Standing behind one another

For some reason, the following essay from July 2, 2005, has been appearing on several Blogdigger aggregators as a new post (but with a dead-end link). Since the original post is as valid today as it was a year ago, I'm reposting. Hope you're blessed by Dan's work.

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.