If you’re like me, you’ve been watching the news and stocks as we witness history in the making.  Yesterday, after the House defeated the bailout plan from the Senate, the DOW Jones Industrial Average fell 777 points, the largest one day fall in its history.  Economically speaking, we are in the middle of a major turning point in our country, and our world.  The days of unfettered spending and reckless, limitless greed are numbered.

The national debt hangs at about 9.3 TRILLION dollars.  I’m no economic expert, but even I understand that’s a big, hairy problem.  I can’t even type that number out on a normal calculator!  US families aren’t much better; and now that teens can hold credit cards in their name, they are graduating HIGH SCHOOL with an average of $6,000 dollars in debt.  What a way to start a life!

Trina and I left college in debt.  School loans were sold to us like a bottle of snake oil.  Trina talks about how signing her name on that first “financial aid” package was a major negative turning point in her relationship with God.  What sounded like “aid” before our college days now sounds more like “bondage” and “debt.”

Around the time I graduated in May, we had some friends point us to Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University.  We listened to all the sessions during our long move from Texas to Chicago, although we had begun to learn some of the principles while in Abilene.

Ramsey describes his plan as, “Giving you the same financial advice your grandmother would, (only we keep our teeth in).”  His main goal - help people live within their means, and climb out of debt.  Through sort of a baby step process, he gives couples, churches, and businesses steps out of the insanity of credit, mortgages, car leases, and much of the monstrosity that comes from living on the thin wire of excessive debt.  He was against the $700 billion dollar bail-out, and after hearing from both sides of the issue, I side with Ramsey.  The market will course correct - we are not headed for the Great Depression Part 2.  The Government in the ’30’s developed the FDIC to secure banking deposits - there is more regulation over private banks (and doubtless there will be more in the near future because of this mess).

What is more likely to happen is that banks will not be able to sell 30 year no-money-down mortgages for families looking to buy a mansion they can’t afford.  Along with that, it will be tougher for people to be approved for credit cards or car leases that they have no business applying for in the first place.  Businesses and banks will have to reel in their liquidity rates that resemble some sense of sanity, while other banks and institutions will undoubtedly continue to fail, the wise will survive.

We are not moving into the Great Depression, we are entering “The Great Moderation.“  This is the time when Cash is King - pull out some envelopes and follow a budget.  Save money, don’t spend it.  Live simply, give generously.  This is a time when the whole nation may begin to heal from its drunken hubris.  Followers of Christ can learn much from their earliest brothers and sisters - “who shared their possessions, and had everything in common, and not a needy person could be found among them.” (Acts 2)

This is not the end of Capitalism, but in this age we must think about a Creative Capitalism that doesn’t only reward a few and neglect millions more.  Do what V-8 Juice is doing, giving away fresh produce to the working poor with some of the profits they make on their nutrition drinks.  Or do what Ethos Water does, putting many of their proceeds on bottled water toward water-well development in Africa.  Or do what the first century Christians did, in sharing a common purse.  Health insurance would be a lot simpler if you were paying into a pot shared by others who actually care about you and worship Christ with you on Sundays.

We as a nation are learning from our mistakes - many of them were lessons already learned during the ’30’s - we can not live beyond what God has given us.

…Give us TODAY our DAILY bread.

I enjoyed spending some more time with our friends/co-workers at Reba Place Fellowship.  We are continuing to see how we can partner with them in following the Lord together and sharing the Gospel with new people groups around the city.  Allan Howe, one of the leaders of the fellowship met with us today, along with several from Good News Partners, an inner city homeless ministry.  As is usual when talking to those on the edge of Kingdom life, the question of “how will this be funded” floated to the surface.

This issue has been on my mind for quite some time now.  It seems that too many people have a desire or a vision for a radical work or ministry, but too few have the capacity to see it come to fruition.  Underfunding could stem from any number of reasons.  Whether its an issue with the skill of vision casting, or a dreamer’s desire to be so radical that it leaves him/her unaccountable to the larger body of Christ, or maybe its an issue of spiritual warfare, or its just that God’s timing for a ministry is not quite our own… It seems that ministries increasingly will have to pay attention to their funding if they are to remain sustainable in effective ministry.

Some have concluded that they cannot receive funding from congregations or missions organizations and instead feel called to “tentmaking.”  Tentmaking is just a fancy way of saying that you use your job to pay for your vocation, and that your business fuses organically with God’s mission.  The apostle Paul, Priscilla and Aquilla did that, and so have countless others.  Others believe that support from churches is where they need to be.  That’s cool too.  “A worker deserves his wages,” Jesus said, and spent time as a mason as well as receiving his living wage from women who had rich husbands (some of which were in business with Herod himself!).  Others still find a workable blend of both roads.

