Why Does the Preacher Talk So Much About Money?

Word has reached me yet again: “Clay talks about money too much in his sermons.”  I am sure other preachers face the same criticism.  Let me assure you, none of us went to seminary to become experts in money messages.   

I do know there are some preachers who go past what is reasonable.  Let the preacher find out someone in his congregation has won the lottery, and I promise you will have an eight-week series on giving.  Some churches give the preacher a percentage of the offering.  You better believe he is going to preach about stewardship at least once a month. 

Yes, I have seen the stories about TV evangelists who have private jets.  I have a private eight-year-old pickup truck.  Some of the brothers and sisters of TV fame do live in very nice homes.  They often say they were able to purchase their nice house not with the money the church paid them but with book contract money.  May God grant that my books sell like theirs. 

Most of the pastors I know are not overpaid but underpaid.  After four years of college and a couple of years of graduate work, they often work for salaries less than a starting teacher (and yes, I think teachers are underpaid, too).  The reality is the pastor’s salary is a small percentage of the overall church budget.  The money the church receives goes to pay other staff members, building upkeep, Bible Study supplies, and taking care of the poor.  No one explains this to you when you say you feel called to the ministry. 

My first church had a budget of about $42,000.  We had twenty-six people.  About half were kids and students.  That left thirteen to fifteen adults to carry the financial load.  We had no professionals, no rich people.  The church was a gathering of hardworking, blue-collar folks.  But they gave, and we did church.  I never preached on money once. 

In my second church, I should have preached on money more.  We had people who had means, but every Sunday was questionable about whether we hit our offering goal.  Heaven forbid that someone give up their Kentucky Basketball tickets so they could tithe.  My third church was constantly broke – and I mean, constantly.  Most people were retired.  I had to preach on giving, or I wouldn’t get paid. 

When the church I currently serve outgrew their building, I realized I would have to get comfortable preaching on giving.  It takes money to do ministry.  It takes sacrificial giving to bring vision to life.  I don’t know that I am good at motivating people to be generous, but I know some very generous people stepped up to share resources God placed in their hands.  Faithful givers keep stepping up and help our church do things for Jesus in our community and all over the world. 

But let me tell you the real reason your preacher preaches about money:  Jesus did.  Jesus talked most about life in the Kingdom, followed by salvation.  Money and Hell are the next two most frequent topics of his teaching. 

Jesus actually told us why it was so important to talk about money: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  Your treasure (literally, “your stuff”) says a lot about what is most important to you.  Your allocation of your money is like soul blood pressure.  When you measure what you have against what you give, it tells a truth about your soul you may not want to hear.  You may drop a twenty in an offering plate and feel generous, but what does it say to you that an eighty-five-year-old woman gives ten percent of her Social Security check?   

A story with a riddle: When is $40 more than $400?  During the offering.  If the boss is pulling in $6,000 a week and he puts in $400 a week, he is giving about 6.6% of his income.  If his secretary is giving $40 out of her pre-tax income of $400 a week – well, you do the math.   She is giving 10%.  What does the boss’s giving say about his heart?  What does the secretary’s giving say about her heart?  More important is whose heart would you rather have? 

Maybe the reason the preacher preaches so much about money is he knows the church needs to pay its bills.  Or maybe the preacher is concerned about your heart.

Which Man Do You Want to Be?

I’ve known some great givers in my life.  I can’t tell about some of them because they are still living.  They would be embarrassed if I called them by name.  God blessed them, and they blessed others by their generosity.   But I would like to tell you about a great giver and a man who could have been a great giver.

My stepfather, Lawrence, was a great giver.  Lawrence came into my life when I was eight.   He married my mother, who had been widowed.  I knew Lawrence was generous when he bought me milkshakes that my mother wouldn’t allow me to have, mostly because she couldn’t afford them. 

I remember every Sunday Lawrence writing out a tithe check.  This was a step of faith because we only got about 8 checks a year from selling oranges and cattle.  Yet, Lawrence trusted that God would provide.  In our home church, when the preacher needed a new car, Lawrence would talk to a couple of other church members, they would come up with the money, and the preacher would get a new car.  The preacher also got a side of beef and a new suit every year for Christmas. 

But Lawrence was not generous with just money.  When our cousin Willard was done picking watermelons from his field (usually about 200 acres – which is a big field!), Lawrence would take me in the truck and say, “I hate to see those watermelons go to waste.  Let’s go get a couple.”  A “couple of watermelons” would turn into 77 piled on the back of a Ford pick-up.  We would stop at every widow’s house in our community of Lemon Grove and drop off four or five melons. 

Lawrence would see young ladies come to church dressed in old clothes, and he would arrange for them to shop at the Red Apple.  The girls never knew where their new clothes came from.  Lawrence saw needs, and he wanted to meet them because he knew God had blessed him.  He was like a mainline pipe that brought resources to other pipes so God’s work could be done.

I knew another man who could have been a great giver.  His genius was making money.  He started with next to nothing and built a business empire.  But there was still an emptiness in his life that his wealth couldn’t fill. 

God had begun to work in his life, and he had returned to the faith of his childhood.  He made the decision to join our church and then offered to take me to lunch.   Over lunch, he asked me about tithing.  I explained it the best I could.  Tithing, I told him, was giving 10% of your income to God.  Doing this simple spiritual discipline showed you put God first in all areas.  You were using what he had given to you to bless others.

Knowing his wealth, I told him that God had probably blessed him with all his resources so he could begin to know the joy of giving.  There were people whose lives would be forever changed by his generosity.  He looked uncomfortable and changed the subject.

A few months later, the rich old man suffered a stroke and passed away.  When he died, he had given nothing to God’s church, to the work of Jesus.  Whenever I think about that man, it breaks my heart.  He died with his fortune intact and his gift of giving unused.  Sometimes when I am at the cemetery doing a funeral, I walk past his grave.  “What a waste,” I think.  He could have done so much for so many. 

Which man do you want to be?