FIGURING OUT A WIN/WIN

The man who came through my door was 50 something. His name was Tony. He was polite. He was looking for gas money. Initially, I decided to buy him $20 in gas. The conversation continued though and I discovered that he worked on air conditioning units. Specifically, he focused on performing annual maintenance of units in hotels. He also worked on residential units. An idea began to form in my mind. I needed my air conditioner cleaned. While I couldn’t loan my friend $60,000 for their business, I could hire a needy guy  for work I needed done. I hired Tony to clean my air conditioning system after calling a reference he provided from a local hotel.
 
Tony offered great service. He diligently cleaned my outdoor unit. Tony inspected my indoor unit, checked all our duct work and the air flow from individual vents. I researched what would be a fair price for his service while he was working. When all was said and done, Tony set a receipt on my breakfast table, stepped away and said, “You write down whatever you think is fair.” I paid for $20 dollars in gas, a gallon of cleaning solution and roughly another $40 dollars in cash. The total was less expensive than most service, but very reasonable pay and Tony walked away with enough extra solution to do a couple of more jobs. I also kicked in some rags to help him out. We both walked away feeling like winners. Best of all Tony walked away as a worker rather than a welfare recipient. Dignity is hard to put a price on.
 

THE LESSONS LEARNED

1. I don’t have 60k to loan, but God puts people on my step that I can help with what I do have.
2. It takes some time and creativity to figure out solutions that help everyone.  You can’t be in a hurry and figure out a solution like Tony and I did. You have to work at it.
3. When there is an exchange for assistance it helps preserve someone’s dignity. I don’t have any problem giving without any strings attached. We do it all of the time. Sometimes though someone needs the gift of work as much as they need the money.
4. Entering into partnerships to help someone yields a very different relationship. Tony and I have a different connection from the people that I have given gas to in the past. I haven’t found words to describe it.
5. I still have a lot to learn about giving.

 
Well, I hope this helps you consider what you have and how you can help someone in need.  Perhaps, you have a skill.  For example, I know a dentist who has had a significant rise in the number of people who need dental work, but can’t pay for it.  He is doing more and more work for free on people.  May be he can’t do everything they need done, but sometimes he can at least get them out of pain.  That’s his gift.  What’s yours?
 

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Hi John.
Last Wednesday I read your post on the Practical Disciple and was inspired to share a story with you. The day before, Tuesday, I was supposed to be at Ferncliff Camp and Conference Center, near Little Rock, AR, on a private planning retreat. However, a saint of the church had passed away the previous Friday, and I was honored to be asked to preside at the funeral on Tuesday morning. Afterward, I went back to the church office to wrap up a few things before heading back to Ferncliff for the rest of the week. While I was there, my secretery ushered in a visitor, ‘Penny’, whom I had met before, and helped with a utility bill. Penny had moved to Arkansas from Atlanta when she needed to be with an ailing parent. Then, she herself had fallen gravely ill, and ended up in a coma for three weeks. While in her coma, she experienced God, and saw and talked with her mother, who had passed away some years before. She woke up and found her family planning her funeral.
 
Tuesday, when she showed up in my office, she handed me a small bag of change and said, ‘This is all I have left for my business, and I need some things to happen today. God told me to sow this somewhere, and I didn’t know where to go, so I came to you, because you didn’t laugh when I told you my story (about being in a coma and experiencing God and her mother). So I need for God to work some things out for me today, I need to know that I’m going the right way with my business, and so I’m doing what God told me to do.’ I took the change, and spent some time talking to Penny. It turns out she had been so involved with organizing and running a local community-wide celebration that she had not been able to devote as much time as she could to her business (a consulting group with three employees that provides assistance with social networking and internet websites). Her water and electricity bills were due within the next few days, and there was no hope of money coming in for at least two weeks.
 
I had been thinking about getting our church more involved with social networking, but had not had the time or energy to devote to it, so this was a God-send for me personally. I called the chair of the committe who manages our publicty budget and got permission to hire Penny’s company for three months. This paid about half of her utility bills. Then, I used some discretionary funds to pay the other half, telling her that I was ‘sowing’ these funds with her, and that if they came back, that would be great, but if they didn’t, I would consider them well spent.
 
Only then did I tell her that I wasn’t supposed to be there that day, that I was only there because someone had a funeral. We were both a little overwhelmed in that moment, both by God’s providence and by the enormity of what we were able to accomplish.
 
I thank God for placing Penny in my life on that day at that time, and I am thankful God helped me to see a creative and useful way to help her and to help our church.
By the way, the change she handed me totalled 192 pennies and about 5 dimes, nickels, and quarters, for a grand total of$2.50. I’m still pondering where to sow this precious gift, but am sure God will tell me where, when the time comes.
God is good!

