For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
1 Timothy 6:10
With the deepest respect to those who devote their lives to teaching and equipping the church to share the good news — how is it that pastors struggling financially themselves still see fit to offer advice to their congregations on the subject?
The Richest Man in Babylon, by George S. Clason, tells the story of a man who makes a bad investment. In trying to grow his fortune, he invests all his money with a brickmaker who plans to buy jewels in a far-away land and sell them locally at great profit.
This man’s mentor points out his folly when he says, ‘But why trust the knowledge of a brickmaker about jewels?
‘… he who takes advice about his savings from one who is inexperienced… will pay with his savings for proving the falsity of their opinions.’
By way of example, I shared a brief story in this post about pastors offering financial advice. Frankly, I find this type of preaching all too common in sermons about money. Pastors struggling financially themselves need to discern between their personal opinions and what the Bible is saying on the subject.
Unfortunately the church sees many pastors struggling financially, just like the rest of us. Statistically, the majority of pastors have zero savings, feel that they are underpaid, and have experienced financial struggle in their lives. Who among us has not felt this at various points?
Furthermore, what most pastors know about managing money boils down to the following:
- The love of money is the root of all evil
- The Bible instructs us to give generously to God’s Kingdom and the poor
Both of the above messages are 100% true and both offer invaluable spiritual advice. However, this does not, by extension, amount to financial advice. Neither of these messages teach us how to manage our finances wisely on a day-to-day basis. Taken in isolation, the logical conclusion, when reading these scriptures, is that every believer should simply sell everything they have and give to the poor.
… and then what?
I have heard pastors speak out against the love of money and the pursuit of wealth many times but I have seldom heard them offer any sound advice on how we should really go about managing the finances with which God has already blessed us.
Instead, I have heard them offer a lot of bad advice on the subject. This happens when pastors offer middle/working-class opinions about handling money and cloak those opinions in Bible verses that appear to support their preconceived ideas.
Pastors usually lead with the fact that the love of money is the root of all evil. While this is true, it doesn’t help those families who are battling to make ends meet. What many pastors fail to communicate is that the love of money and the acquisition of wealth are not necessarily the same thing. Every time we — or our pastors, for that matter — cash our paychecks, we acquire wealth. If that is a sin, then we are all in deep trouble, pastors included.
The silent message in most of these sermons is that it is a sin to chase after riches. Again, true! A healthy bank balance could indicate the love of money in a person’s heart. But this is equally true of an unhealthy bank balance.
Messages Preached by Pastors Struggling Financially Themselves
Messages preached from the pulpit, often by pastors struggling financially themselves, are quick to point out the evils of extravagant lifestyles that seek private jets and luxury yachts. They are less quick to point out the inherent evils of spending all our time chasing after the next paycheck in order to pay for the $20,000 car we bought on credit last year.
This is a pity because the love of money has led far more people into consumer-debt and relative poverty in this world than it has ever led to wealth.
There are, of course, countless verses in the Bible that offer immense wisdom on the subject of financial management. I included a handful of those verses in this article I posted some time back… and another one here.
Sadly, I have never heard any of these verses taught from the pulpit. Either our church pastors have never read them or they have simply skipped past them — possibly on the basis that these verses offer little spiritual or eternal value for their sermon material.
However, I would point out that God still saw fit to include these verses the in Bible, and their truths could improve the lives of countless believers all over the world, pastors included.
As such, I generally don’t accept pseudo-financial advice offered from the pulpit any more than I would accept pseudo-spiritual advice from the countless financial self-help authors out there.