While I’m at it about the absurdity of “retirement,” I have some energy on another related topic.  Might as well spit it all out.

Frequently I encounter people (particularly those who are successful in business, or younger men and women who want to be successful) who are contemplating what God would have them do with the latter half of their lives, and the line I hear runs something like this:

“I would love to serve God with more of my time and talent in the coming years.  But I want to have made enough money to be independently wealthy.  I really don’t think it is right to ask other people to support me when I could pay my own way.   So I want to wait until my nest egg is secure and then Jesus can have all my time and attention.”

1.  Behind such a desire can be an unwillingness to live a life of dependency, either dependency on God or other people.  The need for financial security trumps one’s ability to step out and trust God for the most basic of economic necessities.

2.  There is a subtle, unhealthy independence that such wealth can engender.  I’ve seen it several times when we’ve accepted folks to minister with CRM who didn’t need to raise money.  They had it all.  Inevitably, when times got tough in the crucible of ministry, or there was conflict, or things didn’t go their way, they could pack it up and leave.  Having one’s own resources makes it a lot easier to cut and run.

3.  When I’m independently wealthy, it can put me at odds with those in the apostolic community or team with whom I minister.  I have options they do not have.  I have resources they do not have.  No wonder historically in the missionary orders of the Catholic and Orthodox tradition, one would divest themselves of such material attachments so that all would be laboring together on level ground.

4.  Unfortunately, needing to make my fortune can become an excuse for never responding to what may be God’s clear calling on my life.  It’s a smoke screen.  It’s a way to rationalize away the voice of God.  Movement toward that calling can be inhibited because the nest egg is never considered by the individual to be sufficient enough.

Let me be clear.  I’m not dissing anyone who is doing well financially and particularly those who have learned the grace of giving and sacrificial stewardship and are called to the marketplace.  Rather, I am calling into question when the drive to attain such financial “freedom” is used as the justification for delayed obedience to God’s leading.

When I look for people who are grappling with the calling of God toward ministry that is apostolic in nature, one of the true tests of that calling is that money and financial security are the last and least issues to be considered.  What’s healthy is when these issues are the stubby little tail and not the dog.  When it is the other way around, it’s a portent for trouble.

Clinton defines a divine contact as:

A person whom God brings in contact with a leader at a crucial moment in a developmental phase in order to accomplish one or more of the following:

1. to affirm and encourage leadership potential
2. to give guidance on a special issue
3. to provide insights which may give guidance indirectly and broaden the leader
4. to challenge the leader God-ward
5. to open a door to a ministry opportunity
6. to help an emerging leader make guidance decisions
7. to move the leader toward greater commitment

“I know from past experience that God will bring me in contact with people for whom something I say will make a significant difference in their lives—in other words, I may precipitate a pivotal point in their life. Because this has been true in the past, I am alert to it and actually pray God would make me a divine contact. Usually I will ask for a specific number (in a particular setting or event).”

Tamas and Zsofia Heiser are with Barnabas Csoport, CRM’s ministry in Hungary, and are moving toward the role of leading that team.

This comes after a church planting experience over the past decade where God used them to birth and give leadership to a healthy group of believers in Zalaegerszeg in the southern part of the country.

While a highly respected pastor and leader in his community, denomination and throughout the country, Tamas is making the move to Barnabas Csoport because he sees the acute need for leadership in the church that is and the church that needs to be in Hungary and beyond. His situation is also another vivid example of an apostolic leader that needs an apostolic structure to accomplish all that God intends for his life. Tamas’ sense of vision and calling has moved beyond the boundaries of one local context. A gifted musician, teacher and great mom, Zsofia plays an integral role in all that has transpired and how God will use them in the future. She fully shares this step into the turbulent world of the missionary.

While Tamas may not be as “frustrated” in the same sense as Eric (February 7, 2006 post in Apostolic Ecclesiology), he’s cut out of the same cloth. He, Zsofia, and their three children are in the process of selling their home and moving to Budapest. They are taking some bold, sacrificial steps to follow God’s leading in their lives, steps that God will bless and through which the Church and God’s kingdom purposes will be enriched throughout this region of the world.

One of the exhilarating privileges I have several times yearly is to meet and interact with people joining CRM staff in our New Staff Orientation.