–

Again, thank you Erin for living faithfully. God bless your ministry and God bless Penny. Erin Potter Kaye is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Camden, Arkansas and I am delighted to have her as my very first guest post.
  

I can understand their frustration. We moved right as the economy shifted a little over 18 months ago. Our house sat on the market for a year and a half as we watched its price drop. We went through either four or five failed contracts because of an inability of our buyers to get financing.

So I am pondering, What can individual Christians and churches do to respond to the economic down turn?

First, I am wondering what christians, particularly christians with wealth, can do about this. Perhaps, it’s time to seriously consider investing directly in the lives of Christian business men and women who are struggling out there. I am wondering how we could match the needs with the resources.

Second, I am wondering if churches with monies invested, shouldn’t be taking a significant chunk of that money and find a family like the one I know and help them succeed at their business rather than help feed and cloth them after it fails.

Third, what can we as churches do to educate people on good stewardship in tough times? What can we do to help families establish budgets and healthy financial practices that get them out of debt?

I suspect that there are a number of churches out there already doing very creative things along those lines. If you are a reader whose church is doing so, please comment and share.

In the meantime, let us prayer for the many people, churches, and businesses that are being radically effected by the economy. Ultimately, our hope and security lies in God. Economies will come and go. God’s goodness and grace is eternal.

Most of us know the story of the prodigal son.  A young man, probably full of late adolescent angst or early twenty know-it-all syndrome, tells his daddy.  ”I can’t wait until your dead to get my money.  Give it to me now.”  Forgive me for the tremendous paraphrasing but you  get the idea.  Dad gives him the money.  The young man then heads out on his own.  He squanders his money and finds himself yearning to go home.  He realizes that even life as a servant at home would be better than the life he has made for himself.  When he comes home his dad is exuberantly overjoyed.  Dad kills the fatted calf and has a big ol’ party much to his other son’s dismay.  The other son feels very slighted.  He has stayed at home and been a good obedient son.  He feels passed over to say the least.  Dad and the good son have a talk and the dad tries to explain his extreme joy.

THE PRODIGAL FATHER

We almost always refer to this as the prodigal son.  The word prodigal according to one online dictionary is defined as:

Carry a one dollar bill in your bill fold with a paper clip on it.  Pray that God will send you the person that needs this one dollar bill.  Then the next time you are approached by someone needing money, trust that this is the person you need to give the bill to and let them have it.  I suspect some of you just raised an eyebrow and within you an objection is arising.  ”If  I give some guy a dollar on the street, how do I know he won’t misuse it for alcohol or drugs?”  You don’t.

I had the same objection until one day I was thinking, “If I give a guy a dollar to go get a meal and he then uses it for alcohol, how is that any different than the many times God has given me things, only to see me turn around and abuse the gift.  Then it came to me.  What I do is different…it is a lot WORSE!  I then realized  that carrying around my little prayed for dollar was going to be an act of faith and trust every time I gave it away.  Giving it away was going to  require me to trust my prayer and act in pure grace.

I have truly valued this practice over the years.   It humbles me each time I pull that dollar out.  I realize how much grace I have received and realize that I struggle to even give someone literally a dollars worth of grace.  I encourage you to try it.  Even if for just one dollar.

Heifer Int. Cow and Child, Rwanda

I mentioned in a recent post that my daughter, Ruth, is going to be raising money to purchase a cow for a needy family via Heifer Project International as a Lenten project. I am really proud of her for taking on something so ambitious. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, February 17th, but she is already up and running.  She actually cleaned someone’s workshop today in exchange for a gift to her project.  She has started delivering collection jars to local businesses and she has setup a website called DifferentTomorrowToday.com. Her site is enabled to take credit card and paypal donations.  Wow!  How inspiring.

Ruth is sixteen and doing this unprompted by anyone. Imagine how different this world would look if we all passionately adopted a single mission like this.  I hope her efforts inspire you to make a difference.  She will be posting her results regularly to her website  if you want to track her progress or are inspired to make a donation you can check it out at DifferentTomorrowToday.com.

Check out my Lenten page if you are looking for ideas.  I will be adding more soon.  Ruth’s project has inspired me to consider creating some adopt a mission suggestions.  One that I am putting together for our church is an “Adopt a Shut-in” project.  I explain more about that in a future post.  Blessing to you.

p.s.  So far Ruth has collected $86.54, including her very first online contribution.  She has pledges for significantly more, but I don’t know how much.  A cow is going to cost $500.  You Go Girl!

Today’s post is a gift to anyone with debt.

