I was thinking today about Paul who chose not to draw a wage from the people he was doing misson amongst so that no one could ever say he was in it just for the money.
That is some of what I feel. I would hate for people to become Christians only to discover that they are expected to then give money to pay me… ‘Ah… you led me to Christ so you could pay the bills?’…
I would still be committed to challenging people to be generous with their money and I sense if its not coming to me then I may have a heap more leverage in that area. I actually feel very passionate about the need for Christians to be much more generous than we are.
I would have no qualms about receiving support from mature Christians in the team or long term churchies who have been in that system, but with so much suspicion out there about churches and money I would prefer not to recieve money from new followers until they see it as an issue.
If that is the case then it means doing some support raising. As I thought this thru today it is feeling more and more like the way I’d like to go.
There is the question of how it is structured – is it an informal thing where people just slip us a few dollars each month or do we need a more formal system? Do we need an ‘award system’?…
Sounds complicated!