One of the best-kept secrets in the Christian world is that gospel work needs money. Yes, Jesus did say “You cannot serve God and Money” and Paul backed him up with “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil”-So its understandable that Christians are loathe to give the subject too much airplay.
Nevertheless there are times when that false god Mammon needs to be pressed into service of the true God. Why not capitalise (sic) on this ‘necessary evil’?
Another well-kept secret is that there are many Christians who worship Mammon for a living. Now, maybe they keep their profession secret because they’ve read the above verses, yet this group of people spend most of their waking hours making money for their bosses or their businesses. In the 1980s (even after October, 1987) moneymaking is as popular a hobby as ever! What do this group have to offer their church which, they may feel, suffers from ante-deluvian monetary practices.
Why can’t we liberate these friends from their guilt? Let’s call their moneymaking skills the “gift of administrations” and challenge them to go for it in a big way. Why can’t these people, so successful at being entrepreneurs for their livelihood, channel their skills into being entrepreneurs for the gospel?
One sidetrack is to put these financial wizards on the church committee or appoint them church treasurer. This is no good. It’s no good burying an entrepreneur in accounting for what we already have-he/she needs to be free to dream about what we could have if only we’d…
Another sidetrack is to limit their thinking to funding the structures that already exist. This would only contain and frustrate their distinctive gift. No, let them think widely and beyond the status quo. Let them find the ‘holes in the market’ that we can drive through with some new form of gospel ministry, staffed by this or that kind of person, funded by…
And give them a team of doers who can steer their projects to completion. Don’t let the man with the vision do the job. He needs to keep having more visions. Let him keep dreaming and let the doers do the doing.
It has happened occasionally before. Lady Huntingdon, John Thornton, the Clapham Sect, and the other ‘patrons’ of the English Evangelical Revival-these men and women used their entrepreneurial skills and their cash to propagate good gospel ministry.
Where are the modern day entrepreneurs who can use their gift for the kingdom?
