I am searching things out but I wonder if this has something to do with it — my theory is the church has created a sort of caste system it seems and if you aren’t in full time ministry you feel like you are never good enough and are a 2nd rate Christian. so the church tends to use that power to manipulate members and lead them by guilt and not the spirit with tough love, etc. and an example is this — if i am doing one thing and telling you to do something else, what does that make me?
Ok — follow me on this. inflation, bills, etc all keep increasing. expenses of life keep increasing. instead of teaching the members ways to earn more and be more fruitful, what do we teach them? give more, sacrifice more, give up your cell phone, stop eating out, etc. but what does the church do? it needs more to keep moving forward and to do that it squeezes everyone under to cover the increased expense. so you have a group that looks like they are having a blast — going on mission trips, seeing in the world, off for all special meetings, etc — and the members are footing the bill and are stressed and jealous. INSTEAD teach the church members to GROW in their ability to earn WHILE increasing their ability to GIVE. that is fair. that is good for all.
BUT how do you do that? not in American’s exchange time for dollars way. we need to learn to instead leverage our income and learn a system that provides residual income. 100 years ago 90% of folks owned their own business. now it is 10%. the perfect way to do this today is to invest in a small part-time business you can work from home (for example: mine you can run from your smart phone!) and EDUCATE the church to support these efforts.
The best business model for this is network marketing or multi-level marketing. It uses the same biblical principals as evangelism –so it is going to be an uphill battle of herding cats at times but it works, despite the work.
And when successful, part-time work replaces full time income and you have members free to serve God with the finances to match!
-ETVFC / IHCC