Again, as we look at the problems we seek to address through our ministry efforts, the answer is not more cash. The answer is Christ. Unless we first understand and believe that foundational truth, all our ministry efforts will prove to be in vain regardless of how much cash we inject into the mix.
While cash is not the answer, it does play a role (and a significant one at that).
When looking at the role of cash, it can be helpful to look at it from a couple of different vantage points—the viewpoint of the donor and the viewpoint of the fundraiser.
When looking from the viewpoint of the donor, it’s important to start with recognizing the role of all Christians as disciple-makers. Christ has called us to go into all the world and make disciples. While we’re called to make disciples, it’s easy to see that many of us have been discipled by our culture.
Here in the West, we recognize our consumerist culture. Based on this world’s influence, we’ve often found ourselves approaching the Scriptures or our churches as consumers rather than disciples. We focus on the parts of Scripture we like or agree with. We ignore or change portions of Scripture we don’t. As disciples of consumerism our relationship with cash can often serve as the frontlines of the war the world is waging for our allegiance and affections.
So many of us are like the rich, young ruler or the seed that fell among the thistles in Scripture. We find that our cash can exert a level of control on us that we don’t even realize is there. If left unchecked, that control can choke our impact and limit the testimony of the work God does through us.
In our journey as disciples we need to have a God-honoring relationship with cash. More often than not that involves developing a posture of openhandedness so we can break ourselves from those imperceptible controls that cash would seek to use as a stranglehold in the growth of our faith. In other words, for the donor cash can often serve as the rope being pulled in the tug-of-war battle to determine where the lordship of our life will be held. It’s this posture of surrender that helps us see the Lordship of our life belonging to Christ rather than cash.
For the fundraiser, the role of cash is similar—it reveals the posture of our heart.
This world would love to see us use the same measures of success that we use for a stock portfolio or corporation to judge our ministry efforts. It’s so easy for us to fall into a pattern of believing that if our ministry budgets or our numbers of followers are growing that it’s evidence of our “ministry success.” In John 6, Jesus showed how wrong that way of thinking can be as he seemed to go to great lengths to drive away the masses that were seeking to follow him after the feeding of the 5,000. Jesus was seeking the hearts of his followers rather than the number of his followers.
In Christian ministry we get the privilege of seeing some of the incredible ways in which cash gets utilized. This world would love to use that privilege to distort our understanding of the importance of cash.
Scripture reminds us that “Some put their faith in horses and in chariots, but we will put our faith in the name of the Lord our God” (Psalm 20:7). For the Christian ministry worker, those “horses and chariots” can be some of the tested and proven tools of the fundraising trade. Or perhaps it proves to be even the cash we raise that represents the “horses and chariots.”
