There was much money!

So it was, at that time, when the chest was brought to the king's official by the hand of the Levites, and when they saw that there was much money, that the king's scribe and the high priest's officer came and emptied the chest, and took it and returned it to its place. Thus they did day by day, and gathered money in abundance. – 2 Chronicles 24v11

Had an interesting day yesterday which really fits in to this passage. The setting is this. Once again work need to be done, this time to rebuild the Temple which had fallen into disrepair. When the need became known the people gave in abundance and money was ‘gathered in abundance.’ Somehow the people came up with plenty of money to do God’s work. It seems like very time work needed to done there was plenty of money to do it.

So let’s get back to what happened yesterday. I saw a comment on Facebook about how it is now taking missionaries an average of five years to raise their support and get to the field. The poster was properly lamenting the fact that people just are not giving to missions and the spread of the gospel.

As a result of that post and my response about people being too obsessed with their stuff to give, a friend recommended a book called ‘Radical.’ It is written by David Platt. I started it yesterday and his contention is that the church has it all wrong. Pratt contends that the church, especially the American church, is so busy with building elaborate buildings and running expensive programmes that they no longer even vaguely resemble the church in the New Testament.

I think back to some of the amazing church buildings I have been in. Everything is top notch and obviously very expensive. Everything seemingly has to be elaborate and impressive. They are millions of euro worth of the expensive cars in the car park. People have more stuff than they can possibly ever use.

In many cases the church has swallowed the world’s philosophy that success means you have the biggest and best of everything.

And yet it takes a missionary family five years to get the field. There are lighting fixtures that could pay for years of a missionary’s support. There are bathroom fixtures that could buy months of groceries for the poor and needy. Instead of settling for simple and satisfactory facilities that would do the job, we let missionaries struggle and the needy starve.

I contend that in many cases there is money in abundance. The problem is that it is misdirected.

Each of us, this missionary pastor included, needs to examine what we are doing with our resources, especially in these days of financial difficulties.