The tax circut is way too wasteful. Very good points.
On the other note though, can I ask how you proved that you can ask God what to do with the money? I believe in prayer, and I believe some people have gotten specific answers to their prayers and knew it was from God. But it also seems like it's either a rare thing, or people just don't know how to do it and listen for a response. (Myself included.). So I was thinking if you could prove it to a church board, then it can also be explained and tried by a lot more of us. With or without being part of how a church makes it's decisions on money.
...For the record I really do want to know. I'm not asking for proof to justify it. I'm asking for it because proof sounds like a very strong word choice and hopefully means it's do-able and can be explained so anyone (like me) can do it. (Or even encourage more churches to do it too.)
You know, what I actually said was "...after proving them wrong...". I kind of use that as a figure of speech to convey that in my mind I proved them wrong, but in reality while it was proven to several other people who saw what happened, I guess I wasn't able to actually prove it to the board because they never changed. I feel that was at least partly because they turned a blind eye to God's power, lead by the pastor who said prayer doesn't work. It's notable that this same pastor recently announced the he is in reality an atheist and never had any true faith in God!
I hope other members will tolerate me for this post, because this goes off topic of taxing the church, but I want to explain to you (and anyone else who is curious) what happened. Perhaps those who aren't interested can just indulge me by scrolling past?
This was the situation; The church had a thriving youth ministry that had begun to fall apart because of a change in leadership. The youth leader position had been a paid position, but the new leader had been told that the church was struggling for money and would not be able to pay until the financial situation improved. So the new leader took the position on a volunteer basis on that promise. The problem was that over the next two years even though a salary was written into the budget for a paid youth worker, the financial situation hadn't improved and this was one of the budget items the board chose not to pay since the money wasn't there. The new leader was having to work 2 other jobs as well as run the youth ministry, which was not working out. The youth ministry was suffering badly as a result.
I was on the board of deacons when it was time to write up the new budget, and the new proposed budget that was passed out for approval had now
completely eliminated the youth workers salary. They weren't even going to hope for it anymore! I pointed out that (as I had been telling them for quite some time) that this was an important ministry of the church that deserved to not be ignored, and that removing this salary from the budget sends a message that they no longer supported it. I also contrasted this with the fact that they were paying the same salary for a janitor (who in contrast to the youth worker was an outside employee, not even someone who attended any church, and did nothing directly to edify people), which showed the money was actually available but paying someone to clean their buildings was simply a higher priority to them than was the spiritual welbeing of their teenagers. (Please, don't anyone use this as a springboard to go into the pros and cons of church youth ministry. My post here is already off topic. If you want to do that, please start another thread in an appropriate section.) I recommended instead of eliminating the youth worker salary that they find volunteers from the congregation to clean the buildings and use the money from the janitor's salary to pay the youth workers salary instead. (In fact I was anticipating, and knew the youth leader would approve, of the cleaning of the buildings becoming a service project of the youth group.) I felt this was a more appropriate use of the money, but not a single person wanted anything to do with that idea.
Now I had just finished leading a series for the church adults on the power of prayer that was based on Jim Cymbala's experiences in building the Brooklyn Tabernacle, which was full of examples of God suddenly providing money for ministry needs when Jim and his leadership had no finances available but they still trusted Him to provide if the particular thing was indeed what He wanted. He showed in his examples how if God wants the church to do a particular thing, He will provide whatever is needed, even if the need is large amounts of money. Sadly not a single board member put out any effort to attend the series I taught, but I thought I at least had an ally in the pastor because he was the one that requested I teach the series.
So I proposed to the board to do this: Let's not fire the janitor. He's done a good job and deserves to keep his wages. Let's instead leave the youth worker's salary in the budget as well, and lets all sincerely pray, asking God to provide the money if indeed He wants this type of ministry and wants it run this way. That's when the pastor looked me straight in the eye and told me in front of the entire board that praying usually doesn't work! I was so shocked I was at a loss for words! All I could think to say was "I'm going to pray that God provides this money anyway". The board simply went on to discuss other items and had nothing more to say on the issue. (And the line item for the salary was put back in as a compromise to me, but the amount was set to $0. A lot of faith that shows, right? It was just an attempt to shut me up because they didn't like anyone rocking their boat.)
So what happened? Up until that time the offerings coming in had only been enough to cover the expenses they needed to pay each week, hardly ever an extra penny. Usually we were short and had to let some expenses wait. The very next Sunday the offering increased. We got enough money to pay all of that weeks bills plus any that were overdue. In addition we got extra money. How much extra? The amount, almost to the penny, that would have been the youth worker's salary for that week. What happened the next week? The same thing. Enough money came it to cover all bills with an extra amount to cover what would have been the youth worker's salary for another week. This happened on average
every Sunday after I started asking God to provide the funds if it was his will to fund this ministry in this way. If one Sunday was a little short, another would be a little over until it added up to the exact amount needed, This happened every Sunday... FOR THE NEXT TWO YEARS!
The board never acknowledged that this was God's doing at all. They were happy to get the money and have the stress of figuring out which bills to pay and which to let go, but they never acknowledged it was God's doing in order to fund the youth ministry. The congregation also grew in size. (This was eventually where the continued additional money came from.) There was no reason for the congregation to be growing. There was no advertising being done, and in fact nothing different at all was being done. Yet for the first time in the history of this church the congregation withing a few months increased from about 50 to over 250 in a typical Sunday morning worship service. That was about all the building could hold! So God was not only providing the money, but the source He was using to do that had the added benefit of bringing more people into fellowship! Isn't God just... just so smart???
But instead of acknowledging God's provision of funding the youth ministry and using it for that... they squirreled all the extra money away in the bank for another two years and, incredibly and inexplicably asked the youth worker to resign and canceled what remnants of the youth program they still had! Then they took all the money God had provided for youth ministry and bought nice new carpeting for the entire church building because... mainly because the pastor didn't like the color of the old carpeting! Yes, it was a bit worn, but still looked fine and was still serviceable maybe with a few repairs here and there. But every time the subject came up, the pastor was constantly talking about how he didn't like the color. So the youth worker salary that God gave them was used to buy carpet.
At that point I changed my prayers and told God that I was disappointed in the way they had handled this and from that point on all I would ask of Him was to do His will in the situation. I would no longer ask Him to provide money, but just to do what He chose to do whatever that might be. By this time they had already lost all of their teenagers. So from that point on the money stopped coming in and all those people who were providing it gradually left until the average attendance was back down to about 50 to 80 people.
Yet, when I pointed any of this out to the board, they just silently ignored me. The pastor, to his credit, did nod his head a few times when I talked to him in private and tried to point this out, as if he understood what I was saying, but yet he refused to come right out and acknowledge it. (A few years later this same pastor admitted he was actually an atheist, never did have faith in God, and admitted he wasn't qualified to be a pastor. He was immediately fired.)
So as you can see, I never really did prove anything to the boards. Some individuals, especially some of the teens parents, understood. But the boards as a whole, including the pastor, lead deacon and lead elder all refused to see God's working and continually refused to put their faith in Him. So nothing was ever proven to them as a whole. Maybe to one or two of them, but not as a group.
