Christian Money Management
by Bob Anes

What does money management have to do with being Christian in general, and with The Pioneer in particular? If you are asking these questions, read on.

In September, I had to attend some business meetings in Calgary, Alberta, and my wife and I decided to drive instead of fly. This meant we would spend a lot of time in the car, so we decided to take a collection of cassette tapes along.

CHRISTIAN

MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES

One of these was a series on Doing Business God’s Way, which we had obtained through Life Outreach International. It is a series of seminars on "Breaking the Cycle of Debt," presented by Dennis Peacocke. Dennis has been lecturing for almost 30 years as a Christian pastor, author, and business man, but he was not always like that. In his younger days, he pursued humanistic ideals, until he was confronted with the power of the Gospel, which showed him that his socialist beliefs were a delusion, and not the answer to the problems in this world. The world has been misled into thinking that the problem is lack of money. It is not. It is the symptom of a much deeper problem: humanistic thinking. It has been proven time and time again that throwing money at problems does not solve them; on the contrary, they start to multiply.

OUR "BUY NOW;

PAY LATER" MIND SET

Our worldly way of living is based on short-term thinking and is in many cases geared to the pursuit of pleasure. Buy now; pay later. He who dies with the most toys wins. It is what the Bible calls "Eat and drink, because tomorrow we’ll die." It may provide short-term pleasure, but it does not make a person happy. The Bible teaches to lay up your treasure in heaven. Most of the world has bought into the fallacy of spending now and not thinking about tomorrow. Our children and grandchildren, instead of being heirs to the wealth of this country, are inheriting a pile of unpaid bills to the tune of almost a trillion dollars. Our generation has been stealing from future generations.

This was written before I knew that the January issue of the Church Herald (pages 30-34) would publish an article on this subject and would be using almost the same words! God does have a way of putting things together!

We have bred a whole generation of people who only talk about rights, who are always looking for someone else to solve their problems. God’s Word does not talk about rights. It talks about responsibilities. This builds character and leads to independence by transforming people into problem solvers. The greatest tragedy of socialism is that it robs people of their problem-solving capabilities and opportunities.

God says: "I am the God of Abram, Isaac, and Jacob." He wants to bless future generations, but it is now becoming clear that our sin of overspending is creating problems for us and our offspring. Spending now is easy. Paying for it later can be very difficult, as far too many have experienced. Saving for something and than paying cash builds character. This is, of course, very old fashioned, and it does not fit into our consumer-based society. God’s wisdom is foolishness to the world.

Unfortunately, some of this has rubbed off on Christians. However, I am happy to say that most of the Christian people I know, through proper teaching or upbringing or maybe even instinctively, also think in generations. Rather than pursuing fleeting pleasure, they build wealth (not riches!) by investing in their children and grandchildren. This is done by teaching them how to live, by educating them properly, by saving for their education, by sending them to Christian camps in the summer, by instilling the work ethic in them, and by teaching them to save instead of spend.

Managing money God’s way is built on faith, but it has stood the test of time. Managing money in a worldly manner (buy now; pay later) carries the seeds of destruction. This may surprise some of you, but the worldly system is also based on faith. As long as everybody believes in the system, it will work. We believe that the bank will have the money when we want to withdraw it. We believe that the government will deliver our pension cheques next month, next year, or ten years from now. Our banking system is based on fractional reserve banking, but it is a system built on sand. Just ask anybody who has tried to get money out of a Russian bank lately; consider what it was like to try to get money out of some U.S. banks in the 1930s. In my opinion, the whole easy money bubble is getting too large, and is about to burst. Y2K, now less then a year away, may well be the event that will trigger the biggest financial disaster we have ever seen. The Auditor General for Canada has admitted that our pensions are at risk.

AND NOW: THE PIONEER

What does this have to do with The Pioneer? For some reason most of our churches send ASKINGS, the money that pays for the printing and mailing of The Pioneer, at the end of the year. As I am writing this, The Pioneer is more than $11,000 in the red. I have been told that this is normal for this time of years, but it simply cannot continue. Not only is it not sound, but it is not based on Christian principles, which call for sound money management.

For that reason, I was asked to write an article about this, to bring it to your attention, and suggest a way to turn it around. For the RCA in Canada, it is just a drop in the bucket, and I know we have church members who could easily wipe it out with one cheque. But that is not what I am looking for. What I am suggesting is that, until the situation is resolved, our churches put The Pioneer on their budget in the first instead of the last few months of the year. I think that every church can do at least that much. In the meantime, is it too much to ask that the readers consider this matter, and mail a cheque to the Regional Synod of Canada to wipe out the debt? Every cheque, no matter how small the amount, will help. For amounts over $10, contributors will receive a tax receipt. Larger amounts, $20, $50, $100, or more, will be much appreciated.

We are trying to turn The Pioneer around, and with that I do not only mean financially, but also in content. If you have comments or suggestions, we will be more than happy to consider them.