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Why Do We Give? *

April 12, 2016 by Leave a Comment

The Christian Wallet: Why Do We Give? *
Sycamore Creek Church
January 17/18, 2016
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!  And happy New Year.

What are the life skills you’re training in your children or grandchildren? There are certain spiritual practices we’re training our own children in. We do Bible reading and prayer each night before bed. We serve together as a family. We came to the S Penn Venue together in December to clean the building. We’re training our children to worship weekly, even when we go on vacation. We went with Sarah’s parents to their church when we were away after Christmas. We are training our children in confession and forgiveness. When one does wrong to someone, we ask him to ask the one he wronged to forgive him. When I do something wrong to one of my boys, I confess the wrong and ask for forgiveness. We also are beginning to train our oldest boy about money. He has three jars on the kitchen counter: Give, Save, and Spend. He gets three quarters each week and one quarter goes in each jar. He brings the money in the give jar into the church to put in the offering. We are training our children to give their money away. But why? That’s the question I want to deal with today. Why do we give? I want to give you three reasons why you’d give your money back to God through the church.

  1. To keep close to the heart of God
    When you give your money to the church you keep your heart, the deep place in yourself, close to God. Jesus teaches:

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
~Matthew 6:21 NRSV

Make sure you notice the direction here. Your heart follows your money. Not the other way around. The decisions you make about how you spend your money shape the form of your heart.

Last year Sarah and I sold our house in Petoskey. We had owned that house for about fifteen years. We put a lot of time and money into that house. When we sold it I was curious how much money we had dumped into the house. So I figured an average amount for our mortgage payment, taxes, utilities, and repairs and added it all up. The total amount we spent on that house came to about $170,000 over fifteen years! $170,000! $170,000 is enough to anchor your heart anywhere. And while we had the house, our hearts were in Petoskey. But when we sold the house it freed up our hearts to really reside and root in Lansing.

Forbes provides a list of the top five things you’ll spend your money on over your lifetime. These five things will require about half of all the money you make:

  1. House (30%)
  2. Car/Travel (10%)
  3. Kids ($225,000),
  4. College (10%)
  5. Retirement (10-15% = Salary x 25)

Based on this list, our hearts will be in our homes, our cars, our kids, our education, and our retirement. That pretty well sums up what most of us spend our lives pursuing. But what really struck me about this list was that God didn’t even make a showing. Is God in your top five?

You give generously to the church to keep your heart close to God!

Paul, the first missionary of the church said:

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
~Galatians 5:22:23 NRSV

Many of you know that verse not with “generosity” in it but “goodness.” The Greek work implies goodness through being generous to those around you. When God’s Spirit is at work in you, generosity becomes a mark of your character. You do good generously, including with your money.

So is God not interested in my house, car, kids, education, and retirement? Not exactly. God’s vision for the world is a world of “Shalom.” Shalom is Hebrew for “peace”, but shalom is much more than the absence of war. Shalom is peace, well-being, and prosperity all around for everyone. Shalom includes justice to those who are without justice. There is no peace without justice. There is no shalom without justice.

Shalom pops up in one of the most famous blessings in the Old Testament, the Aaronic Blessing. Aaron was Moses brother and the first priest of the tabernacle. This blessing of his is recorded in the book of Numbers:

The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace [shalom].
~Numbers 6:24-26 NRSV

God is definitely interested in shalom, well-being, peace, prosperity for all of God’s creation, but God’s primary mission is not to make you safe, comfortable, and entertained. God’s primary mission in Jesus is elsewhere…

  1. To meet the needs of the poor and poor in spirit
    Our world is broken and doesn’t have shalom, so Jesus came into the world to seek out especially those who are lacking peace. Jesus describes his own mission saying:

The Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.
~Luke 19:10 NLT

Your heart is with God when you invest in Jesus’ mission to seek and save those who are lost!

You give generously to the church to seek and save the lost!

Who are the lost? The lost are not always just the poor. In fact, when you read this verse in its context you find that it’s actually talking about the rich. The rich are lost!

Jesus entered Jericho and made his way through the town. There was a man there named Zacchaeus. He was the chief tax collector in the region, and he had become very rich. He tried to get a look at Jesus, but he was too short to see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree beside the road, for Jesus was going to pass that way.

When Jesus came by, he looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name. “Zacchaeus!” he said. “Quick, come down! I must be a guest in your home today.”

Zacchaeus quickly climbed down and took Jesus to his house in great excitement and joy. But the people were displeased. “He has gone to be the guest of a notorious sinner,” they grumbled.

Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood before the Lord and said, “I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much!”

Jesus responded, “Salvation has come to this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.”
~Luke 19:1-10

So what’s going on here? First, Zacchaeus is “very rich.” He was very rich because he was good at extorting money out of the poor in the form of taxes. He was so good at it that he was notorious, and the people couldn’t believe that Jesus would spend any time with such a notorious enemy of the poor. But Jesus had a different mission. His mission was to seek out people who were lost, whether rich or poor. And Zacchaeus was lost in his riches. But when he encounters Jesus his life is transformed and he begins to put his money in Jesus’ mission. He reconciles his past wrongs and gives away half of his wealth to the poor. Jesus’ purpose is not so much to get us into “heaven” but to get “heaven” into us.

Heaven in us is God’s mission in Jesus in our hearts. We give generously to get God’s mission in our hearts.

The lost are the spiritual and economically lost. Matthew records Jesus saying:

Blessed are the “poor in spirit.”
~Matthew 5:3 NRSV

Luke records Jesus saying:

Blessed are the “poor.”
~Luke 6:20 NRSV

Sycamore Creek Church has a vision for seven satellites in seven venues on seven days of the week. It’s our 7-7-7 Vision. Jackpot! We’re planning on launching a new venue in 2016. A “satellite” campus is a mission to seek out the lost. We’re not content to wait for the lost to come to us. In fact, the lost can’t find us. If you’re lost, you can’t find your way. That’s what it means to be lost. If you’re going to find the lost you have to send out a search party. We’re going to go out and seek the lost with each new venue we launch. Blessed are the poor in spirit.

You give generously to the church because the church is the primary community that is all about Jesus’ mission!

Blessed are the poor.

You give generously to sustain a community that meets the needs economic needs of the poor in its community

John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, preached and prepared the way for Jesus. He taught:

Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God…

The crowds asked, “What should we do?”

John replied, “If you have two shirts, give one to the poor. If you have food, share it with those who are hungry.”
~Luke 3:8, 10-11

This theme of providing for the poor runs throughout all of scripture. We read in Leviticus:

When you harvest the crops of your land, do not harvest the grain along the edges of your fields, and do not pick up what the harvesters drop. Leave it for the poor and the foreigners living among you. I am the Lord your God.
~Leviticus 23:22 NLT

God was setting up a system by which the poor would be provided for. No one would be left out of shalom. God was showing compassion. The Hebrew word for “compassion” is very closely related to the Hebrew word for “womb” such that God’s compassion could be considered God’s “womb love.” God has love for all of us in the way that a mother has love for her children. And more…

Can a woman forget her nursing child,
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.
~Isaiah 49:15 NRSV

What does a mother want for her child? I asked my mother friends on Facebook what they wanted for their children. I think the answers sum up what shalom looks like:

  1. Reliable home
  2. Healthy food
  3. Decent clothing
  4. Thriving education
  5. Safe place to grow up
  6. Good friends
  7. Love for God

How can a follower of Jesus provide reliable houses, healthy food, decent clothing, a thriving education, a safe place to grow up, good friends, and love for God to all those who are poor and poor in spirit? The answer is that a follower of Jesus can’t provide these things…alone. But we can do it together.

  1. To focus and multiply your impact

We give generously to the church to focus and multiply our impact!

We do things together that we can’t do alone. Jesus takes what we have and multiplies it. There’s this moment in Jesus’ ministry when he’s been teaching a huge crowd out in the countryside, and the disciples begin to wonder how all these people are going to be fed.

That evening the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.”

But Jesus said, “That isn’t necessary—you feed them.”

“But we have only five loaves of bread and two fish!” they answered.

“Bring them here,” he said.
~Matthew 14:15-18 NLT

Jesus takes those five loaves and two fish and multiplies them to feed thousands of people. Jesus takes what we have and makes it more.   Jesus multiplies our impact. We saw this happen at Christmas this year. I put the challenge before you, as I do every Christmas, to give away as much as you spend on yourselves. I thought I was stretching you to set a goal of $12,000. Our previous record was $11,225 in 2013. You responded to Jesus’ birthday at Christmas by giving $16,075.43! Over $16,000! Wow. Do any of you have a spare $16,000 laying around to meet local and world needs? Some of you may, but most of you don’t.   But together, $50 here, $100 there, we’ll give away over $16,000!

You give generously to SCC because we’re a community that

  1. For fifteen years has been helping provide physical “shalom” in Nicaragua by sending medical teams twice a year to provide medical clinics;
  2. Fixed up a house in the Baker Donora Neighborhood adding shalom to our neighborhood;
  3. Helps pay for rent, utilities, food, gas, etc.;
  4. Regularly gives thousands and thousands of items to Compassion Closet personal needs bank;
  5. Paints the local school to help provide a beautiful place to learn for our children in Lansing;
  6. Provides mental health for our community through a Christian counselor working out of our building and funds for those who don’t have insurance or can’t afford her;
  7. Provides a place to build spiritual friendships in a newly remodeled Connection Café;
  8. Partners with each family to nurture love for God in our children through Sycamore Creek Kids and Teen Fuel.

When you give generously to the church, you’re focusing and multiplying your giving!

So what’s your plan to give generously in 2016? I want to suggest four steps for beginning to put your heart where God’s heart is:

  1. Give for the first time
    Some of you are ready to give for the first time today. That’s the first step. In 2015 we had 58 first-time givers and a total of 168 givers. Are you ready to give for the first time?
  1. Give regularly
    Some of you are ready to take the step to give regularly. You were a first-time giver in 2015 and maybe you gave sporadically, but in 2016 you’re ready to make a plan to give regularly each time you get paid. Sarah and I give 10% out of each paycheck. Our giving happens twice a month because I get paid twice a month. Some of you are ready to make that step and give regularly. In 2015, we received $252,596.17 total amount of giving from people who gave for the first time, sporadically, and regularly.
  1. Give automatically
    Some of you are ready to take the step of giving automatically. We live in a different world these days. I’ve lived in Lansing for six years and I just had to reorder checks for the first time. We pay all our bills electronically. In fact, most bills get paid automatically with little to no action on my part. Why would my giving to the church be any different? Most people who give automatically do so through EFT (Electronic Fund Transfer). In fact, in 2015 more was given to SCC through EFT than through the weekly offering. We received $120,926.47 in EFT. Some of you are ready to give automatically so you give faithfully whether you’re in town or on vacation, whether you remember to bring your check book or you forget.
  1. Give proportionally (Tithe Challenge)
    Some of you in 2106 are ready to give proportionally. The Bible talks about percentages of our income, specifically 10%. 10% or a tithe is the biblical minimum for giving back to God. God lets you keep 90%! That’s a pretty sweet deal. Giving proportionally means when you make more you give more. When you make less you give less. Maybe you’re buried in debt and your focus for 2016 needs to remain on paying off that debt. You can’t give 10%. That’s fine. What’s your plan to get to 10% or more? Do you give 1%? Then in 2016 step up to 2%. Or maybe you’re at 10% already, but God has blessed you with more than you need. Maybe for you giving proportionally means extravagant giving of 15% or 20%. There are people in our church who give those kind of percentages, and they’re not always the ones who are making the most. Whatever your income, some of you are ready to step up to proportional giving in 2016. I want to propose a challenge for you. Let’s call it the tithe challenge. If you’ve never tithed and you’re worried about whether you can swing it or not, make the commitment to tithe for the first time for the next three months. See what God does and how God provides. If it doesn’t work at the end of those three months, we’ll give your money back.

Why take one of these four steps? Because when you give generously to the church, you keep your heart close to God. Because when you give generously to the church you join Jesus’ mission of meeting the needs of the spiritually and financially poor. Because when you give generously to the church, you focus and multiply your impact through Jesus’ mission.

May those reasons be true in the life of Sycamore Creek Church. Dear friends, may…

The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace [shalom].
~Numbers 6:24-26 NRSV

* This sermon is based on a sermon first preached by Mike Slaughter

 

 

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Masterminds – Money Masters or Financial Fools

August 3, 2015 by Leave a Comment

GodOnFilm

God on Film: Masterminds – Money Masters or Financial Fools
Sycamore Creek Church
August 2/3, 2015
Tom Arthur

 

Peace Friends!

