“Why are these missionaries always so preoccupied with money? It seems to be the first consideration in every decision.” This was the question I got from a gifted young couple moving into the leadership of a “Faith” mission.

It doesn’t compute, does it? Faith mission and the preoccupation with money seem to be a rather glaring contradiction.

My first response to my friends was: It is probably because missionaries never have much money. When one doesn’t have much, its importance is often magnified. Even as I heard the words leave my mouth, I knew it was a rationalization.

Why do I think so much about money and the material stuff of life? I watch with much more than casual interest how the daily financial markets treat my retirement account. I fixate on the price of diesel fuel and worry about raising food prices at Wal-Mart. Why isn’t Mathew 6 a marker in my daily life?

Mtt 6:^25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? ^26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”

We come from a culture that places a singularly high value on money. The amount of money attached to an activity or artifact seems to determine its intrinsic societal value. The worth of a person is often judged by earning power or patrimony. Art that can’t bring in the big bucks isn’t seen as having value. An activity that can’t be monetized isn’t considered real work and thus relegated to the status of a hobby or pastime.

Even those of us in ministry are influenced, often unconsciously, by the culture around us. “Time is money” we are taught from childhood. This equation often influences negatively our relationships. What donors want to support financially influences our mission programs and priorities far more than we would like to think. As ministers we have pandered to those with money rather than speak prophetically to the idolatrous dominance of our material culture. We unconsciously rationalize that behavior because “the ministry needs the money.”

Why is missional accountability usually applied first to finances? Often ministry results are evaluated by a subtle or not so subtle “bang for the buck.” The use of money is often the first flash point in relationships between national brothers and the mission. The amount of time the average “ministry” board of directors spends on finances dwarfs the comparative time commitment spent on the issues of purpose, vision, or the spiritual health of the enterprise.

^{Mtt. 6;22} “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. ^23 But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

^24 “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”

Perhaps we find the way out of our dilemma in the same discourse of Jesus. A little earlier in the passage He talks about laying up treasure in heaven. He pinpoints the “eye” being crucial to loving God and rejecting the mastery of money. What we fix our eyes on becomes the source of light or darkness.

As leaders, you and I need to cultivate a Christ and faith centered worldview. We desperately need to keep our eyes clearly and consciously on heavenly, not monetary values. Only through this discipline can we escape the tyranny of the cultural values that constantly dominate and cause us to monetize personal and ministry decision making. When our eyes are fixed on the eternal, we then can be men and women of faith and not controlled by the preoccupation with money.

It’s so simple to say and yet seems so hard to do. This is the point where the empowerment of the Holy Spirit becomes essential and intensely practical.

Father, forgive me. I have allowed my eyes to be fixated on money and the material world. Lord help me keep my eyes focused on the eternal. Help me to concentrate my vision on You and cultivate a faith-filled expectation of Your supply of all my needs.

Your friend, … Paul

Paul McKaughan is an ambassador-at-large with The Mission Exchange (formerly the Evangelical Fellowship of Mission Agencies, EFMA).

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