Posted by Pastor Steven on April 15, 2002 at 17:30:11:
In Reply to: Re: Quandary... posted by jonvon on April 15, 2002 at 12:29:26:
Before I respond to the issue, I need to clear up one thing from the gitgo, I think. Jonvon wrote:
: So 20 bucks a week... starts to look like not a whole lot. I don't know how it all works, but I'm sure that not all of that will go right back to Steve.
None of it will go right back to Steve -- NONE of it. What it goes to do (with the other offerings) is to take a stab at the thousands of dollars of church bills we incur each month. Then, if we manage to pay most of them (and often we do not), then I can get paid my modest housing allowance (and often I do not). That is the way it really works. This is why fixing the "babysitting out of Steve's pocket" problem is just a smoke screen of a response. It's like stating a willingness to wash the car with the blown-up engine; it doesn't begin to address the reality of the problem.
So let's clear this smoke screen out of the way: Consider the suggestion that we should announce that we will not have babysitters next week if the money is not in this week's offering. Though this "fix" barely scratches the surface, there is a real principle here that is veiled. The realistic application would be like announcing that the pastor will not be here next week if his salary isn't in this week's offering. The fact remains that I probably would still be there. And the fact remains that everyone there knows it. And even if some thought I would really leave, they may well be offended that I would even consider it, and use that to justify not being persuaded to give. There is no fix here.
: For a really long time I have had a fundamental distrust of ministry in general. When I stopped believing in it after giving faithfully for a lot of years I stopped giving. A lot of us are like that, and Steve has been here for us for a long time. Many of us are kind of like orphans in a way, outcasts of a subculture that just doesn't work for us. So we want to sit around writing dark poetry and smoking cloves and whatnot. Well maybe that is an exaggeration, but its not too far off. Something is happening in me lately, I think after all this time something is maybe getting healed in me. Or maybe I'm just tired of shaking my fist in the air or something, I don't know. Maybe being a father has something to do with it. Its hard to tell. But anyway I want to shoulder the responsibility that is mine, whatever that might be. Everyone else can shoulder theirs, whatever that is.
: At the end of the day we are building something together if we can do this.
This goes right to the heart of the issue. I, like you and many others, am so deeply cynical of ministry motives and so sensitive to the misapplication of biblical principles to motivate funding those supposedly "God-inspired" motives that I would not even BE in church myself were it not for the reality of Yahweh Shammah (God who is there) in my life and in me, and my ongoing inability to stray very far from trying to point out His presence to those who will hear. And like me, you yourself would not even be in this church except for your inability to escape your deep desire to realize God's presence in you, in your life, in your marriage, in your wife, in your child, and in your expression: in your music, your poetry, your prose. You do not have an option--you require the pursuit of this reality to live. It is how you were constructed. When you resist, you begin to die. This you know full well.
My problem is that I have always believed that eventually those like us would make a simple recognition of value, one that has unfortunately never really followed:
If we gave so much for so long to something that was so flawed and left us so bitter, and
if we have now seen fully that what we really desired was never available to us then, and
if we see now the miracle of the possibility that it really could grow right now, right here,
then why would we not give at least what we gave to the lie before?
Why would we not water a beautiful flower today
because ten years ago we accidentally watered a weed,
and we are still disillusioned to this day from that bad gardening experience?
The thing that perplexes me the most is the widespread (likely sub-conscious) assumption that this miraculous flower may really be the weed from the past, reappeared in disguise, and rather than take the risk of nourishing an imposter, we will not water at all. After all, we have learned that whatever needs water is a weed. Right?
Don't we make the following assumptions naturally to some degree, because of our experiences?:
* If the church talks about needing money badly, then their priority is likely money, not God, and there is likely mismanagement and greed.
* If the pastor is distraught because he can't pay his bills, then his main motivation is money, not God, and he only serves so he can get paid, not of sincerity.
* If the church encourages tithing, then their main motivation is to use the parishioners to serve themselves, not to serve others.
There are dozens more assumptions that come into my own head I could list here, but I think you get my point. We are at a disadvantage. We reach out to those who have already been burned and are distrustful. Therefore we are poor. But it is the ministry I chose and I blame no one else for it. And if the good folks here all shut their pockets and this work dies, the fact is that I will surely end up somewhere else battling similar obstacles. Either God has truly called me to this vision or I am inordinately obsessed and the chief of fools. Either way, I am poorly paid when paid, and likely this will always be.
I have spoken here only to those, like you, who have some validity to their reluctance to trust and to give, to those who would respond to a clear revelation that God is here, who would respond in a way that would begin to heal such wounds. I do not speak to those who have no room for the expense in their budget to cultivate the reality and knowledge of God in their lives. They have made a disastrous value judgment that esteems this treasure an optional expense; they judge the experience of God-who-is-there as "beneficial, if financially feasible." They want God only if He is a financial bargain. How sad.