Money and Missions: Why both ideas are broken

        Let's dive right in...and giving sort of the background behind where I'm going to go. The fact of the matter is a lot of people are attaching a spiritual value to poverty. Righteousness does not equal poverty. There are four types of economic class systems in the Bible. There are the righteous rich (who steward their money well), the unrighteous rich (who don't steward their money well), and then there are the righteous poor (who steward well), and the unrighteous rich (who don't steward well). 1 Timothy 6 tells us that God has given us all things to richly enjoy. I think we are in a strong need of a more definitive definition of joy in the church today. Many people say "Oh, take joy in God...bla bla bla"....James MacDonald describes how we need to extend our definition of joy and include in it enjoying the things God HAS MADE. The Psalms are filled with joy of what God has made (Psalm 62). It's not wrong to have, it's wrong when things have you. "Now it is true, the solution to materialism is not poverty, but generosity." And I don't think we realize how much things have our hearts. Poverty is NOT SPIRITUAL. It's not that more doesn't equal and a problem and less doesn't equal a problem. God is not lacking in His resources. Pastors should be blessed. We shouldn't keep with this keep the pastors humble crap. Do you want pastors raising their kids and them hating God because they grew up extremely poor in the name of "spirituality". What a joke. Give money to the pastor. Let him be generous. If you can't trust the leader, cut the leader not the money!

       Now to missions...we don't need to just send more money to poor people around the world, we'll ruin them! There are thousands of people groups who haven't heard the Gospel, it's what's our responsibility financially to get the Gospel to people who don't have it. Honestly, sometimes the extreme amount of money we send to missions is such a waste. The idea that you just have to give money...the whole model is broken. Missions is broken.   "The way missions take place and what goes on and how they measure success, there's been enough money given to missionaries every decade for the last hundred years to get the Gospel to every corner of the earth, so why do we have to keep hearing numbers like thousands of people groups haven't heard the Gospel."-James MacDonald Someone is screwing up, big time. Cause we have sent enough money for this issue to resolve itself about a thousand times over. There is so much wastage in missions. But I will say this, it is worth major sacrifice to fix missions and make it work.