I am more and more convinced that the elephant in the room for the church is money. Actually, it's not money per se, but rather the economy of church. We Christians, especially those of us who make up organized churches of North America, are so entrenched by our economics that we don't even see the impact it's having on our discipleship, our witness, our ability to live forward into the kingdom of God.
The issues are so deep that the only recourse is deep change. Robert Quinn describes the realities of deep change in his book of the same title. When deep change is considered or required, it means that people, individuals must change. That means me, so this is going to be hard!
In using the framework of economics, I'm not retreating from the significance of theology. If anything, it is our theology related to money (and its relationship to power) that matters most. This is not a pro- or anti- wealth argument. It's an application argument.
The church as it is today sustains an economy that is both separate from and yet dependent upon the wider economies of the world. It takes its wealth and first distributes it within itself. Secondarily it sends it back into the world.
Theologically speaking, would it not be more faithful to reframe 100% of the financial resources in the context of the kingdom? In such a scenario our churches would not serve as bi-polar conduits, but would rather re-economize everything we identify as resources.
What am I thinking? One example might be that rather than soliciting donations for the ministries of the church and relying on the charitable tendencies of individuals and fund raising expertise, our fiscal responsibility would become a central piece once again of our discipleship. Rather than becoming experts at fundraising (extracting money from our "constituents") or special appeal respondents, we might focus on helping one another express this aspect of discipleship, managing our resources not for ourselves, not for the church, but rather for the greater good of the kingdom of God.
At the least we start by asking the question.
I think you are asking a good question... But I think perhaps the elephant in the room is bigger and money is part of it. I think the elephant is the tradition of how we do church. Versus how we live in the Kingdom of God RIGHT NOW right here. And how we invite others into that kind of living here and now!
ReplyDeleteMaybe the qualifier here is, MY biggest question. When the rubber hits the road, I still have to pay the bills, lots of them, and quite frankly I rely on my work in/with/for "the church" for my income. Lately I have been pondering this reality, with no small amount of dis-ease, quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteI agree that tradition (or nostalgia perhaps) writ large is probably the "main" barrier to Kingdom living. But, I do hear people questioning the tradition/s, mostly the inherited "forms" of our faith, but rarely with any real discussion about the role money plays in the kingdom, and what would be required of us to change.
I often get the impression that even those who would count themselves as "emerging church" leaders have figured out a lot of the tradition questions (worship, bible study, overall discipleship), but then the economic profile of the emerging ministry is basically a continuation of the established church.
There are, of course, notable exceptions, those ministries that work at community life, shared resources, and ways of interacting economically with local community that are radically different than established congregations.
So I'm with you Martin. What's really at stake is how to live faithfully in the present manifestations of the Kingdom of God. And we have lots of things that keep us from doing so!
Agreed, we have a lot of things that keep us from living faithfully in the Kingdom at present. And I agree that there are layers upon layers of things to address.
ReplyDeleteI hear you on the dis-ease! I've been saying for a long time, that we need to address the oversight structure of District and Denominational ministries. Not sure how to do it, either! Local churches, grassroots ministries, district and denominational ministries all compete for the same dollars. And we encourage folks to faithfully give to all beating the drum of stewardship.
In some ways I feel we are at a similar junction of faith as Mack was when he was wrestling with how to be faithful to what he felt led to do regarding baptism!
Have you read God's Economy by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove? A couple BVSers really got into the book at our most recent orientation. I have a copy of it in our traveling library.
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