Jesus Diaries - The Poor Little Rich Church Series

ILLUS: My brother-in-law is a investment consultant and I once commented that it would be nice to win a million dollars through Reader’s Digest or some similar contest. He guffawed and said “Oh, a million dollars isn’t so much.” I replied: “Well, maybe not, but I’d like a chance to find out how little it is!”

Likewise, almost any church could use a few extra dollars. There’s office equipment to buy. Buildings to maintain. More staff they’d like to have. AND it would be so great to have a never ending flow of cash. THAT WAY, a church could do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted to.

How many of you would like to have this church so rich we could afford build our new sanctuary tomorrow and not have to worry about having a special offering every month? (Many raised their hands.)

IV. But it’s possible for a church to be TOO rich. To have too much money.

ILLUS: I remember hearing the true story of a church that was willed several oil wells by a wealthy member. The annual income from these wells was significant and the church board met to discuss what to do with the money. And they got into arguments over how to spend the money. Some argued they should donate it all to missions. Some vigorously opted for building improvements. Still others thought it should go for additional staff and staff salaries. The Board meeting became so heated that the congregation literally split apart… and they eventually went to court and spent a number of years arguing over who had the right to decide what was done with the money.

ILLUS: But even when a church agrees on what to do with riches – too much money can destroy something inside of them. When I was starting out in ministry, I heard about a sister church that had a building fund of $40,000. It wasn’t that they needed - or even intended - to build. The building fund was their for any improvements they had to do to the building. AND whenever they had to use that money – they scurried around until they had built the fund back up to its $40,000 level.

Why would that church do that? Why were they so concerned about topping that fund off when it was used for improvements? Because they had their eyes too much on the money and not enough on God. They had learned to trust their bank account rather than God.

As far as I know that church taught sound doctrine. People became Christians every year there. As far as I know there was no sexual immorality. BUT they had gotten their eyes so fixed on what they could do that they took their eyes off of what God could do.

That kind of an attitude has always concerned God.

ILLUS: In the book of Judges there is a story of about a man named Gideon. For a number of years, the Israelites had been oppressed by the Midianites (because of Israel’s disobedient attitudes), but now God was calling for man to rise up and throw off the yoke of this nation. God called Gideon to raise an army to fight the oppressing nation.

However, once the Midianites heard that Gideon was raising an army: "The Midianites, the Amalekites and all the other eastern peoples had settled in the valley, thick as locusts. Their camels could no more be counted than the sand on the seashore." Judges 7:12