Jesus, it’s said, spoke far more about money than about sex,
violence, or heaven and hell. The subject is obviously important.
Leaders, especially, must exercise great wisdom about finances,
for their decisions have such wide impact on others and on insti-
tutions, as well as on their own families. Here we explore some
thoughts on how each of us might shape our economic thinking.
Establish Your “Money DNA”
Greed in any organization can devastate it. In contrast, if the
bottom line trumps other values, it can also devastate. Some orga-
nizations scrimp and cut every possible cost; others spend to build
momentum and create new realities.
A person of wisdom and conscience will pay serious attention
to the philosophic issues raised; yet not everyone will come to the
same conclusions.
Ron Wilson, who spent many years as an entrepreneurial edi-
tor and then leader of the Evangelical Press Association, tells of
an experience that dramatized the polar-
opposite approaches similar organizations
have toward money. In the mid-1960s, he
visited the offices of Operation Mobilization
(OM) in Zaventem, near the Brussels air-
port. OM had a similar evangelistic man-
date as the BGEA, but different methodologies. “They had taken
over an old factory building,” Ron told us, “and I used to joke that
they went fourth class because there wasn’t any fifth class.” Ron
remembered its founder, George Verwer, while he was a student
at Moody Bible Institute, coming into its bookstore and pulling
out of the trash some evangelistic tracts that had been damaged
and discarded. “No doubt,” Ron said, “he went into Chicago’s
streets and passed them out.”
From Belgium Ron then went to Paris and stopped in at the
Billy Graham office on the Champs-Elysées. “The contrast was
startling,” Ron said, “from fourth class to first class. I thought of
it in terms of the organization, not personalities—and Billy’s
desire to do things well. Each organization had its style.”
Mobilizing MoneyWhen I have any money,
I get rid of it as quickly
as possible, lest it find a
way into my heart.
JOHN WESLEY