When you read this you must bear in mind that Susan is an insider in terms of church membership. These opinions though are her own and the result of a lot of reading and searching for ideas that will change the lives of those around her. They are also a reflection of her own experience. What you will soon see is that they are very different from the traditional views on this subject and indeed could be seen as quite controversial. Once she started writing she realised that this was going to become the outline for a book. Maybe it will one day but for now here is an outline of Susan\’s opinions on money and the church
Where are we now?
So far during most of the 21st century there has been an economic downturn to some degree or another. This could be with one particular type of employer as when the government started reducing the amount of money that it gave to further education colleges in 2005. It has only got worse since with less funding, fewer courses, less help for those on a low income and fewer jobs for teachers. The one thing that has increased is the cost of courses.
In more recent years the entire UK economic system has been struggling. Some big names in retail have disappeared such as Woolworths. Many companies have downsized as they struggle to get orders. Unemployment has increased as a result. Not only that but events outside the UK have led to the price of food shooting up. The price of wheat and therefore flour doubled in under 2 years. This meant that things like bread, cakes, biscuits, pasta and anything else made from flour has gone up in price as well. People are well and truly squeezed with the cost of food going up and the struggle to earn a living getting harder at the same time.
Some churches have responded by setting up food banks so that it is less likely that people will go hungry. Others have set up job clubs to help people find jobs. Others have started to work with Christians in Poverty to help those who are struggling because they are in debt. These are good ideas but do they really resolve the underlying issues?
In addition to this the church is struggling to fund its national structures. The level of giving is down in most national church groupings so they are having to make some tough decisions. They are re-structuring and even making some people redundant. The pressure on the finances of local churches has also increased as people who have lost their jobs have less to give in terms of money. For years the church has found that it has had projects that it has wanted to undertake but has struggled to find the money so has turned to the community to raise money for building repairs. Then there is the time taken up applying for grants to keep the building going and to set up or run various social action projects.
Some churches are struggling to pay people who work within their structures so they depend on volunteers who can support themselves in other ways. This then leads to people even those leading some churches having to spend part of their lives working and earning money and part working in the church. The church cannot pay them and they have to have a job because they have no income coming in from any other source. Many churches are now heavily dependent on those who have retired because they have the time to run church activities.
The community at large wonders what on earth the church is there for. It does not seem very relevant to today\’s society. They do not want to be involved as they do not think that it will meet their needs. On the other hand churches that do manage to find ways to meet the needs of those around them are growing. If someone believes that their main need is a job that they enjoy or enough money to pay the bills what does the average church have to offer them in the way of achieving their desires?
What could be done to improve the situation?
What about helping people learn how to become financially free? In other words to have enough income coming from businesses that they run to be able to spend their time helping others in the community. Or what about helping people earn such a good income that they can live on half and give away the rest to worthy causes? Or what about some of the people who are attending the job club being offered jobs by a church member who has set up a business with the deliberate intention of providing employment for them. That is radical but is that really what the church should be doing.
Running a successful business takes more than a business strategy or successful tactics or a good product it takes character. How can secular business support organisations help people develop character? They can help with strategy, tactics and product development but character?
What some business start up counsellors have done in the past is filter out those whose character issues would cause them problems. Take the person who did not value themselves or their product very highly which led to them wanting to charge a low price. They would look at their business plan and help them realise that the projected income would be too low for the business to survive very long. However now there are fewer business counsellors around so more people are going into business in without experienced supporters reviewing their plans. This leaves them at great risk of joining the 50% plus of businesses that do not reach their first birthday.
The strange thing about business is that the majority of the principles that work are, when you look at them in detail, found in the Bible. One concept is if you serve others and meet their needs then you will be rewarded financially. How many businesses are founded in order to meet the needs of people? The majority probably because the entrepreneur saw a need in the community and decided to do something about it. There is a need for an electrician who specialises in this kind of work or will visit this type of client or work in this community. They discover the need set up the business and they are rewarded for it.
What has been done in the past?
People have been teaching others to set up and run businesses for generations. That is how it used to be done. In fact could this have been what Jesus himself did. He was the carpenter\’s son and the eldest child in the family. He would have been in line to inherit the family business after his father died. Strange thing is that there is no mention of Joseph after Jesus visited the temple as a boy. Why would Jesus have asked a close friend to look after his mother when he was dying if his father was alive to help her? Could Jesus really have followed the Jewish transition of learning to run a business from his father and when his father died taken it over. Then when he started his ministry was their enough money coming into the family business for him to take some out to support himself while he was an itinerant minister. If Jesus did this why on earth cannot the church follow his example.