Turn a television on, open the paper, or just listen to passing conversations and at some point you will hear people talking about the economy.  The reality of just how messed up the economy is came home to me recently when I visited a friend who was losing her position as a pastor because the church she worked for couldn’t afford to pay her any longer.  Between wealthy members losing their wealth and a massive building debt, tough choices were forced upon this congregation.  Numerous families are also feeling the squeeze.  The December 2008 edition of Harper’s Index revealed these startling statistics: 47% of Americans say they live “paycheck to paycheck”.  21% of these individuals say they make over $100,000 per year.  I don’t know how that statistic hits you, but it is mind numbing and frightening to me.

One of the biggest demons in this whole nasty affair of money is a massive amount of consumer debt.  Debt wreaks havoc on you mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  When you are in debt you fail to give.  You get driven by fear and hard earned dollars that could be used to honor God or compassionately touch the lives of people in need get siphoned away into a nebulous black hole of interest payments.  When you are carrying debt Jesus’ warning in the gospel of Matthew that we cannot serve both God and mammon becomes a harsh and in some ways shameful reality.

So what do we do about it physically?

I think one of the most practical Christian authors out there addressing the situation is Dave Ramsey.  What he has to say works. His book, The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness, is an excellent resource for anyone out there plaque with debt.  I have never had massive debt, but I have had a few times where I needed to aggressively lean on the principles that Dave puts forward to get me back on track financially.  It works so I it is my recommended resource of the month.  For those of you feeling the crunch of the economy and in need of relief of this very real physical and spiritual threat of debt here are a few core components of what Dave recommends.

1)  Stop accumulating debt.  Physically eliminate cards or make them terribly in accessible.  I can’t recall if I read in Dave’s book or where, but I read about one woman who froze her credit card in a block of ice so that she couldn’t impulsively use it.  That may sound wacky, but it’s not as wacky as needlessly spending money you don’t have.

2) Create a budget and live within that budget. If you are not familiar with creating a budget there are numerous resources online that can teach you to do this.

3) Save and set aside a $1000 emergency fund before resolving debt and do it fast. This is often a very difficult concept for people to grasp.  Why would you do this?  What you don’t want to happen is for your debt resolution efforts to be constantly derailed by crisis. Getting out of debt is as much or more mental than mathematical.  You need to create momentum and sustain it. Having an emergency fund allows you to do this.  Getting hit with an emergency like the radiator on your car blowing and finding yourself amassing yet more debt while trying to resolve debt is incredibly disheartening.  It can even halt your efforts entirely.  Being able to cut a check for that blown radiator is the most amazing feeling.  You want to regain a sense of being in control of your finances once again, rather than living at the whim of your circumstances.  An emergency fund does that and is essential.

4)  Eliminate debt using what Dave calls the debt snowball. Pay minimum payments on all of your debts except your smallest.  Apply as much money to resolving that debt as you can.  Once that is resolved you take the money you were paying toward that first debt and apply it on your next debt along with whatever minimum you had been paying.  With each debt resolved you tack on what you have been paying toward the resolution of the next.  You can read more details about the debt snow ball at Dave’s website by clicking here.  I have done this before and there is something very freeing and relieving as your list of debts shrinks.   It is also becomes very empowering to begin making greater and greater payments.  Once again eliminating debt is as much mental as mathematical.

So what do we do about it spiritually?

1) In your budget make room to give to God even as you are resolving debt. This is a very basic application of “first fruits” giving.  As a spiritual and mental discipline consider writing you offering check first each month.  Not only is this a practical application of first fruits but it is a concrete expression of “Seek first the kingdom of God and all of these other things (the basic needs of life) shall be added unto you.”

2) Confess. Some people are in debt because of circumstances outside of their control.  Perhaps, you have been hit with an unforeseen medical emergency or loss of job.  That’s not your fault and you are not guilty in anyway.  So don’t worry about confession.  If however, you have been an irresponsible steward, living outside of your means, then you need have sinned and need to confess.  With out recognition and some true remorse you will likely find yourself back in the same financial messy behaviors again.

3)  Pray to discern need versus desire. I have always had the income I needed to meet my true needs.  When I have had debt it has typically been because I allowed myself to mistake desires for needs.  The desire most frequently mistaken for need is immediate gratification.  Debt is often a result of wanting something now that we could have debt free if we would just save and buy it later.  Learn to discern.  Pray for help in that.

4)  Pray for God to guide you in being a better steward.  The Holy Spirit will illuminate your mind as to what are very good and very bad decisions if you will ask for help and then pay attention.

I hope these suggestions are helpful.  Debt creates a prison of the heart and mind.  It shackle physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual resources that could otherwise be serving God.  If you are in debt I hope you will take some concrete practical steps today to begin escaping that prison.  God’s blessing to you as you do so.