Is “Sell All You Have, Give it to the Poor, and Come and Follow Me” Practical Advice?

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Pastor Foley

I’m highlighting questions and answers from Daniel Threlfall’s recent interview of me which will appear soon on Sharefaith.com. Today Daniel asks me about one of my favorite Scriptures on giving.

Jesus told us to “sell all you have” and give it away. Is that wise? Realistic? Or maybe a bit too radical?

Wisdom personified, yeah. The rich young ruler thinks in terms of his receiving an inheritance—“Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”–and Jesus responds in terms of his becoming the philanthropy of God dispensed to the world in Christ’s name.

As Jesus notes, it is not a one-time act but rather a daily choice one makes. The rich young ruler rightly perceives that this is a threat to his system of personal security which says that he can only care for others once his own well-being is secured.

But in Christ our well-being is never in question. He will always empty himself into us. And the more we become conscious of that deeply, the more we will respond by emptying ourselves into others.

The security comes from Christ’s constant self-emptying into us, not from what we don’t empty into others. We can’t take up a cross and a little bit of self-fulfillment daily. We either have to decide that Christ is going to continue to empty himself into us daily or he’s not.

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Why Should a Christian be Motivated to Give?

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Pastor Foley

Sharefaith‘s Daniel Threlfall asked me great questions about Transformational Giving that will be posted soon in an interview there. Here’s a preview.

Why should a Christian be motivated to give?

Well, let’s start with what shouldn’t motivate them to give.

Self-fulfillment should not motivate them to give. We’re to take up our cross daily and empty ourselves into others the way he empties himself into us. So filling ourselves up through giving—because it makes us feel good or because we like to help people, for example—moves us in entirely the wrong direction. We’ll find ourselves not giving more than giving, because one only needs so much giving or helping in order to feel good enough.

And the desire to change the world should not motivate Christians to give. Jesus has this maddening habit in the Scriptures of calling people to give everything to things that appear to make no earthly difference. “Suppose you have a hundred sheep and you lose one,” says Jesus. “Wouldn’t you abandon the ninety nine and go after the one?” And we want to say, “No! Of course not! You win some sheep and you lose some sheep! That’s the cost of the sheep business!” So churches and Christian NGOs are like that. They win some members and they lose some members with little grief at all.

So there’s only one biblical motivation to give, and that is because we become every more deeply aware that Christ is pouring his whole life into us, and we are filled to overflowing. We pour our/his life into others in order to mirror him into the world. This is our reasonable worship. What we do to others in his name we actually do to him as our worship of him.

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Fundraising Advice for Struggling Churches

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Pastor Foley

From Daniel Threlfall’s upcoming Sharefaith interview. Question’s his, answer’s mine.

We’re a financially struggling church. We hardly have enough money to replace our threadbare carpet, let alone give our money away. Do you have any advice?

I would say you don’t have a carpet challenge or a financial challenge. You have a discipleship challenge. I’ve not yet seen a church where comprehensive Christian discipleship was taught where giving was a problem.

Unfortunately, much contemporary discipleship training can’t figure out how to integrate giving into the training process, so they break it out and teach it separately as “stewardship”. So they run into the same problems I mentioned earlier, and they end up struggling financially like other churches.

So the key is to establish, embrace, and implement a comprehensive program of discipleship that grows Christians to fullness in Christ, where their giving is one part of a much wider pattern of personal involvement they have in the things that God cares about.

Financial gifts are nothing more or less than token and pledge that the Christian will be “all in” with their time and their passion and their participation in a given cause.

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