Church and Money

”It’s all about money!”

This is what we hear the critics say, while pointing at the large amounts of money collected by Christian ministries today.

”No, it’s not true”, we answer, believing to have a better understanding. ”It’s all about Jesus and the Good News and about saving people for eternity. It’s about mission. Of course, this costs money. The more money we give, the more people we can reach.”

In order to find out if this is true, let’s look at some statistics. How is the money spent and what is being accomplished?

According to investigations from 2015, www.thetravelingteam.org, all church members around the globe gave in one year on average 1,7% of their income to churches. 2,9% of this money was used for mission inside their own countries and 0,3% for mission in unreached, non-christian countries.

However, the largest part, 96,8%, was used for building the local church, that is, went mainly to salaries and buildings.

In contrast, we are witnessing Christian movements in the third world, and not only there, with an unparallelled growth in history, yet, with very limited financial resources. These are grass-root movements, carried by the believers and their families, many of them poor.

Moreover, some of these fast growing movements are operating under extremely difficult circumstances and even suffering persecution, like in China, South-Asia, and the Middle East. According to Open Doors every month hundreds of believers are killed because of their faith.

Nevertheless this amazing growth!

It’s easy to think that we could accomplish so much more for the Lord, if we just had more money and could give more.

Is that so?