Church, Money, Future . . . still going
In case you’ve missed the last two posts, there’s a good conversation going, and it’s snowballing. More voices have been added, and I have it on good authority that there’s more coming.
For now, check out the contributions by:
It seems to me that these conversations are both new and old. They’re new in the sense that those of us that have come out of mainstream evangelicalism never had to ask these questions, because the structures of Christendom were still working well enough to ensure some job security, but now they’re not. They’re old in the sense that there have always been churches and pastors serving on the margins and outside the boundaries of the empire, and have never had the luxury of job security in the first place.
Keep pushing, prodding and thinking creatively about all this. There is reason for Hope, and our hope does not disappoint us. But it’s hope of a different nature than we’ve seen before.
Filed under: Christendom, culture, friends, globalization, social action, theology
I would agree that it’s an old issue, going way back to even the first century. Right now in my NT class, were in I Corinthians and in chapter 9, Paul talks about how he doesn’t take a wage from non-believers because that would be a stumbling block in sharing the Gospel with them (because in that time pagan priests didn’t take a wage for their positions, they paid to be in the positions they were in). So because of that, Paul was bi-vocational working as a tentmaker and sharing the gospel. Though in that same chapter, he says that it’s not wrong to take a wage, in fact they should be provided for (v. 14) and of course we know in his journeys that the Thessalonian church sent a gift of money so that he could devote full time to sharing the Gospel.
The thing I took away from that in light of today’s situation is this: There are certain times and places where being bi-vocational for ministers is what’s required or needed. However, if there is a local body of believers that can support a minister full time, they should do so. If believers were doing that in the first century, I don’t see why it can’t be done in the 21st
By the way, great challenging thought provoking ideas
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