This week, it has been with the group above. They are headed to incredible ministry venues such as Scotland, Cambodia, Russia, and Italy. One person is on their way to life among Muslims in South Asia. One couple has just come from New Zealand. Another person is of Chinese descent and another spent many of her growing up years in Indonesia.

“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!” —Isaiah 52:7

I’ve seen it happen over and over again.

In the relationships I encounter, it occurs most often with two groups of people to a degree far too often to be mere coincidence:

1. First are those who have stepped up and begun to use their resources in a strategic and sacrificial way. This is much more than the obligatory “tithing.” I’m talking about folks who really get it and begin to give and invest in the things of the Kingdom until it hurts.

Yesterday, I got a call from one such person. Last year, they gave almost ALL of their disposable income away. He was reeling. Everything that could go wrong was going wrong …agony in his family, vocational set-backs, betrayal from close associates, and physical things happening that could resemble a contemporary Job. Why? Could it be because of his significant financial and material involvement in the things of God, he now wears a big read bull’s eye on his life?

OR:

2. Secondly are those who have made the decision to make the jump and serve Jesus in some form of vocational ministry. Invariably, the bottom falls out in one way or another, discouraging them to pursue such a calling and making them question whether they have indeed heard from God about the future.

These folks catch it a variety of ways. Sometimes, simultaneous with their decision, they get an incredibly lucrative job offer which rocks them. Just think what that extra income would mean ...what they could do for their kids ...the things they could have they previously could never afford …the security, comfort and prosperity. Or, they get clobbered from extended family who consider such a vocational decision sheer madness. How could they possibly throw away all that education? How could they walk away from careers and pay checks and then “beg” from others to pay the bills?

And in both scenarios, there are inexplicable and invariable physical maladies that hit out of nowhere. It is as if they have hung out a shingle that reads “Hit Me!”

Both scenarios force intense reflection and introspection. “Did we really hear from God?” “Have we counted the cost?” “Is this really what we should be doing with our lives?”

One simple, but profound piece of advice I heard early in my days in ministry has been a lifeline during such times of doubt and despair, when all hell breaks loose and you wonder where God went: “Do not doubt in the dark what God has already shown you in the light.” It’s true. It works.

At the same time, such circumstances illuminate the reality of living and ministering in a profoundly supernatural world, a truth that is too often dismissed and ignored because of our western bias against what anthropologist Paul Heibert so accurately describes as the “excluded middle,” that realm where the demonic and angelic operate. When in such circumstances, our survival may depend upon knowing how to effectively engage in warfare in the supernatural realm. As Martin Luther wrote in the crucible of the Reformation:

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us:
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.

Argentine and Shawni are missionaries in Moldova.

He’s Moldovan and she’s from Ukraine. They met in university in Romania and returned to his native Moldova after graduation. She is a medical doctor but prohibited from practicing since they moved. Together, they are part of a team that gives leadership to a nascent church planting movement in this region of the country. Three new churches have emerged from the efforts of this team.

They are quality leaders. Quiet, deep, tenacious, servants committed to multiplying a new generation of leaders and churches in this former Soviet republic and beyond.

Wherever I come across fruitful movements such as this, inevitably at their core are people like Argentine and Shawni. They don’t write books. They don’t spout theory. They don’t blog. They simply do it.

Last week I spent with CRM’s NieuCommunities team in Vancouver, Canada.

Along with four interns, this new team is pioneering life and ministry together as an apostolic community in a highly secular, urban context. And they are are doing it wonderfully. Makes me want to move north!!

What would happen if Christians—particularly those in the comfortable, complacent West—genuinely leaned into those areas of the world rocked by war, religious persecution, poverty, institutional evil, famine, totalitarianism, etc …  For example, what would it take to send communities of men and women who could be, in word and deed, the presence of Jesus into an area like southern Lebanon as the fighting wanes in the days to come? (photos above)

Where are some of these places where those committed to Jesus would find most inhospitable in today’s world?

North Korea, South Lebanon, Somalia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Timor, Yemen, Sudan/Dafur, Libya, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Cuba, Afghanistan, and more ….

What would it take?  How do we get teams of skilled, well-trained, deeply committed individuals into such places?  We know it would require people who understand the realities of spiritual warfare and how God uses signs, wonders and the supernatural for his kingdom purposes.  I suspect they would be mostly single men and women, prepared for hardship, physical suffering and even death.  It would necessitate a neo-monastic commitment and a clear sense of apostolic calling. And it would take the appropriate apostolic structures without which such undertakings would be foolish and cavalier.