Today we continue the series God on Film where we’re looking at a different summer blockbuster each week and exploring the themes or ideas that the movie evokes.  Today’s movie, Masterminds, is about a $17 Million bank robbery by a group that isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.  It’s a movie that makes me ask the question, “Am I a money master or a financial fool?”  Ironically enough, this movie was originally slated to come out in August back when we were planning this series, but its opening has been moved to October because of millions of dollars of debt restructuring by its parent company!  When I saw the trailer and learned that Masterminds was about money my mind immediately went to the teachings of Jesus on money:

No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
~Matthew 6:24 NLT

Matthew was one of Jesus’ closest followers and he recorded this teaching of Jesus.  But Luke, a doctor who hung out with Jesus’ friends also recorded this teaching by Jesus:

No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
~Luke 16:13 NLT

Notice anything about those two teachings?  They’re exactly the same!  Two different places in the Bible.  Same exact teaching down to the letter.  Maybe the Bible wants to make sure that we really get the point.  So here’s the question that it raises for each of us: Will you “master” your money or will your money “master” you?  Today I want to look at three things that financial fools do that allow money to master them and I want to look at three things that money masters do to let God master their money.

Financial Fools Give into PRESSURE
Financial Fools let others make their decisions about money from them.  The book of Proverbs says:

Dear friend, if bad companions tempt you,
don’t go along with them.
~Proverbs 1:10 (The Message)

What is the stupidest thing you’ve ever spent your money on?  Maybe you bought way too many gifts for Christmas when you didn’t really have the money because that’s what you’re “supposed to do.”  Or maybe you go out to eat because your friends are all going out to eat even though you don’t have rent money this month.  Or maybe you just have to have the latest and greatest gadget because everyone’s got the latest S10 iThing Magenta.   I asked my friends on Facebook what was the stupidest thing they’d ever done with money.  I got lots and lots of responses.  I’m talking a TON of responses.  There is no shortage of stories about how people spend their money in stupid ways.  One of my friends who is a bartender said she goes out with friends after work and buys everyone drinks with her tip money.  Then she goes home empty handed!  Another friend a little too embarrassed to claim the spent money publically said in private message (but gave me permission to share), “The stupidest thing I ever did with money was pay $1000 to keep a new boyfriend from going to jail. He promised to pay me back (yeah right) and that it was part of his old life. Young girls are suckers for boys they think they can ‘change.’” Financial fools let PRESSURE make their financial decisions.  Don’t let others decide where you spend your money.

Financial Fools PUT IT OFF for some other day
James, the brother of Jesus, says, “How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow?” (4:14 NLT).  We make all kinds of “plans” for tomorrow, and sometimes we plan to make a plan tomorrow.  Financial fools say, “I’ll figure out money when I get out of college.”  Or “I’ll figure out money when I get a job.”  Financial fools wait until they get married to learn how to use their money.  Yeah, that’s really easily done.  Two people trying to figure out one of the hardest things to figure out while also figuring out how to live together?  Maybe that’s why finances are one of the biggest reasons for divorces.  Financial fools wait until marriage to figure out money.  Or they wait until they have kids.  Or they wait until they have a better paying job.  Financial fools wait until tomorrow to do what should be done today.

Financial Fools POINTLESSLY Spend
Pointless spending means spending more than you make.  It means not having a plan in place for how you spend.  It’s impulse spending.  John, one of Jesus’ closest followers says:

For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world.
~1 John 2:16 (NLT)

We spend our money pointlessly on physical pleasures, creature comforts, anything that catches our eye, or things that make us feel pride in what we own.  One of my friends on Facebook says that she spends pointlessly by shopping when stressed.  I see pointless spending when people tell me they’re using student loans to pay a car loan.  Debt to pay debt.  Yikes!  Pointless spending is using credit cards to buy things that depreciate in value, things like food, gadgets, clothes, and on and on.  Financial fools go into debt for things that you’ll not only be paying on for a long time but you can’t sell them to pay off the debt because they won’t sell for what you paid for them.  Unfortunately, too many of us are sunk in credit card debt.  I heard a great story on NPR (National Public Radio) about a year ago about the struggle with credit card debt.

What I really liked about it was that it described well the real financial challenges people face, the financial trouble they get into, and the way out.  Did you hear it?  This family is turning the corner from their money mastering them toward mastering their own money.  From financial fools to money masters.  Let’s learn three things that money masters do.

Money Masters AVOID Debt by Living Simply
Money masters steer clear of debt because they know a very important truth about debt:

The poor are always ruled over by the rich,
so don’t borrow and put yourself under their power.
~Proverbs 22:7 (The Message)

One key tool to steer clear of debt is the 70% rule.  The 70% rule means that you live on 70% of what you make.  So what do you do with the other 30%?  You give away 10%, save 10%, and put 10% away for retirement.  Most of us aren’t living on 70% of what we make.  We’re living on 110%!  One key way to begin to break the power that money has over you is to give some away.  Giving money away is a discipline that helps put money in perspective.  Christians have been practicing giving 10% or more away for a long time.  Let’s be honest about this.  It’s hard to give 10% away especially if you are not used to it.  But let me put the whole thing in perspective.

Last fall we made a Jack O Lantern out of a pumpkin.  After digging out all the seeds and roasting them, we sat down to enjoy the seeds.  I had eaten most of what I wanted while they were still warm.  Micah, my son, doesn’t like things warm, so when they cooled off and we sat down together, I was mostly just sitting there while Micah was eating cold roasted pumpkin seeds.  At one point I reached over for a couple of seeds and he said, “Hey, don’t eat MY pumpkin seeds.”  His pumpkin seeds?  I bought the pumpkin.  I did most of the work digging them out.  I seasoned them and roasted them.  I put them in the refrigerator to cool them down.  I served them up to him.  Whose pumpkin seeds?  We had a little talk about what it took to actually have pumpkin seeds to eat (work, money, time, etc.).  After a bit of joking, he offered me two pumpkin seeds.

I was reminded in this moment of how we treat God’s resources.  It’s all God’s, and when God asks for some of it back, we say, “Hey, that’s mine!”

I’d like to get down to brass tacks with this whole idea of living simply by the 70% rule by showing you how Sarah and I budget and spend our money.  Financial fools spend pointlessly but money masters spend their money on paper before they even get it.  They make a plan to live into the 70% rule.  Now one big financial change that happened in our life recently was that we sold our house in Petoskey.  We made a good amount of money on the sale.  So the first thing we did was give 10% of what we made to the church’s capital campaign fund.  Then we paid off our two car loans.  That left us entirely debt free!  This month I turn 40, so it took me 40 years to get to zero.  But now it’s time to spend the next 40 years really mastering our money.  So here’s how we’re doing to do it:

  • $180/paycheck for a 10% tithe to the church
  • $350/month (that we were paying a mortgage) now investing toward retirement [One significant difference between our budget and most other people is that the church provides a house for us to live in and pays the utilities.  This is a double edged sword.  While you are busy making payments on a house and building equity, we need to be saving to buy a house with cash when we retire!]
  • $160/month (that we were paying on an auto loan) now saving for a future car

Because our house in Petoskey was our vacation destination, we decided to put aside money each month toward vacations throughout the year.  So we put aside $200/month for vacations.

We also have learned that there are some areas where we tend to overspend.  So what we do is take out cash from each pay check (every two weeks) for each of these areas and put that cash in an envelope.  It’s a cash envelope budgeting system.  Here’s the areas we tend to overspend:

  • $300/paycheck for groceries ($150/week)
  • $50/paycheck for dates ($25/week)
  • $25/paycheck for “blow money” for each of us (to be spent on whatever we want)
  • $20/month for Dad Kid Night Out
  • $20/paycheck for Church in a Diner ($10/week)

I’d like to explain this last cash budget item a little bit more.  It’s very important to understand for the health of our Monday night Church in a Diner.  I budget $10 every Monday to spend at Jackie’s.  Each meal is about $6.50 so the total bill with tax is about $7.  Normally you tip somewhere between 15-20%.  But I just give the whole $10.  I consider myself a “financial missionary” on Monday nights.  Here’s why that’s important.  It costs Jackie’s about $350 every Monday night just to be open for us.  This is their break even amount.  On average we have about 50 people who attend Monday night.  If each person spent about $7, that would be $350.  That’s the break-even point for Jackie’s.  But not everyone who comes on Monday night can afford or wants to buy a whole meal.  So I give a little bit more in the tip to help cover the difference.  I’m a financial missionary on Monday nights.  Now I’ve been told by the owner of Jackie’s that for several weeks now, they haven’t broken even.  They’ve lost money on Monday nights.  So I’m asking you to consider joining me in being a financial missionary on Monday night.  Has God blessed you enough to spend or tip $10/person at your table?  Or better yet, what if you brought someone with you each Monday night and paid for them?  It all goes back to this idea of a budget.  Have you budgeted for Monday nights?  Can you budget to be a financial missionary?

It’s taken us almost forty years of life and eighteen years of marriage to get to this point, but we’re slowly taking steps into mastering our money rather than letting our money master us.

Money Masters ACCUMULATE True Treasure  
Do you know that your heart goes toward where you spend your money?  Jesus teaches:

Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.
~Matthew 6:20-21 NLT

If you want your heart to be in heaven, then put your money where you want your heart to be.  Shell Silverstein, the poet of the famous children’s book, Where the Sidewalk Ends, wrote a poem about this very thing titled “Lester.”

Lester was given a magic wish
By the goblin who lives in the banyan tree,
And with his wish he wished for two more wishes—
So now instead of just one wish, he cleverly had three.
And with each one of these
He simply wished for three more wishes,
Which gave him three old wishes, plus nine new.
And with each of these twelve
He slyly wished for three more wishes.
Which added up to forty-six—or is it fifty-two?
Well anyway, he used each wish
To wish for wishes ‘til he had
Five billion, seven million, eighteen thousand thirty-four.
And then he spread them on the ground
And skipped and sang, and then sat down
And wished for more.
And more… And more… They multiplied
While other people smiled and cried
And loved and reached and touched and felt.
Lester sat amid his wealth
Stacked mountain-high like stacks of gold.
Sat and counted—and grew old.
And then one Thursday night they found him
Dead—with his wishes piled around him.
And they counted the lot and found that not
A single one was missing.
All shiny and new—here, take a few
And think of Lester as you do.
In a world of apples and kisses and shoes
He wasted his wishes on wishing. 
What wishes are you wishing with each dollar you send?  Country songs are good at telling the same basic story.  One recent song is called “Trailer Hitch.”  Watch the video here:

 

You do begin to ACCUMULATE true treasures in one of four ways: give something, give regularly, give proportionally, and give generously.  Some of you today need to begin giving something, anything.  You haven’t ever given anything back to God and today is the day you’re going to take that first step.  Others need to give regularly.  Not just a one-time tip, but a regular predetermined amount.  Some of you are giving regularly but you’re not up to 10% and so you need to accumulate true treasures by giving proportionally.  Then some of us are really blessed financially and accumulating true treasurers means giving much more than 10%, giving extravagantly and generously.  Are you mastering your money by accumulating true treasures?

Money Masters AUTOMATE It ALL
Do you know that S.Y.S.T.E.M.S. Save You Stress, Time, Energy, and Money?  Yes.  What’s your system for automating your finances?  Paul, the first missionary of the church and the author of many of the books of the Bible teaches us saying:

On the first day of each week, you should each put aside a portion of the money you have earned. Don’t wait until I get there and then try to collect it all at once.
~Paul (1 Corinthians 16:2 NLT)

Paul thought that you should have a system for giving that takes place at the beginning of each week.  Money masters do this in all areas of their finances.  They automate their bills.  I love it.  I never have to remember whether I’ve paid it or not.  Money masters automate their savings.  I just set up two new savings accounts at our bank, one for our future car and one for vacation.  I used the online tools to automatically move money from my checking account to those two savings account each month.  Money masters automate their investments.  Money is taken automatically out of my paycheck and invested for retirement.  In each case, I don’t even see the money.  It’s just not there.  It goes to the appropriate bill, savings, or investment.  Now, if this is how I run my financial life, why would I not also automate my giving?  Well, I actually do.  We have our bank send a check to the church every paycheck.  I don’t even have to think about it.  We give whether we’re on vacation or not.  We give whether we remember to bring our checkbook or not.  We give whether we’ve got cash in our wallet or not.  We automate our giving.

Now there is one more way to automate your giving that I learned from a woman who died a couple of years ago.  We received a letter on November 12, 2013 from Neumann Law that Arlene C. Eskes had left $200 to Sycamore Creek Church in her trust.  No one in the office knows who Arlene is.  I found this obituary:

Arlene C. Eskes, 89, of Holt, died Sunday. Services 10 a.m. today at Holt United Methodist Church. Arrangements by Estes-Leadley Funeral Homes, Holt-Delhi Chapel.
Published in Lansing State Journal on Dec. 19, 2012

It made me wonder if Holt UMC knew anything about Arlene.  So I contacted their pastor at the time, Glenn Wagner.  He wrote back saying:

Arlene was a long time member here.  By the time I arrived in 2006 Arlene was living alone in her home and relied on family and close friends for transportation, grocery shopping, and fellowship.   She organized annual Christmas trips for Church members to Turkeyville for dinner and theater.  Her daughter and son-in-law are active members of the Lowell United Methodist Church. In her later years Arlene struggled with health issues that greatly limited her mobility.   I don’t know when or why she decided to leave Sycamore Creek in her will but do believe that for Arlene $200 was a substantial gift…Perhaps she wanted to do her part to support this church that was birthed from Holt UMC.  Thanks for asking.

