I am a pastor at 
Letting this quote from Brennan Manning sink in a bit today,
“To me, the lack of credibility of the Christian church in America is that we are not professional lovers of God and people. We’ve got this carrying of the Bibles, saying “Praise Jesus!” and we don’t love one another. We don’t reach out and extend ourselves. Tell me the amount of money in your local church that is devoted to, first, the quality of faith of the people and, second, the assistance of the poor. Tell me those two things and I will tell you what I think of your church”
Preach in Brennan!
Our leadership team is in the midst of asking some important questions around these very two important issues. It’s my guess that most churches do okay with the first one. That’s where most of our staff is allocated. Our staff make up a significant portion of most of our budgets so one could say that we are putting a good amount of money into the quality of the faith of the people. This is a good thing. I am a fan of staff because I think this is an important part of our mission.
But what about the poor? What about those less fortunate? What about those people on the other side of the tracks?
What’ the best way to use money so that the poor are actually helped?
Where are we unnecessarily putting money?
Where do we need to be putting money that we are not?
All good questions. Sometimes I think its too easy to get caught up in asking questions taht are hard to answer and we never actually act on anything because we are so busy asking questions and critiquing.
By the way this quote from Brennan Manning comes from some dialogue that takes places in the book The Monkey and the Fish: Liquid Leadership for a Third-Culture Church
Tim Thompson said...
1Great quote – Manning hits the bull’s eye I think by pointing to hearts changed and lives changed. Reminds me of something Jesus said about the Greatest Commandment(s) which had to do with love for God and love for neighbor.
In your comments, you focused on the challenge around love for the poor. But I also have some major misgivings about how we spend our money in the work of helping people grow spiritually. (And not just money, but the deployment of all our resources including time, energy and physical space.) It seems to me that in a conventional church, our resources are overwhelmingly dedicated to the large group gatherings e.g. Sunday Worship, while the most effective gatherings for spiritual formation are when a few people get face to face around Jesus. It’s a complete mis-alignment, I think. I have a little napkin drawing illustrating that here: http://feralpastor.blogspot.com/2009/03/twin-peaks-resource-allocation-and.html.
I don’t know anything about your staff, Todd, or how they are deployed, but I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the extent to which they work with large groups and how effective their work is in helping people grow in faith. Or for that matter, how do you even approach the challenge of evaluating faith maturity so as to tell if people are growing or not?
03/25/09 1:59 PM | Comment Link
Tripp Hudgins said...
2Hey there. Challenging stuff.
Most congregations attempt to be both The Temple and the Hands of Christ simultaneously. This is the problem. Many of us have large buildings to support. We may have programs to match. But how do we give. I think that a church has a choice…and two healthy options at least. Perhaps three.
They can be the Temple…full on and blessed. Such a life can inspire individuals to give of their time and their resources to the poor.
They can be The Hands of Christ…full on and blessed. Such a life is a life of charity. The building may be neglected etc. But that comes from living simply so that others may simply live, as someone said once.
So, should we insist that every congregation do both? I just don’t know. It’s a hard thing to work out.
03/25/09 4:26 PM | Comment Link