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As much as I have tried to ignore money, it influences everything. When I have enough, my life feels like a crisp autumn day filled with sunshine. When I lack money, it feels like I’m hit by a cold front hammering down from Canada’s Hudson Bay.
For most of my twenty-two years in ministry, my personal finances have been difficult, sometimes desperately so. In my first year as pastor in Chicago, my income was around $14,000. Over the next eight years the church gradually increased my salary. When I left it was around $25,000. Throughout this time my wife did not work.
Our possessions reflected our situation. In Chicago we drove a 1974 rusting Chevy Malibu. The rubber door seals had decayed, and when it rained, several inches of water collected in the floor well of the rear seats. In the trunk I stuffed newspapers in the rusted-out tire wells to keep water and debris out.
We lived in a second-floor, two-bedroom apartment. When the wind blew from the south, the astringent fumes from one factory were nigh to unbearable. The building’s old windows rattled loosely in a winter breeze, and the drafts were terrible. I became proficient at catching mice (for bait use peanut butter, not cheese), adding to my many pastoral hats that of the trapper. I felt locked in by our penury. We never had any savings, and it was all we could do to keep up with quarterly tax payments.
When we moved to Arlington Heights, a western suburb of Chicago, I received roughly the same salary but now lived in an area with a higher cost of living. On one occasion after our annual church business meeting, in which expenses including my salary were reported, a church member said to me, “I didn’t know it was possible to live in this area on less than $30,000 a year. How do you do it?”
Not very well.
Nothing has made ministry harder for me than financial pressure. Nothing has done more to give me the feeling I cannot go on. I recall a few times of such despair and desperation that despite my love for pastoral ministry, I was willing to do any kind of work for a while, just to pay my bills and be out from under the pressure. One time, against my convictions, I even fleetingly thought about buying a lottery ticket.
As I see it, though, my financial woes have not resulted primarily from a slim salary. Rather, my financial winters have been my responsibility. They come from two sources: my personal weaknesses and my personal convictions.
Anti-control freak
We have done a few things right with our money. We have been good givers, and we have largely avoided debt.
I learned both virtues in my home church. My pastor gave unselfishly, and he taught us to do the same. But the church also constructed a new building that soared over budget, and for the next decade and more the resulting debt was a galactic black hole that consumed time, attention, energy, pastors, money—seemingly everything. That experience has defined my attitude toward debt. Even with serious needs my family and I have normally done without rather than charge it, and that has been our financial salvation.
My weakness, however, is a failure to budget. Several times I have worked up a budget plan, but it has always broken down at the point of recording expenditures. So for twenty-two years we have followed the cash flow method of budgeting: buy only what we need, and when the cash stops flowing, we stop buying.
Realizing that I can live within our means if I work hard at it gives me hope.
That method has one huge drawback. It fails to prepare for large expenditures, emergency or nonemergency. Consequently we have had scarce wardrobes, no savings, no home of our own, a thirteen-year-old car, and a host of ancient appliances (I have repaired the portable dishwasher we bought a year after marriage so often it looks as though it tumbled down a mountain). Emergencies have been just that.
For the longest time, I rationalized we did not budget because we had no discretionary funds. Every expense was a need, not a want. But as our income has inched up over the years, we still have not successfully developed a budget. The cause must lie elsewhere.
The true culprit is I do not like to organize and control things or people. Administration keeps me from what I love. I am an idea person, a word person, a thinker more than a doer. I constantly analyze, question, read, explain, and try to understand. Thus I love to organize ideas, but not things like money or my files. Furthermore, I love to seek the Lord’s face in the spiritual disciplines. I have to force myself to end my time of Bible reading and prayer. Gradually I have learned to administrate and organize out of necessity and a desire to be a faithful steward, but I usually do the bare minimum.
Two financial myths
In junior high I walked a half mile to school. During winter that took a toll on my hands: they became severely chapped and would crack and bleed. My mother pleaded with me to use lotion, but despite my pain I largely ignored her and my hands. After all, in a few months spring would come, and they would get better.
For my first five or so years in ministry, I had a similarly childlike approach to my personal finances. I simply ignored the financial pain and bleeding as much as possible and kept my eyes on ministry. Two myths encouraged me to do so:
We cannot live on what we make. This perhaps was the most destructive myth, for it caused me to give up hope of gradually working toward financial strength through sound financial principles. Instead I put all my hope in God miraculously turning our circumstances from night to day. Of course he can do that, but normally he has another agenda. He wants to mold me through the struggle to gain virtues like self-control, wisdom, planning.
