Loading ...Crying Poor
This phenomenon happens in the church on a regular basis. It can come from preachers, members, elders, and deacons. The crying poor is sometimes a cover up for a “no” or “cheapness.” Often a congregation will cry poor to a missionary about the inability to support his work. The typical phrase goes like “we would love to help you, but we do not have any extra money at this time.” A preacher can cry poor to the congregation by stating, “I do not have enough money to support my family,” but the real problem is that he was not a good steward of his funds. Elders can cry poor to the preacher or to the congregation by stating that “we would love to pay you more or we would love to support that work but the budget is tight at this time.” The problem in crying poor is that sometimes the congregation is not poor. There is a surplus of funds or the financial picture is not that bleak. But the congregation, the preacher, the elders, or the deacons are just hoarding funds instead of allowing the monies to be used in the kingdom of God. There always seems to be a strong desire to properly manage the funds of the church, but this is a two way street. Church monies must not be wasted but also must not be hoarded. Both of these attitudes are sinful.
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This must be accountability for this in congregations.
When does money become the Lord’s money, before or after one gives it to the elders of a congregation? There are a lot of accusations flying around about wasting the Lord’s money. If an individual or the elders of the congregations decide to give money to an effort to further the kingdom whether it meets our expectations or not I believe that God sees it as good. We have all heard about throwing your pearls before swine as a verse to out law giving to things we don’t agree with. But the truth is that many churches and individuals have sincerely gave to missionaries and organizations that have not produced in the old religious score card of Baptisms, Attendance, Contribution, and involvement in the church programs. If you look at what the contribution was used for in the First century most of it went to feed and clothe the poor, Paul got a little salary out of it but most of it went to care the needy both in and outside the church. I think this tells a story of who the early Christians really were in spirit. We must stop measuring the effectiveness of charitable giving by the old score card and start using the kingdom and personal transformation as the scorecard. I can’t tell you how many churches have almost complete abandoned their benevolence programs because they feel they were being taken advantage of. As long as there is charity there will be abuses. How many of us think that Jesus would not have healed the 10 lepers if he knew ahead of time that most would not even be grateful? He still would have healed them! The church must stop using the excuse of being taken advantage of to stop benevolence and other things we are called to do like visit people in prison. Yes the attitude of stinginess is the opposite of generosity. Remember Paul when he said “They gave out of their poverty”. I doubt most members of the churches of Christ in the USA have ever given out of true poverty. Justifying stinginess by citing abuses of the Lawrd’s money is usually a matter of preference rather than the outright “throwing your pearls before swine”. We need to be careful when we tell someone they are unworthy of the Lord’s charity or love.
I have seen some of this too, but I know that the Waynesboro church of Christ has one of the best Benevolence programs in the whole. It is the largest funded work within the congregation. This church does a great job of helping the poor.
I’ll have to agree with Matthew. The benevolence ministry at Waynesboro is the most active, hardest working, most effective ministry we have and I would hold it up as a model to anyone. However, that doesn’t take away from our human side when we see the abuses that occur. When the Lord’s Money is misused it should rile us! Although not feasibly possible, our desire would be for every cent in the treasury to be spent in its most effective manner so when we know it wasn’t it makes us mad. Why? Because there are literally thousands of people out there in need of help and our resources are limited.
Great thoughts Matthew.