Forgive Us Our Debts

“A fool and his money are soon parted.” But what if the fool happens to be a preacher, a person charged to declare the whole counsel of God? As we know, that counsel includes talking about money, i.e., financial stewardship. But what if the preacher’s budget is so out of whack, his personal debt so great, that he can’t give, much less tithe? What can he tell his church about giving then?

 

The following is one preacher’s journey through the darkness of debt, the joy of deliverance, and the homiletical lessons he learned along the way.

An old joke has the church praying, “Lord, we want our preacher to be poor and humble. You keep him humble. We’ll do the rest!” For years, my wife and I struggled financially. Yet we don’t blame the church for our financial problems. Though we weren’t paid a lot in the beginning, subsequent ministries increased our means. No elder, deacon, or treasurer ever tried to draw our purse strings tighter. They didn’t need to! We did it to ourselves.

Through a combination of poor stewardship and, we must admit, greed, we eventually succeeded in tumbling head over heels into debt. It started with buying gasoline on credit. Later, we bought furniture “90 days same as cash.” Invariably, we’d miss the deadline and wind up paying through the nose. (We paid for years on a single kitchen table!)

Then followed a string of credit cards—a pretty necklace that soon became a millstone around our necks. We chased the American dream, including buying a house we couldn’t afford. At last, we scaled the summit of folly—a double-mortgage. Though my wife was working full-time and I, in addition to preaching, was working part-time, there was too much month left at the end of money. By the time our oldest child entered college, we were in one deep hole.

At this point, giving, to say nothing of tithing, seemed out of the question. At least, that’s how we saw it at the time. Yet I was dogged by guilt. Apart from the issue of faith, apart from the soul-eating dangers of greed, as a preacher I struggled with the practical needs of my church. The church needs money to operate same as every other institution. I knew that people have a tendency to forget, e.g., to take their money with them on vacation and fail to put a make-up amount in the plate on their return. I knew that people need to be reminded to give. Unfortunately, I also knew that I neither practiced nor preached good stewardship.

The solution I hit on at the time was as practical as it was pitiful. Once a year or so, I preached a short series on giving. As I preached these two or three messages, I somehow managed to scrape together—either out of my own pocket or (after drawn-out discussion with my wife) our checkbook—a minimal amount to put in the plate. (I’ll never forget my shame when the treasurer reported that a check had bounced. He didn’t tell the board who’d written it.) Once the series was done, I’d sigh with relief—I’d “fixed” the trouble for another year—and fall back into old habits.