The truth is, I can live within my means whatever my income level. By the standards I set and the choices I make, I determine many of my “needs.” From cars to food, I often assume I must have a certain level of quality or comfort that has little to do with true needs. I sometimes wonder what Elijah or Paul or Christian workers in China would think of my “lean” living. The realization that I can live within our means if I work hard at it gives me hope and strength.
Ministers are underpaid. That depends on my measuring stick. I can use a human standard and say pastors should earn what middle-class people make, but where do I find that in Scripture? Further, recent research shows the trend is toward better pay for pastors. The myth that all pastors are underpaid helped me feel sorry for myself and occasionally resentful toward church people, perhaps even toward the Lord. Instead of working hard to live decently on what we had, perhaps I wanted to suffer in order to spite them. Martyrdom can be great revenge.
I finally decided that while personal financial management took me away from things I considered more spiritual, God must want me to do it; despite our faithful tithing he did not unleash a flood of money to wash away our problems. We have had to learn how to manage things. God does provide in extraordinary ways at times, but usually he wants to work through my wisdom and hard work.
That lesson was reinforced by what I saw in Genesis 39 about Joseph, whom God singularly blessed: he was a crack manager. God blessed everything Joseph touched, both apart from him and through him. As Jesus taught, the person who is faithful with a few things will be given more. It seems God objects to pouring water into a bucket with holes in it.
I have read the literature that says we need to major in our strengths. If we put too much time into our weaknesses, so the logic goes, we only dissipate our strengths. I have taken consolation from that idea, but I have also taken it too far. It can help me rationalize a refusal to grow in the Lord. Even though I stretch a large sail to the wind, if the hull has a gaping hole in it, the boat sinks. If I lack helpers around me to whom I can delegate what I do poorly, I must have minimum competence in my weaknesses to make the most of my strengths.
Therefore how I handle my money is spiritual. Money management can lead to spiritual growth. God wants me involved.
Guided by convictions
Mixed with my weaknesses, several key convictions have guided my financial habits. Some I held simplistically; I have had to nuance them because they helped me rationalize my weaknesses. Others were sound, but I did not anticipate their real-world repercussions.
My wife should not work outside the home. Nancy bore four boys over thirteen years, and we wanted her to raise them. At first that was our conviction based on Scripture; then it was simply our preference. In an economy geared toward two-income families, our choice obviously gave us smaller margins to work with.
I would love to say that God will so reward parents when the mother stays home, that they will do as well as if she worked, but that has not been our experience. When our youngest son went to school a few years ago, Nancy started working part-time, and it has helped us significantly. Certainly our boys are better off for our decision that Nancy stay home, and I am glad she did. What I should have known, however, is the repeated message of Scripture that convictions often entail sacrifice.
Money should never determine where I minister. I want to follow God’s call, whatever the size of the church and salary. Ministry is not a climb up the career-and-paycheck ladder. That attitude, however, may have kept me from making my true needs known to the church leaders who decided my compensation. Over the years I have learned what I hope is a healthy mixture between faith and realism. I need to be willing to have faith when necessary, but I also need to communicate my needs and then prayerfully leave the decision with the Lord and the decision makers.
When I discussed with church leaders the possibility of coming to my current position, for example, I felt strongly that God had directed me to this church. Nevertheless I determined to tell the leaders what I needed, not just to survive, but to live in a way my family would experience only normal financial pressure. To me that amount sounded exorbitant, but I felt it was the right thing to do. As it turned out, my salary request exceeded by about 50 percent what they had planned to pay, but they hardly blinked, accepting my request without dissent. If I had asked for less, I would have gotten it and would now be living with the repercussions.
If I seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness, I will not have to concern myself with money. That, of course, is not exactly what Jesus said. He never suggests I am a passive recipient in the process of God’s provision. Rather the weight of Scripture shows that God normally uses me in the process, and that means I will have to give money serious attention.
Occasionally that attention involved me in decisions that felt self-serving. At our first church in Chicago, after a poor offering I sometimes had to decide between the church paying me or the church utilities. I had heard other pastors say that under such circumstances, pay the church bills first. After trying that, I finally decided it did the church no good to grind me and my family into the financial dust, thus forcing us sooner or later to find another church. The church had a responsibility to pay the worker his due. So I did that, and the church utilities always found a way of getting paid as well. When I made myself the fall guy for church problems, I stood in the way of God’s promise.