The fact is there are no “closed” countries to the gospel of Jesus in today’s world. There are only “creative access” countries.  There is no nation on the face of the planet where committed followers of Jesus cannot go to live and minister as representatives of the living Christ.  We can get into any place as long as we are willing not to have any assurance we could ever come out.

So where are such people?  Where are those in the Christian movement with the same zeal that we see demonstrated daily by those in the Islamic world willing to blow themselves up in suicide forays?  Perhaps Greg Livingstone is correct when he says that Christians will never be taken seriously until we are willing to populate Muslim jails.

It can be done. With CRM, we can get access to the places. We’ve got the capablities. We have the apostolic structure to facilitate such ministry in any nation.  All that’s lacking are the people.

“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.” – Jesus

Because the businesses created by CRM Enterprise are actually owned by the CRM entity in the respective nations, profit distribution is a decision that entity makes, i.e. ministry perspective dictates use of money earned.
The profit stays in the country/region where it has been made. These businesses do not suck resources out of the local scene. They are not exploitive.
While CRM entities own the businesses, there are a variety of ways individuals – nationals and ex-pats – can participate as equity partners in the ventures.

For more information on how CRM is doing this through Enterprise, check out the stories on the link or connect with Colin Crawley at colin.crawley@crmleaders.org

First, they understand the concept of leverage. A dollar invested in such a way earns a significant return because, as Stephen Covey puts it, that dollar is invested in “production capacity,” not just “production.” It keeps on earning.

Secondly, these business oriented individuals usually begin to salivate because finally they have discovered a way whereby they can put their own expertise and business skills directly to work for ministry purposes. Their abilities are valued.

Involvement with Enterprise is a real life illustration of the old adage about giving a person a fish or a fishing pole. What results from the fishing pole is exponentially more effective.

“Profit? How mercenary?”
“This just smacks of western capitalistic opportunism.”
“Make money? What’s that got to do with ministry? Why can’t they just trust God?”
“I can’t believe they are mixing business and ministry …God’s work will be the loser in such an unholy alliance!”

I’ve heard all the arguments from my friends on the left about the inherent evils of capitalism and likewise, know all the arguments from my friends on the theological right who frown on such “worldly” attention to lucre which they believe can only corrupt the purity of the gospel.

The sad fact is, when it comes to money and the wise even shrewd use of resources, Jesus’ admonition that “...the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves …” seems strangely applicable.

To our detriment, others have historically done a better job at this than those who have been followers of Jesus. For example, the Mormans have done it for years while most of those committed to historic orthodoxy have sat on our sanctimonious hands.

There is no biblical, historical or missiological reasons why business, wisely operated, cannot be utilized for Kingdom purposes.

The Christian movement is littered with the intentions of well meaning visionaries who either would not or could not find the resources to make their dreams become reality.

The primary purpose of the businesses created through CRM Enterprise is to quite simply make money. Profit is the bottom line.

There are certainly other worthwhile byproducts of these businesses. For example they

Provide jobs, often in economies where employment can mean survival;
Model good business ethics and mores;
Contribute to the overall welfare and development of the local and regional economy;
Develop nationals as entrepreneurs and business leaders;
Can provide a platform to legitimize ministry, particularly in limited access nations;
In word and deed, function as authentic expressions of the presence of Jesus in the marketplace

In reality, and by design, all of these side benefit have happened and are happening. But just because they happen does not insure that profit flows as a result. At the end of the day, we have deliberately chosen for these entities to turn a profit that can in turn be invested in ministry. These businesses are to be an economic wellhead to help vision, given by God, become reality.

Of course there are some exceptions, but on the whole, those in vocational ministry are not good business people. In CRM’s Enterprise Division, we do our best to keep the ministry folks away from the operational aspects of the businesses because they rarely have the skills or the experience to know what to do.

Enterprise offers business men and women a unique opportunity to really go for it using all that God has entrusted to them. For some, this may mean taking a one or two-week trip a year where their unique abilities can be applied in the developing world. For others, it may mean packing it up and spending months or even years in locations around the globe pioneering such ventures.

And for many, it means being part of a Business Development Group which gathers other like minded and committed business people together to anchor such projects without leaving home, contributing advice, expertise, and even investment capital.