A few books that have shaped my thinking on this are Getting Sent: A Relational Approach to Support Raising, by Pete Sommer, No More Mondays, by Dan Miller, Missions and Money: Affluence as a Missionary Problem, by Jon Bonk, and Profit for the Lord: Economic Activities in the Moravian Missions and the Basel Mission Trading Company, by William Danker.

While I think that those called to a missionary must learn that the world does not revolve around them and their ministry (and that we must learn to become accountable to the larger body of Christ in relational and financial ways), I also think that each ministry must seek eventual self-sustainability.  In order to do this, we must allow the “creative starter” giftings of the missionary to encourage entrepreneurial capital ventures, but keep it from becoming a means of significant distraction from their real work of training leaders to plant churches.  It is not a bad thing for students training to be missionaries to take some key business classes to help them get their arms around economic enterprise.

At the same time, I would hope that financial ties to the rest of the Body of Christ would never be completely severed.  Much like a biological family - even after the children are grown, they help each other out when times get rough or share resources for special interest projects (like a family reunion, or supporting a needy member of the family).

Reba has found that when a group shares resources, more risks can be made - both in ministry and in business.  It’s easier to start a business when you instantly have nearly 100 people financially backing you!

Ultimately though, we work and sweat and prepare - and then we must wait for the Lord to provide.  Right now I work part time at a restaurant in the neighborhood.  I run around like crazy setting the place up in hopes that when we open the doors at 5:30, there will be people interested in eating there, receiving my work, and (mostly unbeknownst to them) supporting urban missions!  There’s an interesting passage in Isaiah 40 that says,

“Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

“Waiting” on the Lord includes lots of work!  But their strength comes from the Lord, and from knowing that ultimately the Lord will be their resource.  When it comes to financial life and ministry today, not much has changed.

I look forward to the day when, like the apostles in Acts 6, I can hand off “waiting tables” to others.  For the time being however, I am learning in my job what it means to earn a living, and seeking humility as a server even as I reach out to those I work with as one who has found the Peace that changes lives.  I’m thankful that Jesus gave us flexibilty in this area of funding missions - and I learn so much from others who are much father into this experiment than I am.

Thanks to Jenna for getting my butt off the blogger bench.

Today I spent almost the whole day doing some of my favorite things: traveling and networking.  My little dirty secret:  I actually LIKE public transit - it gives me great delight in playing the game of transferring buses, deciphering train map puzzles, and timing the whole thing just right.  Today I took Pace Bus 250 all the way from one end of the route to the other - all the way to O’Hare Airport’s Kiss n’ Fly.  The bus driver looked at me a bit suspiciously as I looked longingly into his eyes…

From there, I met Dave Rudin, who is pastor at Summit View Christian Church in Hoffman Estates, and we carpooled it the rest of the way.

It’s amazing how church planters are really most interested in the same things.  They are interested in how to bring someone in desperate need of Jesus to a place where they are ready to follow him, and grow them even beyond that to the point where they are a mature believer helping others come to know Christ.  This process of reproducing disciples is the heart of what church planting is all about.  In fact, most of my interactions with the term “church planting” have left me somewhat wanting, since Jesus never asks us to “go into all the world and plant churches” - but rather make disciples.

Today’s group conversation however centered around our own discipleship.  The process of spiritual formation and personal growth is a favorite topic of mine - especially when talking like this in groups.  It’s inevitable that people will start throwing resources and new ideas around, and I’ll start writing them down like a crazy person.

Speaking of sweet resources: check out 48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller, and this sweet quote by Kahlil Gibran:

Work is love made visible.

And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste,

it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple

and take alms of those who work with joy.

For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread

that feeds but half man’s hunger.

And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes,

your grudge distills a poison in the wine.

And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing,

you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

All work is empty save when there is love;

and when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself,

and to one another, and to God.

What is it that gets your heart racing - that makes the time fly by?  If you’re only working for the money, chances are good you won’t last long in the job.  If you just put your resume out there and hope someone bites, chances are good you’ll hate your job just like the rest of America.  But if you discover your calling - your vocation - and can think of some way in which your job fits into the higher calling, then even cleaning toliets or sweeping floors can be genuine work and worship to God!  May we all find our calling, and enjoy the work God has brought us to.

We’re living just a little more free these days, Katrina and I. It’s an exciting moment, and I thought I would share it with you through this video:

An inspiring “money drop” on Wall Street from some inspiring brothers and sisters in Christ.

What if another world is possible???