Money is hazardous material. More often than not, the New Testament warns of the spiritual dangers of money. For that reason, outside of paying my current bills I have never had a desire to pile up money.
Still, deep in the catacombs of my heart I think some other motivation may be at work. I have never owned a home and currently rent a three-bedroom duplex, though we could have purchased it if we had really wanted to do so. The truth is I feel more spiritual when I am relatively “poor,” and that’s a sign of some sort of distortion in my spirituality. Am I trying to impress God or earn his favor by doing without?
In ministry I must be willing to suffer for Christ. I have, and I have not always liked it. In general, though, I have withstood hardship stoically and felt honored to do without for Christ’s sake. That blinded me to what hardship did to my family. I thought they should be just as happy to endure hardship as I was. But we were in a place that I chose, not they. The person who chooses has a much easier time of it than the ones who are forced into it.
I learned that the hard way. On one occasion, my teenage son and I began a heated argument, unusual for us, and he said to me, “What kind of a man are you? You can’t even provide for your family!”
That got my attention. Although the rest of the world judges a man by how much money he makes, in my naivete it had never occurred to me that someone in my family would do the same.
Nevertheless, money was not the real problem, for leanness does not in itself cause resentment. I simply did not do enough of the fun things that were within our means to make up for the hardship. I could have taken my family to the park and enjoyed more family time than I did. But I was focused on the church, loved to work, and was content. Having fun has not been one of my higher priorities. In addition I may have been guilty of poormouthing, too often saying no to something the kids wanted with the reason being a lack of funds.
Courage for the Promised Land
I have made many mistakes for which I will have to deal with the consequences for some time to come. Yet, despite all this, God has shown his grace in our finances. He has used finances like a spiritual ballast in my life, a heavy weight that stabilized me by forcing me to deal with distortions in my thinking. God has met our needs without fail and blessed us with excellent health. In our financially vulnerable state, he has protected us from the large financial crises that would have created a hole from which we could not climb out. My oldest sons, now in college, are extremely hard-working and self-reliant. Through our times of need, I have learned to pray more effectively and gained faith from how I have seen God provide. I have empathy for others in need.
And finally, my wife and I are actually working toward getting on a budget. We have started by recording expenditures for six “critical control zones,” like groceries, on accounting paper taped right in the checkbook. When we get the recording habit down, we plan to set monthly amounts for each category of spending and then stay within the limits. I think this will work!
One north star by which I have navigated throughout has been the experience of Abraham and Isaac. Genesis 12 says God appeared to Abraham, commanded him to move to the land of Canaan, and gave extravagant promises. Abraham obeyed, endured the hardship of moving hundreds of miles, and when he came to the place he was specifically told to go, the land of promise—the end of the rainbow—he found something unexpected: famine.
That was hard not only on Abraham but the hundreds who lived with him. Imagine hearing the children in his camp crying out for more food and water. Imagine facing the questions and doubts of Sarah, Lot, and others in his company. The famine was so severe Abraham felt he must move south to Egypt to survive.
Isaac, too, experienced famine in the Promised Land, according to Genesis 26. Like his father, Isaac considered moving to Egypt, but God appeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you.” In faith and obedience, Isaac stayed put. Eventually God blessed him for it, giving him a hundredfold harvest from the seed he planted.
I have received that as a promise and a paradigm for my life. For a time, the Promised Land can be a hostile place. But sooner or later, if I persevere, God will always fulfill his purpose for me and bring about a great harvest of the sort he desires.
The place to which God calls me is not easy to possess, especially in the initial stages. It takes time (hundreds of years for Abraham and his descendants). It takes courage and faith (too often I have wanted a situation that requires no faith). It takes a willingness to endure famine and live in tents like a nomad. But I believe the glory that will eventually be revealed in this life and immeasurably more in the age to come will make this hardship seem trifling by comparison. The Promised Land may at times be hostile, but it is my spiritual home.
This article was excerpted from Pastoral Grit: The Strength to Stand and to Stay, the second volume in Leadership’s “Pastor’s Soul” book series. To enroll in this series, call toll-free, 800-806-7796, and mention offer E8A28. If you like the book, pay just $14.95; you’ll then receive the next quarterly volume, and you may cancel at any time.
Craig Brian Larson is pastor of Lake Shore Assembly of God in Chicago, Illinois.
Copyright © 1998 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us.
