Saturday, July 02, 2005

Standing behind one another

At Cerulean Sanctum Dan Edelen has completed his thirteen-part series on Christians and the business world. Links to the entire series are here. In his final post of the series, Dan offers alternatives to swallowing undigested the values of how the world does business. His seven alternatives are both reasonable and biblical --- and therefore radical. I won't pull them out of context here but recommend you read them for yourself. One, however, is worth mentioning. The church needs to stand behind the brethren:
. . . whenever a person in a church is unemployed, we need to do everything possible to help that person find work ASAP. There is no sense for me to be buying $4000 plasma TVs when another family in my congregation is burning through their life's savings while trying to find work.
I can relate. Being fired from my job with a previous congregation put my family in a financial bind and left us hanging without the spiritual support community we had been a part of for years. Some members seemed to forget us. Others--in most cases not the "pillars" of the church--came to our aid with their time and money. As the first few chapters of Acts show us time and again, we shouldn't view our money or property as our own. Not only helping but sacrificing for one another should be standard operating procedure for the church.

7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Though I have never been fired by a church I have been "encouraged to leave" a few and you are right, it is the rarely the "pillars" of the church that come to support you emotionally, spiritually, etc.

Great post and thanks for the kind words over at Razor Kiss...it just shows you can write hundreds of posts but if you fail to proof one that is one everyone will see...as is life.

8:56 AM, July 02, 2005  
Blogger Milton Stanley said...

Sorry to hear you've been through the same kind of thing, Frank. Thanks for your encouragement. Peace.

3:33 PM, July 02, 2005  
Blogger Milton Stanley said...

Bummer, isn't it, Dan? BTW, Totem to Temple had a similar experience.

9:10 AM, July 04, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My most profound experience of this was when my wife and I were leading a small group in Hungary. The parent of a group member was gravely ill in Canada, and the person concerned did not have enough money to fly back - the homegroup got the money together to enable the trip.

Only much later did I discover that one of the group members, on a far lower income than most of us, had sold her car and given the proceeds...

1:41 PM, July 04, 2005  
Blogger Milton Stanley said...

Wow, great story, Andy. Thanks for sharing.

11:47 PM, July 05, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why were you fired?

4:40 PM, July 07, 2005  
Blogger Milton Stanley said...

It's a long story, Anon, and unhelpful to rehash.

9:36 PM, July 07, 2005  

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