Doing God's Math
Exciting times in a tough economy
Across our nation, in church after church, believers are facing cutbacks, job losses, housing foreclosures and the like. As a group, Christians are not exempt from the economic realities. But in the midst of this unstable economy, pastors and churches that model the realities of God’s economy are actually seeing exciting things happen. EFCA Today spoke with three EFCA pastors. . . .
Case in point is Southern California, where the economic crisis hit fast and hard. When people started losing their homes, they descended into crisis mode, according to EFCA Pastor Alex Rivero. “They were just thinking, Me, me, me, what’s going to happen to me? God was not in the picture. People were paralyzed. They didn’t want to evangelize; they didn’t want to come to church.
“It started as an economic battle and became a spiritual battle.”
Alex was hired six years ago by EFC of Conejo Valley to plant a church that would minister to the 3,000 Hispanics who live within a mile of the church. He now pastors Nueva Vida Comunidad Cristiana, just northwest of Los Angeles.
Many of his 50-family congregation — and the surrounding Hispanic community — are undocumented immigrants, sending money back home to their families in Central America. They tend to work more than one job and rent a room (or sometimes only a couch) in a two-bedroom home that might be occupied by four or more other adults.
That is, if they still have jobs and homes. Ninety percent of those in Alex’s congregation who owned homes have since lost them.
In another part of the country, deep in America’s heartland, banking and construction are the name of the game for many of the 1,600 who attend Valley Church (EFCA). The economic highs and lows might be less severe there in Iowa than in California, but that usually means the area is slower to recover. At any moment your secure job could disappear. And those who haven’t lost jobs are often making gut-wrenching decisions about whether to fire a long-time employee.
And in New England last summer, Neal Laybourne watched his community with concern as the rising price of home heating oil, coupled with the stock-market crash, devastated people already overloaded with credit-card debt. The 160 who attend the church he pastors, Barre (Vt.) EFC, are also facing the challenge of job losses in a no-growth area.
“We pray every week in worship for jobs for those unemployed, underemployed or soon to be pink-slipped,” he says.
Laying a foundation
Despite serious economic realities, Nueva Vida Comunidad Cristiana, Valley Church and Barre EFC each have exciting faith stories to tell. And each church would point to solid biblical teaching that was deeply ingrained even before fall 2008.
For more than a year, Pastor Quintin Stieff and other leaders at Valley Church had been planning a churchwide series on “The Road to Financial Freedom” (based on Crown Financial Ministries, www.crown.org). It included sermons, as well as additional teaching for adults, youth and children, and it launched in September 2008.
“After this series, and over the next several months,” Quintin adds, “we offered all-day seminars, as well as small groups on financial planning, biblical stewardship and more.”
Nueva Vida Comunidad Cristiana also incorporates materials from Crown Financial Ministries. And every November for the last four years, Alex Rivero has preached a series on tithing and offering and giving God what He deserves. “I’m very strong in my messages,” he says. “I tell them in their face that if they don’t give their tithe, they are robbers; they are stealing from God and God won’t bless them.
“As part of our Thanksgiving celebration each year, we also seek God for what He would have each person give the following year (above and beyond their tithe). We call this a faith promise. It is up to God to provide the means; we must be faithful to obey what He has laid on our hearts to give.
“Recently, a guy from our church came to me and said, ‘Pastor, I’m struggling.’ His painting business was doing poorly and he was in debt.
“My first question in this situation always is, 'Are you tithing?' Normally, the answer is no, so I say, ‘That’s the answer, let’s work on that.’
“A week later, this guy came back to me and said, ‘I’m going to give God 5 percent.’
“I said, ‘OK, try God.’
“A few weeks later he returned and said, ‘I have to ask forgiveness because I only gave God 5 percent. Work has been so crazy that I’ve had to hire somebody to help me. I want to give 10 percent now and start the faith promise.’
“Then he added, ‘This is something I never expected. It’s like magic with God.’”
Magic? Perhaps not. In Alex’s words: “I like to say we’re doing God’s Math, not American Crisis Math.”
Preaching on “God’s Math” can indeed be revolutionary, as Neal Laybourne in Vermont has also discovered. Every other year he preaches a three-part stewardship series: contentment, credit-card debt and giving. “When I touch on giving,” he says, “I literally take away the offering box so that nobody can give that week; I want them to listen.
“Two years ago, after my sermon on debt, people had an almost holy terror about their credit-card debt. I have never seen that kind of response. So we started taking steps, making major changes and seeing victory.”
Neal can cite examples of church members who are still struggling now but would have been absolutely buried by their debt if the economy had tumbled two years earlier.
Looking outward
Even as Evangelical Free Churches across the country are taking major steps to freeze budgets and make every cut possible in order to retain staff, the churches that are experiencing the greatest joy of God’s economy are those that are continuing to give.
Nueva Vida Comunidad Cristiana supports two missionaries in Central America completely by its faith promises. “If I keep them thinking of God and the people who have less than us,” Alex Rivero says about his church family, “then we’re grateful, and because we’re grateful we keep working on the kingdom.”
Barre EFC has increased its giving to missions — through special offerings — even when every other part of the budget is frozen. “There is a generousness for the rest of the world and others that is good for our church,” says Neal Laybourne.
“I also preach a lot on the millennium,” he adds. “To me, [thinking about] the millennium is the No. 1 way to break the idea of materialism. That God has set up 1,000 years on a renewed earth reminds us that paradise is not for now; it’s for the 1,000 years. Now is our time for mission.”
Valley Church in Iowa saw people donate $7,000 to its benevolence fund during one service, and the church has continued to be involved in both local and international missions — including helping the same ministry in India that Barre EFC supports.
Quintin believes in living by Proverbs 11:24,25: “One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.”
“It goes against human nature to say, ‘I will give away and somehow be better off,’” Quintin explains. “That doesn’t make sense from a human standpoint. But God promises, ‘I will take care of you if you don’t just hoard it for yourself.’”
God’s math
Clearly, operating according to God’s economy doesn’t make sense. At first. But it makes all the sense in the world to these and other EFCA congregations who are putting God to the test in a bumpy economy.
“I’ve told our people,” Neal Laybourne says, “that [as Christians] we’re always called to a countercultural action. If somebody offends us we forgive; if someone shows hatred we show love.
“In today’s economy, the countercultural activity has to be giving. Not hoarding.”
