Now if math was not or is not your favorite subject, be patient. This not only won’t hurt, but will perhaps lead to a breakthrough in visualizing a far healthier church from the individual to the corporate.
To relate one fourth with one twelfth and one twentieth we discover that the lower portions can all be divided by two, hence that is the lowest common denominator.
Let’s look at several easily agreed to signs of health in the church and see if there might be a common denominator to highlight.
• A worshiper wants to leave the church some challenge and encouragement about how the Gospel addresses his or her everyday life.
• A seminary professor wants to ensure that students will graduate with both a personal and a professional understanding of a core area of decision making and leadership.
• A Session member would love to spend time deciding how to encourage members to take on new ministry initiatives without first putting up funding roadblocks.
• A pastor relishes the thought that carefully prepared sermons actually connect the Gospel to where members live day in and day out.
Any idea what the common denominator is? It is a well-developed and healthy theology of money. Each of the items noted above and many others are addressed with meaning and positive results when there is a high comfort level with how we relate to, use, value, invest, and spend money.
Pastors and church members would find stewardship a joy if “meeting the budget” was replaced with “growing generous Christians.” How can that goal be achieved? Rather than the pressure of that single, better-be-a-homerun stewardship sermon in November, how about twenty different sermons during the year applying Scripture to members’ daily economy of buying, selling, and justice issues surrounding the blessings and curses of money?
How great would it be for seminaries to both prepare future church leaders and have the graduates lead others to undergird theological education? Seminary graduates, comfortable with their own theology of money, lead churches to have a healthy relationship with money. Guess what? Those graduates actually become mini-fund raisers for their alma mater!
I have come to a new assessment of how to raise the value of this common denominator. The push for a greater focus on a healthy theology of money needs to begin with anyone who “gets it.” If a member wants his or her pastor to address this more often, ask for it. If a seminarian wants to explore more in depth how the current topic being addressed relates to our daily relationship with money, ask. If a pastor wants to become more comfortable with his or her own use of money and the role it plays in their congregation, create some collegial and safe form of mutual discovery. If a professor wants to enlarge the application of their current topic and make that bridge to money in this century, do it!
When the gospel and its relationship to everyday life is explored and becomes an integrated part of the life of a congregation, more people join that church’s spiritual journey. People are hungry to learn how Scripture can inform everyday life. They sense intuitively that our consumptive society is a vacuum and they are looking for something deep and satisfying. We need to raise up and use that lowest common denominator for its highest purpose.
There is no telling the impact a healthy theology of money would have when given the chance.
Kim Warner is vice president of the Texas Presbyterian Foundation.