In the years since then a variety of people have come up with various ideas to alleviate poverty. William Booth the founder of the Salvation Army published a whole host of ideas on how to help the poor of London in his book Out of Darkest England. One of his ideas was a Labour Exchange. This was taken up by the government who have now developed Labour Exchanges into Jobcentres. It might be over 100 years old but that book still has some useful ideas and concepts that could help the modern day church. There again the Salvation Army has strong links to a commercial bank. The Reliance Bank was originally set up to help local Salvation Army corps develop new buildings and today its profits are still used to support the Salvation Army. In other words it can be done.
What could be done?
Here are a few of the possibilities that come to mind.
What if someone set up a business with the deliberate intention of employing some or all of the people who attend the church job club. It would need to be a viable business but the passion for setting it up and running it would to to care for the workforce including providing them with a good income and a long term job.
What if instead of giving someone food from a food bank or telling them that they do not have the money to buy new clothes until they have repaid their debts they are directed to a project that helps them find a way of increasing their income by developing business skills. This could be done by directing them to the church-based business training and mentoring programme. It is not just those in the third world that need help like this but those in our local communities. There are materials available online for this like those on the Reconxile web site.
What if jobless young people were enabled to believe in themselves enough to serve the community by setting up a business that provided them with a living. They could have their own business and mentoring programme.
What if the church itself set up some businesses. That is not as strange as it sounds. There are parts of the church that many many years ago used to get a large part of their income from renting out farms or houses. They got the income but the local community had jobs and food and a place to live. Some do still have property that they rent out. It could be in the form of training rooms or an exhibition venue or even homes to rent.
What if the church had incubator business units so that the people it supported had somewhere to move to once their business started to take over their home. Or what about providing a meeting room or other office facilities so that it was not so obvious that someone was working from home.
What if the church allowed its premises to be used as a registered address for businesses run by those who attended their projects. This would help the woman who was trying to stay clear of an abusive husband. UK law states that a company registered with Companies House needs to have a registered address and that address needs to be included all written materials given to others as well as on the web site. How can someone who needs to be protected from an abuser use their home address as the registered address of a company?
That is not a comprehensive list by any means. After all it is a list based on Susan\’s own experience. There are all sorts of possibilities that are suited to different situations.
Why the retreat?
There is a view of church history that suggests that the church has struggled in certain ways and then retreated but at the end of time it will recover all the ground that it lost. Whole books have been written about this idea. It is seen as the explanation why prophecy and adult baptism were not seen in the church for centuries and then were restored to the church. The strange thing is that something similar has happened in the community at large.
One thing that has been lost to the UK church is its monopoly for funerals and burials. In the 19th century when towns were growing so rapidly that nothing seemed to be able to keep up the church also had a problem. There was not enough space in the churchyards to buy people and this led to all sorts of unseemly things happening to bodies. Bodies were even disinterred by rain and floated down the street on occasions. In the end the government took over the situation by setting up Burial Boards who were committees of local worthies who organised new cemeteries that were not linked to churches. Burial Boards later became part of the system of local government and today their successors provide most of the facilities the community needs for burial and cremation. Cemeteries and crematoria are now paid for by local taxes and of course any charges they make. Churches that were built after 1850 often do not have church yards. Today the church has even lost its monopoly for funerals.
A similar story can be told in many other arenas of community life. Once most schools were provided by one of two organisations, one linked to the Anglican church and the other to the non-conformist churches. They were overwhelmed by demand so the government decided to put a mechanism in place so that every child could go to school. It did not take long for many of those schools with church links to disappear into history. The exception being the Roman Catholics who recognised the importance of educating their own children within their community and fought long and hard to keep their distinctive style of education. Today many Christians moan about the things that their children are taught and some go as far as educating them at home or find ways of setting up their own schools to protect them from the the things that are taught in government funded schools.
Coming back after a retreat is not easy but the government has made it easier in some ways. In recent years there has been talk of finding alternative ways of providing services to the community. This could be the Third Way i.e. not government not business but a different or third way. Then came the idea of the Big Society i.e. the government has retreated from providing some services and the Big Society took over. There are even new ways of setting up schools that can be used by churches who want to set up their own schools.
The truth is that the community has so many needs, that the government even with its ability to levy taxes, cannot afford to provide for those needs. The church feels weak and powerless and even the strongest church struggles to make a dent on all the needs of the community around it. The answer lies with the churches secret weapon i.e. its ability to work with God to bring in his way of doing things in the community.
What needs to be overcome to go forwards?