Friends, when I die, I want my treasures so stored up in heaven, that my money automatically goes to supporting God’s mission here on earth!  To do that, we must remember:

No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
~Matthew 6:24 NLT

Will you be a Financial Fool or a Money Master?  Lord, help us not give into PRESSURE, PUT off our financial planning for another day, and spend POINTLESSLY.  Help us rather to AVOID debt by living simply, ACCUMULATE true treasure, and AUTOMATE it all.  In the name of Jesus, the master of our lives, including our money.  Amen.

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Ave Maria*

December 12, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Christmas2014

 

 

 

 

The First Carols of Christmas – Ave Maria*
Sycamore Creek Church
Dec 7/8, 2014
Tom Arthur

Merry Christmas Friends!

What a way to start Christmas!  Right?  We are holding our first worship service in our new building!  Thank you God!  This building is a blessing to us, but as we will soon find out, a blessing is meant not to be held on to but to be given to others.  Thank you God for the blessing of this building.  Thank you God for the opportunity we have to use it to bless others too.

Today we begin a new series called The First Christmas Carols.  We all love Christmas carols and singing at Christmas.  We decorated our house this Thanksgiving weekend and put on our old favorites.  I noticed that some radio stations were even beginning to play Christmas music before Thanksgiving!

Throughout this series we’re going to look not at the classic Christmas carols we sing at Christmas but rather the first Christmas carols in the Bible.  Have you ever noticed that the story of Jesus’ birth in the book of Luke reads almost like a musical?  People are having normal conversations and then all of a sudden they’re singing.  There are four Christmas carols in Luke and one scene that has been made into a song.  Today we begin with that scene that was made into a song, the Ave Maria.  Let’s turn to the book of Luke and read.

Ave Maria: Luke 1:26-28, 39-42 NRSV
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgins name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings [ave], favored one [full of grace]! The Lord is with you.”

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

You may wonder where the phrase “Ave Maria” comes from.  The early church used a Latin translation of the Bible and the word “Greetings” is “Ave” in Latin.  Another way to translate Greetings or Ave is “Hail.”  Maria is of course Mary.  Thus, this is known as the Ave Maria.  So let’s see what there is to greet Mary about.

Mary holds a special place in some Christian traditions, particularly the Roman Catholic Church.  While we are not Roman Catholics (we are catholic in the original sense of the word which means “universal” or the “universal church”), we can learn from our Catholic brothers and sisters.  In the 2nd and 3rd century this phrase from Luke became part of the church’s liturgy (“liturgy” literally means “work of the people” although we generally understand it as the order of readings and prayers in worship).  The church would recite this phrase from Luke: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.  Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.”

Later in the Medieval church, Mary became one who was deeply honored.  In the 1400s and 1500s a phrase was added to the one from Luke: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”  While we don’t generally pray to the saints, I don’t personally have a problem asking the saints in heaven to pray for us.  Thus the church began asking Mary to pray for us.  Today this prayer is called the “Hail Mary” or “Ave Maria.”

Mary was from a very small town called Nazareth.  It probably had a population of about 100.  Most people there probably lived in limestone caves.  Limestone was easy to dig into.  These caves were the ancient from of mobile homes.  They were the affordable housing of their day.  Nazareth was close to another better known town, Sepphoris.  Sepphoris was the cultural center of the region.  It was wealthy.  There were plenty of shopping opportunities.  It was kind of like the fashion mall of its day.  Josephus, an ancient Jewish historian, called it the “ornament of all Galilee.”  And yet, God chose Nazareth, not Sepphoris.

Mary was probably about twelve or thirteen years old.  While that seems very young by today’s standards to get married, it was average for its day when the life expectancy was thirty or forty.  A girl was considered an adult when she had her first period and could conceive a child.  Boys married a little older around fourteen or fifteen so that they had a couple of years in their trade or career to support the family.

Gabriel shows up to deliver a message to Mary.  Gabriel literally means “Mighty One of God.”  He is an archangel, or chief angel among many.  In other words, he’s an important guy.  He greets Mary saying, “Greetings favored one.  The Lord is with you.” Mary “wonders what kind of greeting this might be.”  Let’s unpack that greeting a bit more.

Another way to translate “greeting” is “hail” or “hello” or in Latin it’s “ave.”  Thus, here’s where we get “Ave Maria.”  Gabriel goes on to call her “favored one.” In Greek, the language that Luke was written, the word Gabriel uses is from the root word “charitoo” which is where we get our word “charity” which   Thus, Gabriel is saying, “Greetings highly charitable one.”  Charity can also imply grace.  So Gabriel could be saying, “Greetings one full of grace.”  So now you see where the Ave Maria or Hail Mary gets the, “Hail Mary, full of grace.”

What does it mean to be “full of grace”?  Well, let’s talk about what grace is.  Grace is getting or giving something undeserved or unearned.  Grace is in contrast with mercy (which we’re talking about next week) which is not getting something you did deserve.  So grace is showing kindness and expecting nothing in return.  Grace is my parents paying off my college debt when I did little to work on scholarships or pay for college myself.  Grace is Sue Trowbridge, a local artist and pastor, giving me a painting of hers after I mentioned that I liked it a lot.  Grace is the gift of cash in an envelope that we would get every year anonymously from someone at the church we worked at in Petoskey.  Grace is coming home from the hospital with a baby when no one gave you a parenting test.  Grace is charity, and not charity in the sense of giving to the poor, but in the sense that charity means Christian love, loving your neighbor as yourself.  Grace is a blessing, a gift.

Mary, then is “one full of grace.”  She is full of charity, full of blessing others, full of love for others.  God chose Mary, not just because she was poor, but because since being a little girl she was grace-filled, or graceful.  God has a tendency to use people who are graceful, or full of grace.  In fact, God’s solution to the problems of the world is for us to be grace-filled.  If someone is hungry, you give them food, not because they earned it but because it is a gift to them.  Marriages survive on grace.  We can’t expect to earn the love of our partner.  We must give and receive it freely.  People need basic toiletries and so SCC gives over 3700 items to Compassion Closet, a personal needs bank.

Each year as we look toward Christmas, we encourage you to be grace-filled.  Give away as much as you spend at Christmas.  For some of you this means rearranging your discretionary spending so that you just match what you spend.  For others it means spending half as much so you can give half away.  Remember, Christmas isn’t your birthday, Christmas is Jesus’ birthday.  Is there a gift to Jesus under your Christmas tree?

As usual, our church will be receiving a special Christmas offering this year.  What’s different this year is that we usually receive this offering only on Christmas Eve.  But this year we’ll be receiving this offering throughout all of December.  You can mark on your giving envelop if you want to designate a special offering above and beyond your tithe to the Christmas offering.  Then at our four Christmas Eve services (you heard me right, one church in two location over three days with four Christmas services!) all of the offerings those days will go to our special Christmas offering.  We will then give 100% of this offering away.  We’re going to give it to three different needs:

First, we have a long-term relationship and commitment to providing medical missions in Nicaragua.  This Christmas offering will help us continue to support our medical missions in Nicaragua.  Second, our conference (the United Methodist Churches in West Michigan) is focusing on the Imagine No Malaria campaign.  Together we can literally eradicate malaria!  Check it out here or watch this brief video.  Third, we’ll use the offering to help with local emergency needs when people in our community are looking for help with rent, utilities, getting a car fixed, etc.  This year and every year at SCC you have the chance to be grace-filled by giving to this special Christmas offering.

My family is taking this challenge to be grace-filled this Christmas pretty seriously.  We recently wrote a letter to our family telling them of our intentions to try to celebrate Christmas differently this year and in the years to come.  We asked them to give whatever they would spend on the adults (my wife and me) to our Christmas offering.  We asked them to limit their gifts to our children to one each.  In doing so, we invited them to participate with us in putting presents under the tree for Jesus.

All of this leads to one big question in my mind: Are you more “full of grace” than you were last year?  Would the people closest to you say you are someone full of grace?  If not, begin to pray that God would fill you with grace.  You see, our nature is to hold on to stuff.  Our nature is unwilling to give free gifts away.  Our nature is to look out only for me and my immediate family.  Our nature is a mixture of grace and self-interest.  But God’s nature is different.  God’s nature is to save.  We are saved by grace, through faith.  We don’t earn our salvation.  We cannot do enough good works to save ourselves.  And yet, our faith in God’s grace is expected to show itself in our good works to others.  God’s presence with us, God’s Holy Spirit, fills us with grace in the same way that God filled Mary with grace and blessed her.

One warning before we pray.  Being blessed often causes trouble.  When Mary was declared to be blessed, remember where she was?  She was at her cousin’s house, Elizabeth.  Why travel ten miles to her cousin Elizabeth’s, rather than talk to her mother?  Mary’s blessing meant that she was an unwed pregnant engaged teenager on the edge of losing her fiancé and being executed for her “unfaithfulness.”  Mary doesn’t feel blessed, she feels burdened.  Later on she ends up fleeing her hometown and becoming a refugee, alien, and immigrant in Egypt.  Thirty-three years later Mary has to watch her son die on a cross.  None of this sounds like a blessing.  William Barclay refers to it as the “paradox of blessedness.”  He says, “The piercing truth is that God does not choose a person for ease and comfort and selfish joy…”  When you are full of grace and blessed, that blessing will require something of you.  You are blessed to be a blessing.  Your blessing is to be a “pass through blessing.”  You pass the blessing through to someone else.  The more you try to hold on to it yourself, the more the grace will slip away.

So let’s go back to that big question: Are you more full of grace than you were last year?

Prayer
Hail Mary,
Full of Grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit
of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary,
Mother of God,
pray for us sinners now,
and at the hour of death.

Amen.

 

*This message is based on a message originally given by Adam Hamilton

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Million Dollar Arm: How To Be Rich

June 24, 2014 by Leave a Comment

GodOnFilm

 

 

 

 

God on Film – Million Dollar Arm: How To Be Rich
Sycamore Creek Church
June 20/21, 2014
Tom Arthur

 

 

 

 

Peace friends!

Today I want to talk about how to be rich.  Yes.  I’m serious.  I know you don’t hear about it very often in church, but I want to talk about how to make money.  Of course your primary way of making money (unless you inherit it) is to get a job.  I’ve got to admit, I’ve got a pretty good job.  Being a United Methodist Pastor, I’m guaranteed an appointment in a church.  So the last time I had to look for a job was back in graduate school.

My primary job in graduate school besides being a student was writing for scholarships.  I spent a good portion of time researching and writing scholarships.  But I also took a job one winter break at a local outdoor store.  I worked wrapping presents that I wished I would be getting!  I would always prime the tip jar with a couple of $10s and $20s.  It worked!

Another set of jobs I had while in grad school was being a guinea pig.  Literally.  When you’re at a research university there are always researchers looking for people to test in various ways.  The pay was dependent on the length and discomfort of the test.  I got very good at looking quickly for what they were paying and weighing it against the inconvenience it would be for me.  On the low end of things there were always researchers willing to pay you $5 to take a five minute test.  Quick cash now!  Then there were more advanced computer tests that would take twenty to sixty minutes.  These would pay anywhere from $10 to $30.  The place I made most of my money was doing MRI studies.  One time I was in an MRI machine playing a video game for about ninety minutes.  I made $150!  There was one research study that looked good at first but not so good upon further examination.  As I read the study it paid very well.  $300 for about three hours of time.  Sounds good.  You got to watch old Duke Basketball games during the three hours.  Still sounds good.  The study was for a new experimental catheter!  I passed.

3 Ways to Be Rich
Here at SCC we have a wide spectrum of people when it comes to making money in employment.  We have some who are unemployable.  Others are unemployed or underemployed.  Then there are those who are well employed or exceptionally-well employed.  I’d like to talk to each level of person today where they are that.  So if at some point you find yourself listening to me teach about a situation you don’t find yourself in, then pray for the person who is in that situation.

So today I’d like to talk about three ways to be rich.  Let’s dive in.

1.     Make All You Can (Honestly)
We read in the beginning of the Bible that “the LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15 NIV).  Notice that from the very beginning God intended work to be part of what we do in this life.  We are to work the garden around us and take care of it.  For some of us this might be a literal garden.  For others the gardens around us might be teaching children, working on cars, practicing medicine, or just about any other kind of work you can imagine.  I don’t say “any kind of work you can imagine” because I believe that God would have us work in such a way that takes care.  We are to work and make all we can in an honest way.

So when it comes to work some among us are unemployable perhaps because of a disability.  If you find yourself in this kind of a position, then the work you might do is to volunteer in as many ways as you can.  Your disability may make you unemployable but it does not keep you from being able to contribute in some way to the community around you.  Make all you can by volunteering at your church or one of your favorite local charities.

