Cash Night

Sunday night was our annual Cash Night on our Pastor Track. (Or should we call it Lack of Cash Night?)

The Scriptures are replete with warnings of the lure of money on the soul, with the stakes even higher for those men who will lead churches and have access to financial gain for doing so. The list of pastors who allowed greed to get its filthy clutches around their throats is awful. We want men leading us who are righteous in their handling of treasure.

And that doesn’t just mean avoiding jail after a visit from the auditors. It means leading their families financially, providing, planning, being responsible, avoiding addictive and wasteful spending. And it also requires a certain tone of generosity with your stuff, which is one of the outgrowths of getting the Gospel.

As you can imagine, this is a really hard session. We present to the others in the Track the exact fiscal state of affairs in our lives, to the penny, literally. Laziness, greed, addiction, deception… all those sins get surfaced if they are hanging around.

And yet grace and hope are the real tone of the night. Identifying areas of weakness leads to repentance and effort to live well before God. It’s nice having brothers walking that road with you. And our hope is that by calling men who have their home’s financial life in order will result in the church’s being above reproach as well.

~ by Matthew Kruse on March 11, 2009.