One problem is that the church has rationalised its attitude. It has seen the scriptural warnings about ambition but it says selfish ambition i.e. ambition to help yourself. If someone has the ambition to earn more so that they can give more, and still live on the same amount, is that really a selfish ambition? Worse still is its attitude towards money and earning money.
Money is seen as evil by some. Business owners can feel like cringing in church when they admit that they make money from running a business. If Jesus and his disciples were businessmen how could the church have got into a situation where people who are like them feel that they have to apologise for making money. The church has seen the warnings about the love of money and taught against greed and made people feel guilty for having money. It has taught against the love of money but then forgotten that the people who have the biggest fight with letting the love of money consume them are often not the rich. People say \”I need that bit more money so I will work more overtime or get a second job\” . Then their loved ones suffer from lack of attention due to the love of money.
There are those who allow possessions to possess them. That was the problem faced by the Rich Young Ruler. Jesus recognised his problem and gave him a prescription to deal with it. Problem is that this prescription has become medicine that is taken by people who do not need it. It has become a reason for people to say that any Christian with any property is acting in an unChristian way.
Let the new things emerge
Strange thing is that when new movements have come into the church like the charismatic movement there are people who have learnt that the old ways are the scriptural ones and the new ones are dangerous. There is something that is coming into the church that could be called an enterprise movement. People are seeing old ideas in a different way. They are seeing that developing businesses is a good idea. They are seeing new ways of understanding scripture and history that backs up their thinking. The beauty of this enterprise movement is that it is an excellent way of bringing money into the church so that the church can provide for the needs of the community.
The sadness is that there will be those who struggle against it who cannot really see why these kind of changes are necessary. Those who cannot understand what is happening and complain and leave and do things on their own rather than remain part of the church. That is nothing new it happens time and again with new movements.
What happens if the church does not act?
There are some communities in the UK where 1 in every 4 shops is closed. To walk through a town centre and stop counting boarded up shops when you reach 20 is a heartbreaking experience. It might be something to do with that community having one of the highest unemployment rates in the UK. There are also many empty business units and even the only business in that community that sold new cars has stopped trading. What is worse there are those involved in illegal money lending in that community. They offer lending of last resort with excessive interest rates and use unethical means of getting money back. This situation might improve with the new supermarket but it will take more than that to get that town back on its feet.
The fact that so many people are struggling financially is seen in the things that people are searching for on Google. There are tens of thousands of searches done each month for terms like \”make money fast\” \”best ways to make money\” \”how can I make money quickly\” and many other similar ones. The demand is there. People are looking but what is the church doing to meet their needs? Providing a job club here and there and running a money management program and of course developing a food bank. That is like feeding strawberries to an elephant or trying to put a sticking plaster over a wound where the bone is sticking out. It is pitifully little and not doing enough to meet the real need.
What is happening instead is that some people are going online to see what they can find. The problem is that they start looking and find not only practical ways of making money and handling money but spiritual ones as well. That should make most Christian\’s antennae start twitching. You see most of what is called spiritual online is linked to New Age or other non-Christian forms of teaching. There are loads of ungodly ways and means of overcoming issues relating to money appearing online. It seems at times as though they are exploding.
Someone may go online and recognise that they have what is best described as an ungodly belief around money e.g. I will never have enough for my needs and be presented with an ungodly way of dealing with it. From the church\’s perspective they then have two problems i.e. the original issue and the influence of the methods they have used to solve it. They then warn people against those ideas. Problem with that is that when those ideas work it is because they are copying biblical principles. This creates an additional problem because it is hard to separate the godly from the ungodly ideas.
The temptation is then to throw the baby out with the bath water. Problem is that keeping the baby is a good idea, we just need to get rid of the dirty water. Without sound teaching people get confused and struggle to tell the difference between the godly and ungodly.
Where to next?
First step is to decide to do something. Second is to work out what to do. Yes that does sound easy. However those who have tried changing the way a church fellowship does things recognise that it is like turning round an oil tanker. It takes time and has to be done slowing and carefully if it is to be successful. However unlike some new movements this idea of becoming more enterprising is something that can be done by individuals. It is possible for individuals to educate themselves in relation to how to set up a business. In fact often the best way is to get on and set up a business and find a mentor to help. There are also ways that individuals can help themselves recognise and overcome ungodly beliefs.
This is why Susan is developing learning materials in the name of Lily the Pink Education to help people set up and run businesses as well as to deal with the issues that make it harder to succeed in business such as ungodly beliefs. If you have reached the end of this epic journey of why Susan is doing this and are still interested in these ideas you are welcome to go over to the the web page and sign up for the newsletter to keep in touch with what progress she is making.
P.S. Well done for reading right to the end. This page ended up being around 3700 words.