For those of us who are employable there are two ways we make all we can.  We work and we invest.  You can make all you can at a new job.  Last week I visited Teri Sand who is the Business Services Team Leader at Michigan Works.  She also happens to be a member of Redeemer Church on Holmes.  I didn’t know this before I went in to visit with her.  I was meeting with her because I wanted to understand better the job market that we find ourselves in.  I learned many things that I didn’t know.  I learned that Michigan Works is not just for the unemployed or those on welfare.  It is essentially the Human Resources Department for all of Michigan Businesses.  Teri’s job is to get to know the businesses in Michigan and to find people to fill those jobs!  She offered me three tips for finding a job in today’s culture:

First, you must have computer skills.  In the not too distant past, the way you would find a job was to send a generic resume to the companies you were interested in hiring or you’d cold-call on a business and drop off your resume.  They’d look over your resume and see if you had the skills they needed.  If you did, they’d hire you.  Today almost all applications for jobs are submitted online, and many jobs are posted through social media.  It is not uncommon to put in fifty applications online.  Here’s the trick to applying online.  You must customize your resume to each application.  This is because companies use computer programs to sift through the applications they receive.  If your resume does not include key words they are looking for, it won’t even be considered.  What you need to do is look over the job description, circle everything that is honestly true of you and include those words and phrases in your resume submission.  It’s a different world out there today and you have to have computer skills to navigate it.

Teri emphasized that while online job application is the norm, networking is also still the king.  You have to let people know you are looking for a job.  You have to think about who the people you know know.  You ask your friends and acquaintances, “Do you know someone who could use my skills?”  You need to expand your network.  Attend career conferences and chamber events.  And don’t forget to volunteer.  Volunteering expands your network in ways that you might not anticipate.

The last tip that Teri told me was to remember that finding a job is a full-time job.  If you’re looking for a forty-hour-a-week job, then plan on spending forty hours a week looking for it.

One last tip for those of you who might be beginning your work-life.  The top three job markets in Michigan are Information Technology, Healthcare, and Manufacturing (check out this video on manufacturing).

So we’ve been looking at how you make all you can by finding a new job, but what if you like your job and you just want to make more money doing the same job.  David Bach, author of Start Late Finish Rich, says, “The market doesn’t pay you what you’re worth—it pays you what it has to…and what you’re willing to accept.”  Bach suggests  going to your boss and asking what it would take to get a raise in the next six months.  When you get an answer, then go do it!

Or maybe you like your job but you’re not making enough to pay off your debt ask quickly as you’d like.  Make all you can by getting a second job.  I actually have a second job.  You may not know that, but I write for a youth devotional called Devo Zine.  My wife got me this job.  It is a humbling experience for me.  I get paid $100 a devotion.  Sarah gets paid $200!  She is a full-time writer after all.

So you make all you can by working.  But you also make all you can by investing, or making your money work for you.  When it comes to investing there are three rules: invest early, invest automatically, and invest ethically.

Let’s take a look at the power of investing early.  If you invest $3000 a year in a mutual fund that makes 10% (the historical average of the stock market) until you retire at age 65, here are three different scenarios you might follow:

  1. Age 15-19 (5 years) = $1,615,363.40
  2. Age 19-26 (8 years) = $1,552,739.35
  3. Age 27-65 (38 years) = $1,324,777.67

Did you catch that?  Begin at age 15 and invest for only five years and you make $1.6 million.  Begin at age 27 and invest for thirty-eight years and you make $1.3 million!  What does that $1 million get you?  “A $1 million nest egg will provide you with an income of roughly $80,000 a year for 20 years if you choose to keep the nest egg in an insured account paying 5% interest” (greenamerica.org).  Invest early!

Second, invest automatically.  Have your investments taken automatically out of your paycheck through electronic fund transfer, or through your company’s pension or retirement plans.  You do this by following the 70% Rule.  You live on 70%.  What happened to the other 30%?  Well, you gave 10% back to God.  You saved 10%.  And you invested 10% in retirement.

Lastly, you invest ethically.  If you’re going to make money off of other companies then you might want to know something about what those companies are doing to make money.  Are they employing children in sweat shops?  Are they polluting the environment?  You can learn more at www.greenamerica.org/socialinvesting.  Sarah and I have always invested in socially screened mutual funds.  We find Calvert, Pax, and Domini to be fruitful companies investing and managing money in ethical ways.  You may have heard that socially screened investments make less money.  This may or may not be true.  If it is true, then I go back to the question: how are they making money and do you want to make money in that way?  But it is not always true.  Domini is a socially screened index fund.  Last year it beat the S&P500.

We’ve covered a lot of ground so far about how to be rich.  Let’s briefly review where we’ve been: You make all you can in honest ways by working and investing.  Do you need to find a new job?  Do you need to ask how to make more at your current job?  Do you need to get a second job?  When it comes to investing are you investing early, automatically, and ethically?  We make all we can because God has put us on this earth to work and take care of it.  But what do we do with that money that we make?

2. Save All You Can (Spend Less, Save More)
A second way that you can be rich is to save all you can.  In other words, spend less and save more.  The wisdom of the Proverbs says:

Those who love pleasure become poor;
those who love wine and luxury will never be rich.
~Proverbs 21:17 NLT

The first way you save is to build an emergency fund.  I asked my friends on Facebook about times they found an emergency fund helpful.  I heard stories about car bills, tree roots growing into pipes, furnaces breaking down, driving cars into ditches, a well pump going out, a visit to an ER and unemployment.

One experience I know more fully is the experience of Tabitha Martin, a member of our church.  Tabitha lived with Sarah and me for three years while she was getting back on her feet.  She saved up $3000 before she was ready to move out.  The week before she moved out she was in an accident and while she was okay, her car was totaled.  Because she had an emergency fund she was able to buy a new car, make a deposit on her apartment, and still have $1000 left.  She may not have been rich by many people’s standards, but in that moment she had more resources than she had ever had to meet the challenges that life threw her way.

So how do you save all you can as the summer approaches us?  I asked my friends on Facebook for suggestions on living simply in the summer.  Here’s what they said:

  1. Turn AC down and sleep in the basement.
  2. Buy ice cream at the grocery store rather than the ice cream store.
  3. Grow a garden.
  4. Buy veggies at the farmers market and if you have a bridge card, you get Double Up Food Bucks (two dollars for every dollar you spend!).
  5. Cancel cable and get outside.
  6. Instead of seeing movies, shopping or otherwise paying for your entertainment, go to free outdoor concerts, “movie in the park” nights, feed the ducks, visit new playgrounds, play whatever kind of ball you like best, etc.
  7. Make a picnic and take it somewhere romantic instead of going out for dinner.
  8. Cancel your gym membership and run/bike/swim for your workout instead.
  9. Instead of taking a vacation, take a staycation.  You’ll spend less and be more refreshed when it’s done.

3. Give All You Can (Give the Rest Away)
So you’ve made all you can and saved all you can, what do you do with the rest?  You give as much away as you can!

We find this wisdom in the psalms:

If riches increase, do not set your heart on them.
~Psalm 62:10 NRSV

There is a pitfall if you make all you can and save all you can and build wealth.  John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement highlights this pitfall saying:

Wherever true Christianity spreads, it must cause diligence and frugality, which, in the natural course of things, must beget riches! And riches naturally beget pride, love of the world, and every temper that is destructive of Christianity…Do you gain all you can, and save all you can? Then you must, in the nature of things, grow rich. Then if you have any desire to escape the damnation of hell, give all you can; otherwise I can have no more hope of your salvation, than of that of Judas Iscariot.
~John Wesley (18th Century Founder of the Methodist Movement)

As your wealth and riches increase, don’t miss the really important things in life.  Give money back to God.  If you began with 10%, then become an extravagant giver and give 15% or 20% or perhaps God will bless you to give away as much as you live on.  Give money to your church.  Give money to charities.  Give money to the needs that you come across.  Make all you can and save all you can so that you can have the joy of giving all you can away!

Recently our church sent you home with baby bottles to fill up with loose change lying around your house.  This loose change was going to be given to the Lansing Area Pregnancy Services.  I was a little surprised by the results.  Thirty-nine bottles were brought in with $651.60!  This mission of giving was organized by the knitting group in our church.  The knitting group also made and gave 14 blankets, 17 hats & 6 hat/booties sets.  Wow!  All that just from loose change lying around the house.

Friends, the world doesn’t really care how big your bank account is.  For our world to experience the love of God, they need to see that we care.

 

 

Are becoming rich by making all you can, saving all you can, and giving all you can?

Prayer
God, all that I have is yours.  Use my time and my talents to work in this world and take care of it.  As I make money, let me save all I can by living simply.  As I live simply, let me then give all I can so that world will see your love.  Amen.

Questions for Small Groups
Each week we provide questions for small groups that meet regularly to discuss today’s message.  Sign-ups for Small Groups happen in January, May, and September.  Want more info?  Email Mark Aupperlee – m_aupperlee@hotmail.com.

  1. What’s your job search experience?  Where do you find yourself: unemployable, unemployed, underemployed, well-employed, very-well-employed?
  2. Read Genesis 2:15.  What would it mean for you for work to be a God-given command?  Read Proverbs 21:17.  Where do you find yourself indulging a bit too much?  Read Psalm 62:10.  How attached is your heart to growing wealth?
  3. What do you need to do most?  Make all you can?  Save all you can?  Give all you can?  How will you do it? How can we pray for you?
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Getting Past Your Past Money Mistakes

May 23, 2014 by Leave a Comment

past

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Getting Past Your Past Money Mistakes
Sycamore Creek Church
May 18/19, 2014
Tom Arthur 

Peace friends!

Pull out a dollar bill from your wallet.  What has this dollar bill bought?

  1. Food?
  2. Housing?
  3. A vacation?
  4. Gambled?
  5. Sex?
  6. Drugs?
  7. Was it stolen?
  8. Was it killed for?

Money can buy all those things.  It’s an interesting thing to note that it can do good or it can do bad.  That makes me wonder: what exactly is money?  Money is a tool that simplifies the exchange of goods.  It is a widely recognized IOU.  Money is neither good nor bad, although I will admit that at times it feels like it can have a significantly negative power, or lust, associated with it.  But generally speaking, money can be used in good or bad ways.  Many of us have made a lot of mistakes when it comes to money.  Today I’d like to look at three mistakes we make with money and how to correct them as we begin to use money the way that God wants us to use it.

Materialism
The real problem with money is when we tend to pursue it or what I can buy and neglect the more important things in life.  This is called materialism.  Google defines materialism as “a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values.”  Too often we are slaves to material possessions and physical comfort.  This can go both ways.  If you find yourself saying, “There’s no money so I can’t do ____________”, then you’re still serving money, not God.

This problem of materialism might suggest that the answer would be to get rid of everything you have and live in voluntary poverty or asceticism.  Is this the answer?  The Bible tends to take a kind of middle route when it comes to money.  Hear the wisdom of the proverbs:

Give me neither poverty nor riches!
    Give me just enough to satisfy my needs.
For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?”
    And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name.
~Proverbs 30:8-9 NLT

The wise thing is to make enough but not too much.  Even if you make just enough to squeak by, say $25,000/year, do you realize how much that ads up to over a lifetime? If you make $25,000 from 25-65 then you will have made and probably spent $1,000,000.  Most of us will in our lifetimes manage a fortune.

To prepare today’s message I’ve found Randy Alcorn’s book, Money, Possessions and Eternity very helpful.  He says:

The key to a right use of money and possessions is a right perspective—an eternal perspective…The everyday choices I make regarding money and possessions are of eternal consequences… The key question is not, “Should a Christian own this or that?” but, “Does God want me to own this or that in light of the drain on my resources it will create?”  Will owning this thing keep me from doing other things God wants me to do?

Let’s take another look at what the Bible teaches about money.  In the book of Ecclesiastes, probably best referred to with its Hebrew name, Koheleth, which means “teacher”, we find this passage about money.  (I’ve included Randy Alcorn’s comments in parentheses after each verse.)

Ecclesiastes 5:10-15 NLT
Those who love money will never have enough.
(The more you have, the more you want.)
How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness!
(The more you have, the less you’re satisfied.)
The more you have, the more people come to help you spend it.
(The more you have, the more people come after it, including the tax man!)
So what good is wealth—except perhaps to watch it slip through your fingers!
(The more you have, the more you realize it doesn’t meet your real needs.)
People who work hard sleep well, whether they eat little or much. But the rich seldom get a good night’s sleep.
(The more you have, the more you have to worry about.)
There is another serious problem I have seen under the sun. Hoarding riches harms the saver.
(The more you have, the more you can hurt yourself by holding on to it.)
Money is put into risky investments that turn sour, and everything is lost. In the end, there is nothing left to pass on to one’s children.
(The more you have, the more you have to lose.)
We all come to the end of our lives as naked and empty-handed as on the day we were born. We can’t take our riches with us.
(The more you have, the more you’ll leave behind.)

Thinking about the eternal consequences of the way that we use money is the opposite of materialism and it’s the first step toward getting past your past money mistakes.

