparing yourself to someone who owns even more.
To ...
Benevolence is simply showing love through giving—giving of our money, time, and abilities to help the needy. So to talk about benevolence ministries is to talk about giving.
To me, giving less than a tithe is simply not an option. Someday I’m going to stand before God and give an account of my life (Romans 14:12). On that day I do not want to have to explain why, being indwelt with the Holy Spirit and having lived in the most affluent nation in human history, I failed to give at the very minimal level of those who did not have the indwelling Spirit and owned far less than I.
The Seed Company’s ministry exists to train nationals in translating the Scriptures into their own languages.
Then Jesus says, "When you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men" (Matt. 6:2).
The apostle Paul gave us our top priority: “What I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3).
Are buildings a legitimate ministry expense? If so what kinds of buildings, and how many?
In our newsletter, we deliberately speak very little about EPM or our financial needs. Sometimes people wonder why. More than anything, we want to keep the focus on the Lord, and issues of eternal concern.
When it comes to financial stewardship, God hasn’t handed each of us a standardized checklist with little boxes to mark off one by one. Rather, He has provided us His Word with principles for effective financial stewardship—principles we have to wrestle with. In the process of this struggle, God expects us to seek His face and to pursue the counsel of godly believers who have traveled further than we along Stewardship Road.
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