Giving
The second mistake we have made in our past when it comes to money is to neglect giving a portion of our money back to God.  We tend to think that our money is, well, ours.  But it’s not.  Everything belongs to God.

The prophet Malachi speaks to the Israelites saying:

Will anyone rob God? Yet you are robbing me! But you say, “How are we robbing you?” In your tithes and offerings!
~Malachi 3:8 NRSV

Wow!  Rob God!?  I certainly don’t want to be guilty of robbing God.  I suspect none of us want that.  But this is what Malachi says is happening when you don’t give back to God a tithe of 10% and an offering which is above the tithe.  Please don’t shoot the messenger.

We can get some basic sense of how we tend to approach giving money away by our taxes.  “The IRS calculates that the average filer spends ten times more paying off interest on debts than he gives to charitable causes” (Randy Alcorn, MPE, 305).  Yikes!  Ten times more on debt than charity!

Today we’re introducing two new ways that make giving back to God by supporting the mission of SycamoreCreekChurch even easier.  Now you can give online:  http://www.sycamorecreekchurch.org/p/index.php/ministries/107-give-online.  It’s really simple.  You can give a one-time or recurring gift using your debit card, or you can set up electronic fund transfer and have your giving electronically transferred from your bank account.  If you’re already using EFT, you can even get online and see your past giving and change it at any time.

A second way we’re trying to make giving easier is through a new offering envelope.  This offering envelope has several features.  First, you can give just as you always have.  Put a check or cash in the envelope and drop it in the offering bucket.  Second, you can take the envelope home and mail it to the church.  Third, you can now give with a debit card right on the offering envelope.  Lastly, you can sign up for EFT right on the offering envelope.  It’s all right there in one place.

Correct your past money mistake of ignoring giving back to God by choosing to tithe from this point forward.  Don’t rob God any longer.

Debt
The most obvious money mistake that most of us have made in our past is through spending habits that accumulate debt.  The Bible doesn’t categorically prohibit borrowing money.  For example, Jesus teaches:

Give to those who ask, and don’t turn away from those who want to borrow.
~Matthew 5:42 NLT

But the Bible does voice serious reservations about debt.  Consider these verses:

Just as the rich rule the poor,
    so the borrower is servant to the lender.
~Proverbs 22:7 NLT

Owe nothing to anyone—except for your obligation to love one another.
~Romans 13:8 NLT

Debt makes three basic assumptions that may not turn out to be true.  Debt assumes that:

  1. You’ll retain your current income (but you might get a pay cut or lose your job),
  2. You’ll remain in good health (but you might become disabled in some way),
  3. Other better or more missional opportunities won’t arise (but you might spend your money today and tomorrow find that you are unable to give to a great mission opportunity at church).

Not all debt is created equal.  Let’s take a look at several different kinds of debt.  There’s secured and unsecured debt.  This means that the debt is secured with something tangible that you’re buying.  Then there’s debt that you take on to buy an asset or a liability.  An asset is something that tends to grow in value and a liability is something that decreases in value.  Here is a chart with examples of each of four kinds of debt.

  Secured Unsecured
Asset Mortgage (Low-Med %) Education (Low %)
Liability Car (Med %) Credit Card (High %)

 

  1. Secured Asset: A Mortgage

The least risky kind of debt tends to be a secured asset.  A mortgage is secured because generally you can sell the house and pay off the loan, and it is an asset because it tends to increase in value.  But given what has happened in the last decade when it comes to housing values and how many people are now underwater with their mortgage, it’s  important to remember that debt, even a secured asset, is always a risk.  Perhaps we need to remember that buying a house is not a right.  Sometimes it is better to rent.  You get what you pay for, housing, and you don’t have to worry about upkeep and things breaking down.  It is worth asking, “Would renting free up your time and attention to focus on mission and calling?”

  1. Secured Liability: A Car

An auto loan is secured because you can sell the car and pay off the loan.  But while it is secured it is also a liability.  The moment you drive it off the lot, it decreases in value.

  1. Unsecured Asset: An Education

Student loans are unsecured because you can’t sell the education to pay off the loan, but a college degree does tend to increase your value in the marketplace and thus it can be understood as an asset.  But many of us don’t need quite as much education as we’ve gone into debt for.  It might be smart to go to a community college first, and then another school second later.  When I was in undergrad I, or more truthfully, my parents paid for $400/credit hour ($1600/course) at a private Christian liberal arts college, WheatonCollege.  One summer I came home and took a course at the local community college, Indiana University Purdue University of Indianapolis or IUPUI.  That course cost my parents $90/credit hour ($360/course).

  1. Unsecured Liability: Credit Card

Now that you’re getting a better sense of how debt works, let’s look at the worst kind of debt: an unsecured liability.  Credit Card debt is generally the worst kind of debt because the kind of stuff you put on a credit card can’t be sold off to pay off the loan.  Once you’ve bought the $5 latte and drank it and peed it out into the toilet, you can’t sell the latte to pay off the credit card!  You have nothing that secures the debt and the latte decreases significantly in value the moment it goes in your mouth.  In fact, you have to pay your sewer bill to have the utility company get rid of the waste!  You may say to me, “But Tom, we pay off our credit card every month.”  This may be true but studies have shown that we tend to spend 26% more on our credit card than when we pay for the same things with cash.  So be very careful how you use a credit card. Most of us probably need to do some plastic surgery: we need to cut the credit card up.

So here are three spiritual questions that Randy Alcorn suggests you consider before you take on any debt:

  1. Is not having enough resources to pay cash for what I want God’s way of telling me it isn’t his will for me to buy it?
  2. Is it possible that this thing may have been God’s will but I don’t have the resources to buy it because of past unwise decisions?
  3. If a lack of wisdom has put me in a position where I can’t afford to buy something, wouldn’t I do better to learn God’s lesson by forgoing it until—by his provision and my diligence—I save enough money?”

Small Groups
The other day I came across this news article in Psychology Today that shed a lot of light on why we spend money the way we do:

Feeling down?  Buy yourself a new pair of shoes.  Or get a new gadget.  That should boost your mood—right? 

Not necessarily.  According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, seeing possessions as a ticket to happiness and success increases feelings of isolation.  But the reverse is even stronger: Loneliness fuels materialism, creating a sometimes vicious cycle.  While fixation on ‘stuff’—especially around the holiday season—is usually blamed on an overly consumerist culture, the study suggests that it’s often a symptom (and a cause) of individual alienation, not cultural shallowness.

“Lonely people have a tendency to become more materialistic over time,” say study author Rik Pieteres, a professor of marketing at Tilburg University.  Some, he notes, may use shopping as a coping mechanism that is driven by the fear of rejection: “A friend might say no, but an iPad never does.”
“The Insatiable Shopper” by Agat Blaszczak-Boxe, Psychology Today

During the month of May you have the opportunity to help get past your past money mistakes by correcting the loneliness that is driving you to spend money in ungodly ways.  May is our GroupLINK month and you can sign up for one of twenty-one summer groups.  Groups are a great way to make friends that will help with the modern disease of loneliness and will have the added benefit of keeping your loneliness from causing you to make more money mistakes in the future.  Not only that, but groups provide you a place where you can build friendships that will help you discern the answers to the tough questions listed above.  Those friendships can help you begin to make wise money choices.  You can learn more and signup online here.

You may have gotten into a pit of debt in the past, but with God’s help you can begin to make wise money choices heading into the future:

  1. Reject materialism,
  2. Give back to God,
  3. Avoid debt.

Prayer
God, give us new eyes to see how our money choices have eternal consequences.  Give us courage to trust that if we give back to you 10% or more of what we make that we will have enough.  And give us the perseverance to avoid debt in a culture that is addicted to buying what it wants right now.  In the name of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

 

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Expect a Miracle

December 9, 2013 by Leave a Comment

bday

Christmas Is Not Your Birthday – Expect a Miracle *
Sycamore Creek Church
December 8/9, 2013
Tom Arthur 

Merry Christmas Friends!

Is it too early to say that?  No way.  Stores started decorating for Christmas weeks ago.  We put our Christmas decorations up the week before Thanksgiving so they’d be up to enjoy over Thanksgiving weekend.  So, Merry Christmas!  It’s never too early to say it.

But what are we saying when we say Merry Christmas?  What we’re really doing is saying, “Be merry because a birthday is coming!”  But whose birthday?  Your birthday?  Your kids birthday?  Your grandkids birthday?  No, Christmas is not your birthday.

That’s the series we’re beginning today: Christmas Is Not Your Birthday. Over the next several weeks we’re going to look at how to celebrate Christmas as Jesus’ birthday rather than our own.

Here’s the problem we run into every year with Christmas: Christmas has become too predictable.  What we need this year is a miracle!  Christmas is the perfect place for a miracle:

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
~The Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 9:6 KJV)

Hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth the prophet Isaiah predicted a miraculous birth, the birth of a baby who would be God and who would bring peace.  That’s quite a birth, quite a miracle!  But how did we get from that, Jesus’ birthday, to this?

The traditional “perfect” Christmas today includes: chaotic consumerism, stressed shopping, a terrible to-do list, disastrous date books, awful agendas, and deep deep debt (a pledge of allegiance to an economic Christmas orgy of overspending and debt).  Jesus was to be called the Counselor.  Maybe we should call him the Financial Counselor?  The traditional Christmas isn’t traditional at all.  It’s a “mixture of…a little biblical truth…some eighteenth-century Victorian practices, and…a double shot of Santa theology” (Thank you Mike Slaughter) on steroids provided by Madison Avenue with a shot of eggnog to make it all go down.

We’re left with the question: What exactly does God look like if this is how we celebrate the birth of the one called The Mighty God?  God ends up looking like Santa Claus?  God becomes a genie in a bottle with three wishes (if you’re good enough).

My own Christmas growing up was like this.  I remember when my grandma would hand me the J.C. Penny Catalogue and tell me to circle the things I wanted from it.  Now that I look back on this, it seems absurd to me.  My grandma lived so simply that when she died all my mom had to do to clean out her possessions was to empty one drawer at the nursing home!  And yet she bought into the whole traditional Christmas when it came to her own grandkids.  Another aspect of the traditional Christmas with my family was that kids of divorced parents cashed in big at Christmas.  Here’s how my Christmas schedule went:

Christmas Eve: Gifts with my dad’s parents
Christmas 6AM: Gifts with my dad and step-mom
Christmas 8AM: Gifts with my step-mom’s family
Christmas Noon: Gifts with my mom’s family
Christmas Afternoon: Gifts with my mom and step-dad.

Boom baby!  It’s one of the few times that being a kid in a divorced family pays off.  And of course, all these family members are doing their best to make sure that the other side of the family doesn’t one-up them!

So if this is how we celebrate the birth of the one called Mighty God, what does that God look like?  Something is really jacked up, isn’t it?  It’s jacked up because this baby wasn’t called Santa.  This baby was called Jesus, the Prince of Peace.  God doesn’t look like Santa, God looks like Jesus:

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.
~St. Paul (Colossians 3:15 NLT)

In Jesus we see God and also humanity, at its fullest.  Sometimes it’s hard to wrap your mind around God, but Jesus is easier.  Jesus is a God I can believe in.  And that’s a miracle.

The miracle of Jesus is that he was ordinary and yet extraordinary.  He was ordinary in that he was born in an empire-occupied territory to an unwed mother.  His parents were poor and lived as refugees in Africa amidst genocide back home.  He grew up in Nazareth, a small town in the middle of the U.P. (OK, just kidding about the U.P. thing).  He was a basic laborer.  He worked with his hands as a carpenter.  Jesus’ background was not extraordinary.  It was about as average or below average as they come.

And yet Jesus’ birth was also extraordinary and miraculous.

All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’).
~The Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 7:14 NLT)

Jesus is God with us and he was extraordinary in so many ways.  His message was a message of healing.  Jesus’ first sermon was also from the prophet Isaiah.  He stood up in the synagogue and read:

God’s Spirit is on me;
he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
to announce, “This is God’s year to act!”
(Luke 4:18-19 The Message)

He was the son of God full of power and yet he reached out to those who were powerless.  He was ultimately executed on a cross and resurrected three days later.  He was ordinary but extraordinary.  If God can work an extraordinary miracle through an ordinary Jesus, then he can work a miracle through any ordinary person, including you and me this Christmas.  In fact, you are God’s miracle worker!

This miracle is going to take some preparing for.  Christmas is Jesus’ birth and that means there is going to be a labor.  Preparing for the miracle this Christmas requires the cost of labor pains.  This birth was no “silent night.”  In fact, that song is really just about as silly as they come.  Sentimental, yes.  Realistic, no.  The birth probably looked more like this:

 

Jesus’ life cost him something.  He lives.  He taught and was persecuted by the religious establishment.  He was executed on a cross.  He raised from the dead.  All of those who closely followed him were persecuted and executed as well, except one who was sent into exile.  Those are some serious labor pains, not sentimental silent nights.  As Mike Slaughter says, “The real Christmas was a snapshot of poverty and anxiety, not feel-good warm fuzzies.”

So this Christmas we need another miracle.  We need the miracle of giving up on the “traditional Christmas” and building new traditions that put the celebration back on Jesus’ birthday, and this miracle is going to take some birth pains.  It’s going to require you to give up some stuff that makes Christmas look more like your birthday or your kids birthday.  It’s going to require you instituting some new traditions that look more like celebrating Jesus and what Jesus’ life was all about, his purpose.

What’s the goal or purpose of your life?  Is it “the good life”?  Retirement?  Golf every day?  Walking on the beach and collecting shells?  Sitting in your man cave watching ESPN1, 2, & 3 on your 80 inch HD TV?  Shopping till you drop?  Lying around in a hammock?  Those all might be OK for a season, but if that’s the ultimate goal of your life, then you’re life is going to get pretty boring pretty quickly.  My step-dad just retired.  He’s done good as a small business owner.  He sold his business to one of his most faithful employees.  He’s got a good life with my mom.  They have a house in Indianapolis and two in Florida.  They’re pretty set for the rest of their lives.  But about two weeks into retirement he got pretty bored sitting in his living room with his iphone watching sports on his super huge TV.  He told me that he was trying to figure out what to do with his life now that he’s retired.  He went to his pastors and asked if they could use him volunteering fifteen or twenty hours a week.  He wants his retirement to make a difference in somebody’s life.  He wants to serve others.  He wants his life to be like Jesus’ life.

As Mike Slaughter says, the new meaning and purpose of our lives at Christmas is that “We find meaning when we give sacrificially to those in need, because by doing so, we are giving to Jesus himself.  It is his birthday after all!”

So take up a new tradition this Christmas: celebrate Christmas as Jesus’ Birthday!  One way we’re doing this is by changing how we spend our money at Christmas.  Most of us spend way more than we even have to spend.  We go into debt to have the “traditional” Christmas.  New rule: don’t go into debt to celebrate Jesus’ birthday!  Rather, make this commitment: give away as much as you spend on Christmas.  For some of you that means simply being more generous at Christmas.  For others it means cutting your spending in half.

We’re going to give you an opportunity on Christmas Eve to give away as much as you spend on yourself.  Usually our offerings all year long go to supporting the immediate mission and ministry of SCC, but at Christmas Eve we receive an offering and give it all away.  This year we’re giving it all away to our medical missions in Nicaragua.  Twice a year we send teams to Nicaragua to bring life-giving and life-changing medicine, medical expertise, and hope to individuals all across the second poorest country in the Americas.

Over the life of our church we’ve been able to give away over $31,000 in our Christmas Eve offerings.  Last year we gave away $3800.  Our record is $5800 in 2011.  I’d love to see us smash that record this year.  Can we do $6000?  No, that’s too low.  Let’s shoot for $10,000.  Come on, if we give away as much as we spend at Christmas, we can easily do $10,000.  Get your family and friends in on it.  Give them an invite card to join you for Christmas Eve (one service at 5PM at Lansing Christian School and one service at 7PM at Jackie’s dinner with a $10 Christmas dinner), and tell them not to spend any money on you but to give it to our Christmas Eve offering.  Now that’s a miracle!

During Christmas we’re not only focusing on giving overseas, but we’re also giving away lots of money locally.  This is the last year in a three-year capital campaign at SCC to save money for a building.  When we began the campaign we decided to tithe on what we received for the capital campaign, so we’ve been setting aside 10% for missions.  We’ve received about $330,000 so we’ve set aside $33,000 for missions.  Half of that is going to our medical missions in Nicaragua and half of it is staying here locally.  Part of the local money is going to the ministries and missions that our church’s small groups have committed to.  So over the course of December, each of our small groups is getting a $1000 check to give to their local charity.  We’re going to show you a video each week of that miraculous moment when someone from our church gets to give $1000 to a ministry they’ve been volunteering at for a long time.  You’re not going to want to miss that!  That’s what your giving does.  It changes lives both here in SCC, in our community, and our world.  Here’s a miracle for Holt Senior Care:

 

*This series and sermon are inspired by Mike Slaughter’s book, Christmas Is Not Your Birthday.

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Act Your Wage

November 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment

strapped

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strapped – Act Your Wage*
Sycamore Creek Church
November 17/18, 2013
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

Anyone feeling strapped these days?  Too little money?  Too much debt?  The proverbs say:

Just as the rich rule the poor,
so the borrower is servant to the lender.
~Proverbs 22:7 NLT

The word “servant” is really too weak of a translation here.  It’s more like “slave” or “in bondage” or “strapped.”  Jesus says that you can’t serve both God and money.  What we found out last week is that we don’t serve money.  We serve God.  Money serves us as we serve God.

Here’s an Old School Rule: If you didn’t have the money to buy something you wanted, you weren’t allowed to buy it.  Before the great depression, 2% of houses had a mortgage on them.  Forty years later only 2% don’t have a mortgage.  Then in the last decade we’ve had quite a ride when it comes to houses and mortgages, haven’t we?  According to the New York Times, “More than a third of homeowners who received loan modifications under TARP’s mortgage modification program have since stopped paying” (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/business/new-defaults-trouble-a-mortgage-program.html).  Defaulting on your mortgage is becoming more and more common.

There’s a certain mindset of entitlement in our culture.  We expect that when we graduate college at 22, we deserve the same lifestyle of our parents.  So we keep driving cars like our parents.  We keep eating out like our parents.  We try to live in houses like our parents.  We expect instant middle class status without the hard work of getting there.

We are a generation of pretenders and posers.  There’s a scene in the movie Cinderella Man where Mae Braddock, the wife of James Braddock, the Cinderella Man boxer, goes to see his manager, Joe Gould, who lives in a fancy expensive apartment building.  When she first knocks on the door, he’s home but doesn’t answer it.  She keeps knocking. She yells at him from outside his door, “Don’t hide in your fancy apartment, I want to talk to you.” He ignores her for a while but then finally lets her in. When she comes in, she sees that the apartment is almost empty. There’s a card table and some chairs. She says, “I didn’t know, I mean I thought that…” He says, “That’s the idea. Always keep your hands up.”  That’s how many of us are posing for the rest of the world, with our hands up hiding our real financial situation.  Unfortunately, many of us are using debt and credit cards to pose.

The proverbs say:

One man pretends to be rich, yet has nothing
~Proverbs 13:7 NIV

There are three kinds of people:

  1. The Haves
  2. The Have-Nots
  3. The Have-Not-Paid-for-What-They’ve-Got

Today I want to look at three values essential to becoming unstrapped.  I want to give you some really practical advice for getting your financial house in order.

1. Embrace the Value of Self-control

How’s your self control these days?  How’s your self control when it comes to money?  The proverbs say:

Like a city breached, without walls,
is one who lacks self-control.
~Proverbs 25:28 NRSV

Without self control we’re like an ancient city without a wall, defenseless to attacks.  We’re vulnerable to debt and exorbitant interest of credit cards and pay day loans and pawn shops.  We’re like the little kid in the grocery line screaming, “I want it now!”  Except instead of getting the candy bar or the match box car, the financial stakes are bigger!

This is a generalization, and while it is not always true, I think it has some truth in it.  Women tend to nickel and dime and quarter their way into debt.  They buy shoes and belts to match the shoes and pay hundreds of dollars on hair cuts and dying (one survey found that money spent on hair added up to $50,000 over a lifetime! http://main.stylelist.com/2010/03/29/the-price-of-pretty-women-spend-50-000-on-hair-over-lifetime/).  Then there’s the nails to match it all.  Nickle.  Dime.  Quarter.  Dollar.  Five Dollars.  Ten Dollars.

Men on the other hand do the debt thing in one big purchase.  A new car.  $20,000.  A time share.  $10,000.   A boat.  $30,000.  An ATV.  $10,000.  A new flat screen TV, Blue-ray DVD player, surround sound, leather couch, wall mount, and upgrade of all old DVDs to Blue-ray.  $15,000.  Boom goes the dynamite!  And friends, you’re in debt.

What we need to do is show a little self control.  We need to practice saying, “No.”  Say it with me now:

Ladies – Do you really need to get your nails done twice a month? NO!
Men – Do you really need to play golf twice a month?  NO!
Do you really need a $4 cup of coffee each day? NO!
Do you really need your kid to have an iPhone 5abc-xyz?  NO!
Do you really need a brand new car?  NO!

Say NO! for a little while so we can say YES for the rest of our lives!

2. Embrace the Value of Sacrifice

Are you willing to make a sacrifice to attain something better?  The author of Hebrews says:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross…
Hebrews 12:2 NIV

So we’re to focus on Jesus who was willing to sacrifice his own life for something bigger.  Sacrifice means giving up something you love for something you love even more.  Give it up to gain.  Give up the belts to gain.  Give up the shoes to gain.  Give up the fancy hair and nails to gain.  Give up the new car to gain.  Give up the boat to gain.  Give up the fancy house in the fancy neighborhood to gain.  Give it up, sacrifice, to gain.

Let me give you just one example.  The average person eats out a lot!  If you brought your own lunch every day to work, brown-bagging it daily saves you $100,000 over a life time!  $100,000!

The other night a Kirby salesman came by the door around 8PM.  It was a college student.  He used a nice line on me to pull at my heart strings.  He said, “I just need one more demonstration to go home tonight.  You don’t have to buy anything.  Just let me show you it for about ten or fifteen minutes.”  The poor guy was obviously tired, and I let him in.  Then after way more than ten or fifteen minutes, some other guy came to the door and did the sales job.  I was getting really annoyed at this point.  I told him he had two minutes to make his pitch.  He gave me the price: $1600.  $1600 for a vacuum cleaner!  Now it was a nice machine.  It really was.  It was the Porsche of vacuum cleaners, and I have no doubt that you get what you pay for.  But I don’t have $1600 for a vacuum cleaner.  He said to me, “What’s keeping you from buying it today?  The down payment?  The monthly payment?  What?’’  I said, “The cost.  I’ll give you $100.”  That was the end of the conversation.  The salesman left my house while the poor college student was there another twenty minutes packing back up the Porsche of vacuum cleaners.

We’re all asking the wrong question.  We’re asking:   How much down?  Or how much each month?  What we really need to ask is what’s the real cost?

Let’s go back to our credit cards.  The average credit card balance is $14,517.  You wracked up that 18% debt on your credit card with a trip to Disney World, the surround sound system, the flat screen TV, video games, new clothes, shoes, etc.  Now you’ve got to pay back $14,517, assuming you don’t add any more debt to it!  If you pay $291 per month (the minimum payment) on $14,517 at 18% it will take 52 years to pay off the debt and you will have paid a total interest of $41,414 (http://www.federalreserve.gov/creditcardcalculator/Default.aspx)!  You’re paying almost three times what it cost you to buy that stuff just in interest alone!  But that’s not all its costing you.

Let’s say that instead of buying all that stuff you saved the money and invested it.  Many say that historically the stock market makes 10%.  I found data that showed a 50 year average stock market return at 9.2% (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/perfi/columnist/krantz/story/2011-10-17/rate-of-return-for-stocks/50807868/1).  But let’s use some real investment numbers.  When Sarah had a best seller and she made more than I did that year, we invested the maximum we could that year in a Roth IRA in a socially screen mutual fund called Pax World Growth.  We like the socially screened aspect of the fund because it means we’re not making money off of companies that pollute or discriminate or make money off of weapons, etc.  You get the point.  This year that fund is making 17%.  It’s a good year.  Since inception in the 1970s, Pax World Growth has made 8.46%.  We also opened a 529 college savings plan for Micah.  We decided to go again with a socially screened fund through the DC College Savings Plan.  Year to date that fund is making 22.44%.  Since inception in the 80s it’s making 7.45%.

Back to the credit card debt of $14,517.  If you didn’t spend that money and instead saved it.  What would happen?  Let’s take the lower of our investment returns and assume a 7% return on your investment.  If you saved $14,517 at 7% for 52 years (the same time it would take you to pay it off with minimum payments), you’d end up making $489,590.  But let’s take this a step further.  Let’s add the minimum payment of $291/month to your investment.  So every month you’re also putting $291 into that same investment account.  At the end of 52 years, you’d have $2,236,395 in the bank!

(These calculations come from Dave Ramsey’s website: (http://www.daveramsey.com/article/investing-calculator/lifeandmoney_investing/#/entry_form)

So what’s the real cost of going into debt on your credit card for $14,517?  The real cost is over $2,000,000!  How much of a difference could you make in this world if you had money like that?

3. Embrace the Value of Planning

Most of us fly by the seat of our pants when it comes to money.  Going back to the wisdom of the Proverbs:

The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty.
~Proverbs 21:5 NIV

You can wander into debt but you can’t wander out.  There are three basic planning tools you need to get unstrapped.

  1. A Budget: Budgeting is fairly simple.  It just takes some time and effort and focus.  If you don’t know how to budget, sign up for a FinancialPeaceUniversity class in the area.  There are eleven Churches in the Lansing Region that are hosting them right now.  I also want to take budgeting a step further.  In our culture, finances are taboo.  What you make and how you spend it are “private.”  That may be our culture’s value, but it’s not a Jesus value.  Share your budget with someone else outside of your family.  Ask them for input on what you make and what you spend.  Ask someone who manages their money better than you manage yours.
  2. An emergency fund:  Save $1000 for emergencies.  You’ll never get ahead if you are always in crisis mode.  You’ve got to have a cushion so that when you hit a crisis, it doesn’t sink you.  To build this emergency fund you may need to sell stuff, go heavy on the coupons, or even get an extra job.  Many of you know that over the last two and a half years Tabitha Martin has been living with us getting back on her feet after being at Maplewood.  She’s just moved out into her own place this past week.  I asked her if I could share what’s happened to her recently.  Over the two and a half years she’s lived with us she’s saved $3000.  About two weeks ago she was in a car accident and totaled her car.  Because she had $3000 on hand, she was able to buy a car with cash.  But she didn’t spend it all because she also needed money for a down payment on her apartment and a future emergency fund.  So in the last week she bought a new car, made a down payment on her apartment, and retained an emergency fund for the future all because she had a big emergency fund to begin with.  If she hadn’t had it, she’d be back to square one.  But because she had the emergency fund, she was able to continue moving forward with her life.  Thank you God!
  3. The debt snowball: The basic idea here is to pay off your smallest debt first.  Then take the payment of that debt and add it to your payment on your second smallest debt.  Once you’ve got those two debts paid off, then add those two payments to your third smallest debt.  And on and on until you’ve snowballed your way out of debt.  To get a really great picture of what this can look like on the ground, check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyF4mZFtfZs.

So why are you talking about this in church?  Because nobody teaches you this in school.  And unfortunately, most of our parents don’t talk about it.  Maybe they don’t talk about it because they’re so deep in debt and strapped that they don’t have any wisdom to share with their kids except, “Don’t do as I do.”  So we talk about money in the church because money is spiritual.  Money and things are the number one competitor with God for our hearts.  The Bible says more about money than just about anything else.

What do you think you do for the glory of God if you had no school loans?  If you had no car loans?  If you had no credit card debt?  If you had no home equity loans?  If you had no mortgage?  What kind of impact could make on this world?  How could you help bring the kingdom of God here on earth as it is in heaven?

God, help us have some self-control. Help us sacrifice something good for something better.  Help us live by a plan with our money so that our money can bring you glory and honor.  In Jesus’ name and by the power of your Spirit, amen!

*This sermon was adapted from a sermon by Craig Groeschel

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The Buck Starts Here – A Godly Perspective on Money

November 11, 2013 by 1 Comment

strapped

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Buck Starts Here – A Godly Perspective on Money*
Sycamore Creek Church
November 10/11, 2013
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

A little more money would make life a little better?  Right?  Dave Ramsey says, “Money is fun. If you’ve got some.”   The problem is that most of us are strapped for cash.  And the hard reality is that we’re strapped largely because we’ve done something stupid with money.

I’ve had my share of stupid purchases.  There was the time I spent $18 on a Rainbow Brite Doll for my fourth-grade girlfriend, who then broke up with me.  Afterwards I realized that a Rainbow Brite Doll was for a four-year-old, not a fourth grader.  Then there was my job during college at The Gap.  I spent all my paycheck on clothes while accumulating student loan debt.  Shortly after I was married I spent $200 on Gore-tex waterproof boots that ended up being a little too small.  I didn’t realize they were too small until after half a day on the trail through the dirt, water, and mud and aching feet!

I asked my friends on Facebook what stupid or unwise purchases they’ve made.  Here’s the stories they shared:

  • Going to the casino and losing it all and not being able to get anything from the ATM on weekend.
  • Bought a house right before the housing market crashed.
  • Went to Costa Rica when I *really* didn’t have money to be doing that sort of thing.
  • Grad school?
  • Went to Divinity School.
  • Bought a new house before old house was sold. Two house payments. Not good.
  • There was the time the sales woman was hot at the Buckle in the mall.  She was flirting really bad.  I spent $300 of my graduation money. I went back the next day and asked her out. I thought she was interested, but she was with someone else!!  Lol

We’ve all made stupid and unwise purchases.  Check out this poem by George Bilgere called Unwise Purchases.

So we’ve all done it, but this is not a guilt series.  We’re not here to shame you.  Shake off the guilt. Shake it off.  This is a practical series about how to manage and handle your money in a god-honoring way.  It’s a series about:

  1. The heart and money
  2. Disciplines to help us to climb out of debt
  3. Saving and what to do with it

The wisdom of the Proverbs says:

The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant [servant/slave/in bondage] to the lender.
Proverbs 22:7 NIV

“We’d love to [you fill in the blank]…but we don’t because we don’t have money.”  That’s bondage.  That’s being strapped.
We’d love to stay at home with the kids, but we don’t because we don’t have money.
We’d love to adopt an orphan, but we don’t because we don’t have money.
We’d love to buy a little bigger house for our family, but we don’t because we don’t have money.
We’d love to go on a mission trip, but we don’t because we don’t have money.
We’d love to give a little more away, but we don’t because we don’t have money.

The average household debt is $136% of household income.  The only institution that does this and gets away with it is the US government!  The average credit card debt is $14,517.  That’s a lot of ear rings, belts, shoes (to match the ear rings and belt), golf clubs, DVDs, and more.  The average 21 year old is $12,000 in debt!  $12,000!  It gets worse.  The average 28 year old is $78,000!  $78,000!  $78,000!  The number of US households living paycheck to paycheck is over half at 55%.

If money is one of the best outward measurements of your inward spiritual condition (and I believe it is), then we’re in really bad shape spiritually.  I was meeting with someone the other day who is reading through the Bible for the first time.  He said to me, “There’s a lot in here about money!”  He’s right!  2/3 of the parables deal with money and possessions.  1 in 10 verses in the gospels deal with money and things.  2300 verses in the Bible are about money.  That’s five times the amount on prayer or faith!  Money is an indicator of our spiritual condition, and there are two temptations we face when it comes to money.

Two Temptations of Money

1. We’re tempted to serve money.  Jesus says:

No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
Matthew 6:24 NLT

Money and things are the #1 competitors for our heart.  If you bought something you didn’t need with money you didn’t have to impress people you didn’t like, you’ve served money.  If you’ve ever hoarded money, you’ve served money.  If I want to give my kids the life I never had, when all they ever wanted was your presence, you’ve served money.

2. We’re tempted to love money.  Paul, the first missionary of the church, was a mentor to Timothy when he said:

For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.
1 Timothy 6:10 NLT

Money isn’t good or bad.  It’s neutral.  It’s the love of money that is wrong.  There are a lot of poor people who love money.  If you’re rich, it doesn’t mean you love money. You may just be good at what you do.  If you have debt with low money, you will have more debt with more money.  More money makes you more of what you already are.  King Solomon who was known for his wisdom said:

Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.
Ecclesiastes 5:10 NIV

We’re under the power and influence of money and we don’t even know it.  Most of us don’t have an income problem.  Most of us have spending problems.  Which indicates a spiritual problem.  We don’t need more money.  We need more Jesus.

Things have got to change.  Are you sick of it?  Get sick of it so that you do something about it!

The Point
Here’s the whole point of the message today: If you’re a Christian, we don’t serve money, we serve God.  Money serves us as we serve God.  So how does money serve us?  Four ways:

  1. Money buys basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing.  These are basic NEEDS (not wants) that we must have in order to live life.
  2. Money buys time.  If you’re spending all your time focusing on food, shelter, and clothing, then you don’t have time to focus on “higher” needs like loving your family with your presence.  Micah has recently begun saying to me, “Daddy, do you have time to play with me?”  Time to play with Micah isn’t as basic a need as making sure he’s got food, clothing, and shelter, but it is a very important need.
  3. Money buys options.  Do you own a clunker car that you’re always afraid is going to give out on you, or do you own a dependable car that gets you to work and back each day?  Dependable doesn’t mean BMW.  It means just what it says, a dependable basic car.  But if you don’t have the money to buy a dependable car, then you’re ending up with all kinds of other problems like not being a dependable worker and not having dependable income from that job to meet the basic needs of life.
  4. Money buys blessings to others.  When you’ve got your basic needs met and you’ve got more income, it is fun, yes FUN!, to bless others with what you’ve got extra.  For example, check out this video about tipping:

Christmas

We picked this series to happen in November to help you prepare for Christmas.  Christmas is one of those times when we throw out all financial wisdom and go big into debt and spend several months if not years trying to dig ourselves out of the hole we dug ourselves in.  This Christmas I want to challenge you to do Christmas differently.  We’ll be doing a series called Christmas is Not Your Birthday.  You know that Christmas is not about you.  It’s not even about your family.  It’s about Jesus.  Christmas is Jesus’ birthday.  And Jesus’ birthday wish list has on it blessing others with your resources rather than buying into the greed, consumerism, and materialism of our culture.  This Christmas we’re encouraging you to spend less so that you can give more away.  If you usually spend $1000 on Christmas, give $1000 away.  Or if you usually spend $1000 on Christmas, then cut it in half and give $500 away.  We’ll be receiving a special offering on Christmas Eve that will go entirely to our medical missions in Nicaragua.  Twice a year we bring life-saving and life-giving medicine and medical expertise to Nicaragua, the second poorest nation in the Americas after Haiti.  Use your money to bless others this Christmas rather than give more gifts to people who already have too much.

Paul, the first missionary of the church, said to the church in Rome:

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another.
Romans 13:8

Do you want to better honor God with what God has given you?  Then take today’s message as a foundation to your life, and come back in coming weeks to learn basic practical steps for how to handle your money wisely.  Today, set your will, set your mind, set your heart on getting your financial house in order so that you owe no one any debt except the debt to keep loving as many people as you can.  And remember, this is first and foremost a spiritual problem.  It’s a spiritual problem because our hearts are in the debt of sin, and Jesus must first free us from that debt so that we can get our financial debts in order.  Have you asked Jesus to free you from the debt of sin?  If not, do so today, and trust that with time and perseverance, and wise financial decisions, you can get to a place where you are blessing others financially because God has blessed you.

* This message is adapted and based on a sermon by Craig Groeschel.

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The Daily Grind – Financial Margin

October 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The Daily Grind

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Daily Grind – Financial Margin
Sycamore Creek Church
October 28 & 29, 2012
Tom Arthur
1 Timothy 6:6-10 

Peace Friends! 

One day, the father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the express purpose of showing him how poor people live. They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family.

On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, ‘How was the trip?’

‘It was great, Dad.’

‘Did you see how poor people live?’ the father asked.

‘Oh yeah,’ said the son.

‘So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?’ asked the father.

The son answered:

‘I saw that we have one dog and they had four.
We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night.

Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.

We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight.

We have servants who serve us, but they serve others.

We buy our food, but they grow theirs.

We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to protect them.’

The boy’s father was speechless.

Then his son added, ‘Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are.’

The Problem
The problem I want to look at today is that we look prosperous but we’re really poor.  Today we wrap up a series called The Daily Grind.  It’s been about the stuff that slowly but surely grinds us down day after day.  Not the big blowout stuff, but the small stuff.  We’ve looked at emotional grind, physical grind, time grind, and today we’re looking at financial grind.

Sarah and I struggle a bit with the financial grind.  I get paid regularly and you all take good care of us, but Sarah’s income comes in big chunks.  It’s feast or famine at our household.  We’re either covering just the basics or binging ‘cause we just got a big huge check!  While this is somewhat true of us, of all the daily grinds (Emotional, Physical, Time), this is the one where we seem to have the least grinding.  It’s because we live simply (on one income) and give generously (mostly give Sarah’s income away).  We recently had a family financial emergency that was in the $1000s of dollars.  We had an emergency fund that could cover it and so while it was stressful, it just meant that we were going to have to tighten the belt for a while to rebuild our emergency fund.  Then Sarah got a royalty check.  She actually hasn’t gotten much of a royalty check in many years, but the royalty check was within forty-three cents, yes, forty-three cents of thousands of dollars of the financial emergency.  We gave thanks to God for how we were first, prepared with an emergency fund, and then for how we were taken care of above and beyond that!  I still marvel at it as I tell this story today.

The question of the day amidst an election year seems to be: What are the economic statistics doing?  But the question should be: What are the economic statistics doing to us?  It seems like layaway has become really popular again.  “Buy now pay later” = “Binge now pain later.”  We buy more and more stuff on debt and credit, which means that we have the perception of prosperity but the reality of poverty.  A couple of months ago I was talking with a local bank manager and he told me that his best guess was that 50% of the houses in the neighborhood surrounding the bank were underwater, they owed more than they were worth.  A friend of mine took out too many student loans, spent them unwisely, graduated and got too much house for too much mortgage, maxed out all his credit cards, and then it all came crashing down in bankruptcy.  Who is to blame, the politicians ask.  I think everyone: the banks and credit cards for loaning irresponsibly and my friend for spending way over what he could afford.

How much debt do you have?  How content are you with your current financial situation?  I’d guess that most of us are carrying more debt than we would like, and are not very satisfied with how things are going financially.

If you won $1,000,000 in the lottery, would that fix everything for you?  You might think so, but you would probably be wrong.  Did you hear recently about Amanda Clayton?  She won the lottery a couple of years ago but continued taking food stamps.  Recently she was found dead from a possible drug overdose.  If you don’t know how to take care of your money, getting more money will only make the problems bigger.  If you don’t have the discipline to build financial margin in your life with little money, then you won’t have the discipline to do it with a lot of money.

I’d like to turn to God’s Word today and see what it says about building financial margin in our lives.

1 Timothy 6:6-10 NLT
Yet true religion with contentment is great wealth.  [A new definition of wealth:] After all, we didn’t bring anything with us when we came into the world, and we certainly cannot carry anything with us when we die [Universal truth: we all die].  So if we have enough food and clothing [live simply], let us be content [to get a little bit more]. But people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction.  For the love of money is at the root of all kinds of evil [not all evil but all kinds of evil]. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.

Main Point
Here’s the main point for the day: Living simply and giving generously produces financial margin.  If you get any one thing from this message get that.  When you live simply, that is below your means, and give generously, that is give sacrificially, then you will end up with financial margin in your life and financial peace no matter how much you make.

To live simply and give generously here’s what I want you to do.

Ditch Debt
Get rid of your credit cards.  If you can’t pay them off at the end of each month so that you don’t carry over any balance, then get rid of them.  And cut up those credit card checks as soon as they come.  Practice a debt snow-ball.  Pay off the smallest debt you have.  Then take that monthly payment and begin to pay off the next biggest debt.  Once you’ve paid that off, take those two payments and pay off the third.  And on and on until you’re debt free.

Decrease Spending
To be able to ditch your debt you’re going to have to decrease your spending.  Now a few very disciplined people can do this without a budget (but they’re probably not in debt to begin with), but most of us need to set a budget.  I was recently floored when Jeremy, our worship leader, showed me how they budget and track their money.  They use Google Docs.  Kristin, Jeremy’s wife, set this whole thing up online with a spread sheet for each category of spending.  I know that Kristin set it up because it’s way too advanced for Jeremy.  So every time Jeremy and I meet at Biggby Coffee and he buys something, he logs in to their Google account and types in what he just spent.  It shows him how much more he has that month to spend.  This is pretty amazing to me because of how detailed it is and that they set it up on their own.  But the discipline that he and Kristin show to do this every day is even more amazing than the technology. 

Sarah and I do the same basic thing but we found a website called Mint.com that does most of the work for us.  It pulls data from our bank accounts and it learns how to categorize your specific spending habits and all you have to do is check it to make sure it’s categorized everything correctly. 

Now budgeting doesn’t have to really include any technology except a pencil and pad of paper.  But whatever you use, use something to help you budget so that you decrease your spending so that you can ditch debt so that you can build financial margin.

Devote More to Savings
So you’re ditching debt by decreasing spending, but don’t forget to devote more to savings.  First you need to build an emergency fund.  Start by aiming for a $1000 emergency fund.  That will get you through two big emergencies.  That way when the water surge hits after the hurricane, you’re not taken out.  I mentioned earlier that Sarah and I had an emergency fund that was going to buffer our financial emergency.  While the financial hit didn’t feel good, it would have felt even worse had we not had the emergency fund. 

In an ideal world, you’d build that emergency fund to be six months of expenses.  That would give you six months to find a new job if you got laid off.  Wouldn’t that be great to have six months of cash to cover the loss of a job?  It’s a long-term goal, but one worth aiming for.

The general rule of thumb for devoting more to savings is to live on 70-80% of what you make and put at least 10% in savings.  So now we’ve come back to living simply.  Live on less than you make.  To do that you have to decrease your spending by budgeting and ditch debt.  Then you’ll be able to devote more to savings.

Sarah and I have also begun to think even more long-term.  How will we pay for Micah’s education?  We’ve begun a college savings plan.  We put $25/month toward it right now.  It’s not a lot, but it’s better than nothing.  I think one of the big temptations is to think that because you can’t save a lot or put a lot away, that you shouldn’t save at all.  Well, that’s a false assumption.  Save as much as you can.  And when you can save more at a later time, then save more.

Discipline your Desires
So we’ve looked at ditching debt by decreasing your spending, so that you can also devote more to savings.  All this is in order to build financial margin in your life. But let me share a secret with you: money has a spiritual dimension to it.  Money holds a kind of power over your heart.  It’s hard to do any of this when money finds a root in your heart.  The best and most effective way to break the power of money in your life and to break the hold it has over you is to give it away.  Money was not made to be given away.  When you give it away, you break down its power.  Money is like manure, spread it around and it can do a lot of good, but pile it up in one place and it stinks to high heaven.  Live simply and give generously.  It’s the motto for those who want to have financial margin in their lives.

I recently came across the amazing story of Howard Cooper.  Howard recently retired from his auto store, Howard Cooper Imports inAnn Arbor.  Howard had a surprise for his employees when he retired.  He gave all of them $1000 for every year they had worked for him!  Some people had worked twenty or thirty years!  Wow!  What generosity.  What kind of person gives away so much of their hard-earned savings when they retire?  I had to find out so I called up Howard and talked to him.  He told me he got the idea from a friend who had a concrete business.  This friend of his has not paid his employees as well as he would have liked because he was always bidding low so that he would get the bids.  When he retired, he sold the business and made a huge amount of money.  So to make up for his poor pay rates, he did the same thing: gave his employees big “retirement bonuses.”  Howard had treated his employees well, but felt that gesture still had merit.  As we talked he told me about his mother who was a very devout Methodist.  His mother was very generous with her money.  One time she had heard that someone had won $1,000,000.  She commented to Howard, “Think how much good that person could do by giving that money away.”  Howard’s mom’s attitude toward money rubbed off on him, and when he had the opportunity he decided to give generously to his employees.  When I grow up and have lots of money, I want to be like Howard Cooper!

I love what Howard did because it’s being generous with the people who are around him day in and day out.  I hope whenever I talk about giving money away, you don’t immediately think I’m talking about giving it to the church.  I do want you to give to the church because I think that’s part of disciplining your desires, but being generous is much bigger than that. 

But when it comes to giving to the church, the best way to do it is to automate it.  We automate everything these days.   In fact, I barely ever write a check.  I’ve created most of my financial life to take place automatically whether I’m even paying attention or not.  My pay check is automatically deposited to my bank account.  All of my regular bills are automatically taken out of my checking account.  And I’ve done the same thing with my tithing to the church.  Tithing means 10%.  It’s the basic standard of giving in the Bible.  Sarah and I do it through EFT, electronic fund transfer, but you could also do it through your online bank bill pay.

Some people point out to me how they like to put something in the offering bag and that feels like an act of worship.  That is probably true for many people.  When it comes to worship, we like the physical act of doing something.  But if you automate your giving, that doesn’t mean you can’t still do something.  When the offering bag comes around every week, consider simply touching it and saying a prayer of thanks.  That moment can be a moment of thanks for everyone whether you put something in it or not.  Touch the bag and be thankful.  Or if you want to put something in the bag, simply put an empty giving envelope in the bag.  Let that be a symbol for you that you gave in some automated way.

There are three different groups of people here today.  Those of you who have yet to give something to the church.  I want to encourage you to give something, anything, regularly.  Even if it’s just $5.  Then there are some of you who give regularly but don’t tithe.  Consider tithing today.  Then there are those of you who already tithe.  Consider taking the next step to radical generosity.  Give above and beyond 10%.

One last comment about disciplining your desires by giving generously.  Anyone start thinking about Christmas yet?  It’s just around the corner.  What’s your financial game plan for Christmas gifts?  Sit down and write it up.  And make sure you include giving generously.  We want to encourage you to remember that Christmas is not your birthday.  It’s Jesus’ birthday.  So give away as much as you spend on gifts.  Or cut what you spend in half and give the other half away.  Our Christmas Eve offering will be entirely focused on missions and meeting the needs of those in our community and world.  So begin making plans for Christmas generosity right now.

Financial Margin
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, liked to say that financial margin was about making all you can (in honest ways), saving all you can (living simply), and giving all you can (give the rest away).  I heard him paraphrased lately this way: “Keep our needs low, our generosity high, and our expectations heavenward.”  What if we all had that kind of financial margin?  Imagine the joy of having your basics covered and not living pay check to pay check.  Imagine the joy of having an emergency and having money to cover an emergency.  Imagine the joy of giving lots of money away.  Imagine a whole community of 150 people doing that.  That’s whatSycamoreCreekChurchwould look like if we all had financial margin. 

You know what?  I already see it here at SCC.  I see people doing it in amazing ways.  There are people here at SCC who live way below their means.  They live very simply.  And that frees them up to do some amazing things with their money to help others find that financial margin too.  It warms my heart.  But perhaps the most heart-warming example is a teenager I found out about who tithes toSycamoreCreekChurch.  That’s someone who we’re already teaching how to discipline their desires.  I cried when I heard that story.  Thank you, God, for letting me be part of a community like that.

Prayer
God, help us be a community that helps rebuild the financial margin in people’s lives.  Help us be a community where people are ditching debt, decreasing their spending, devoting more to savings, and disciplining their desires.  Help us be so much that kind of a community that it rubs off on our children and teenagers.  May it be so in the name of your son Jesus Christ and the power of your Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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A New Reason to Give

May 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Not So Random Acts of GivingPeace Friends!

Why do you give?  There are a lot of good reasons to give to Sycamore Creek Church.  We’d like to suggest a new reason to give to SCC: Designated Special Giving (DSG).  Beginning with this newsletter, we’re going to be listing ten DSG opportunities every quarter.  They are various needs that already exist or new ministry opportunities that we’d like to move into but don’t yet have the finances to do so.  We think that by sharing these ideas, God might speak to some of you in new ways about giving.  A particular opportunity just might catch hold of your heart, imagination, or spirit, and God won’t let it get out of your mind.  Would you prayerfully look over the list below and consider whether God is calling you to give to one of these DSG opportunities?

Let me share a couple of caveats.  First, we’re still asking you to make an annual financial commitment.  This year’s Commitment Sunday will be Sunday, May 20th, and the theme for the two-week series (beginning on May 13th) will be Not So Random Acts of Giving.  One thing that is clear about the way the Bible approaches giving is that giving is best done intentionally.  Commitment Sunday gives you an opportunity to seek God’s will for your own giving with intention rather than randomly deciding what you’ll give week by week.  Watch for more info on Commitment Sunday in the coming weeks.

Second, DSG is an above-and-beyond giving opportunity, above and beyond other commitments you’ve made to the church such as your annual Commitment Sunday pledge, your 20 Years Deep Capital Campaign pledge, or your commitment to Dr. Mir in Nicaragua.  Some of us are giving sacrificially to give intentionally and regularly in these areas, and this above-and-beyond kind of giving may not be for you.  But God has given some the spiritual gift of giving, and DSG is especially for people with this spiritual gift.

Third, if you can’t give the total amount listed, don’t feel like you can’t contribute.  Perhaps God will speak to five other people too, and their total giving meets the need or opportunity.  Fourth, we’ve tried to give a brief description of the need or opportunity, but if you’d like more information, feel free to contact the office.

So take some time to consider DSG alongside your current giving, and watch what God will do in the coming weeks and months!

Peace,
Tom

P.S. Don’t forget that the easiest way to give regularly and intentionally is through Electronic Fund Transfer.  Contact the church office fore more details.  You can make future changes at any time by simply calling.

Designated Special Giving (DSG)

  • Staff Laptops ($600 each) – Tom, Jeremy, and Julie/Kids Creek are all using laptops that are several years old and running very slowly.
  • Main Projection Screen ($1,400) – The current screen is showing significant age.
  • Retreat Scholarships ($20 and up) – If someone needs help going on CRASH men’s retreat, Awakenings women’s retreat, or a youth retreat, this helps cover those costs.
  • Connection Café Tables ($200) – The current tables are aging and falling apart.
  • Presentation Laptop & Software ($1,500) – Currently we put together Sunday morning’s presentation on several different computers.  Streamlining it to one laptop would save hassle, time, and the stress of making all three computers work together.
  • Youth Ministry Intern ($5000) – We’d like to hire a college student as a year-round youth intern.
  • Emergency Fund ($20 and up) – We help people in our church and community who are having difficulty covering basic expenses like rent, utilities, and food.
  • Leadership Training ($300) – Conferences, workshops and coaching help our paid and unpaid staff continue to improve their craft and grow our church.
  • Signage ($100 to $2000) – We’re working on a new office sign, street signs, signs going into Lansing Christian School, and signs inside LCS that show our new logo and improve visibility.
  • Digital Recorder to MP3 ($100) – This would allow us to more easily get audio of each week’s message on the website and podcast.

If you would like to give to one or more of these Designated Special Giving opportunities, simply drop a check in the offering bag and write “DSG” and the name of the DSG (i.e. “DSG: Staff Laptops”).

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