Critique of the Ways to Finance Evangelization

When you read the articles on evangelism or evangelization on paper and in the Internet you are given the impression that this work is not done effectively or not done at all. Time and again writers say that this is the most important work of the Church and yet it is the most neglected work of all.

A reason for this is that people give to this work only what they can spare extra after their personal, family and social needs are taken care of.

Today I present the ways to finance evangelization and make a critique of each one of them. In this way I hope to elaborate on my answer to the question why evangelism is the most neglected work of the churches.

1. The Way of Almsgiving

This is the usual way of supporting any church activity, including evangelism or evangelization. (Note on the usage of these two terms: Evangelism is the term preferred by non-Catholic western Christians, like the Protestant groups. Evangelization is the term preferred by Catholics. Some see different meanings in these words. I would say that the basic meaning is the same: announcing the good news of salvation to those who have not yet appropriated personally its meaning.)

The way of almsgiving is giving some amount to the collection plate or bag or basket as it is being passed around in church. Some give much, others give little, still others give none. Some people give a sizable amount if they thought the sermon was a very good one. If the sermon did not move them at all they would give only a little or none at all.

My Critique: This is the least effective way of financially supporting evangelism. It is up to the whims of the church goers how much they are going to give. Furthermore only a very small portion of the collection is spent on direct evangelism. Most of the amount is for the upkeep of the church and its ministers.

2. The Way of Special Funding

The church puts up a special second collection, or a bingo, or a dinner for a cause or a raffle or whatever gimmick. This is all to raise funds for a church activity, including evangelization or missions.

Critique: This way raises some sizable amount but it is seasonal. After the special funding is over and the amount raised is spent on the project the church is back to zero for its projects. This generates a good amount but it is temporary. Evangelism however is not a temporary work of the church. It is its perennial business. In fact it is the business most worthy of supporting.

3. The Way of Tithing

This is giving ten percent to the support of the church, its ministers and its activities. Some churches monitor their members whether 10 percent is really given to them; others leave it to the good will of the members, encouraging them to give the full ten percent. Some churches even warn their members that not giving the full ten percent is stealing from God because this portion does not belong to them but to God himself. Some church members give more than 10 percent.

Critique: This way does generate a good amount of money which comes in regularly and is less dependent on the satisfaction of the listeners to the ministers’ sermon. But still I notice that even the collected tithes are never enough for funding the activities the church wants to do. There are other collections made.

4. The Way of Donations

This includes love gifts, bequests by church members, endowment funds, etc.

Critique: This generates a good amount but it is totally dependent on the good will of the donor and on the ability of the church personnel to convince donors to give donations. They cannot be relied upon regularly.

5. The Way of Investments

Some churches do invest funds. Some even have people in the stock market trading stocks and securities.

Critique: This is akin to gambling. The churches doing this can go into debts and more debts.

There are other ways perhaps that I have not mentioned. But the general critique of all these ways is that they are not ways with the express purpose of providing constant funding for evangelism.

Jesus said, For where your heart is, there will your treasure be also. Our heart is not really in evangelism because we do not put our treasure there. We put it to supply our personal, family and social needs first, and evangelism only second or last.

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Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritworld for knowing more about spirituality or spiritual realities

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

Removing the Obstacle to the Spread of Genuine Christianity

The 788 and more plans to evangelize the world from the beginning of Christianity, documented by Barrett and Reapsome in their book SEVEN HUNDRED PLANS TO EVANGELIZE THE WORLD, have not successfully fulfilled the great Commission of spreading genuine, as opposed to nominal, Christianity.

Reason for Failure in Evangelization

Why? The reason is because we have this mentality of giving to the task of spreading real Christianity only what is extra, what we can spare after deducting what we require for our personal, family and social needs from our earnings. That is the obstacle to the accomplishment of the task of spreading genuine Christianity around the world in our generation.

And how do we remove this obstacle? Simply, by getting rid of this mentality and putting in its stead the attitude that this task is the most important work of our life and that it deserves all our finances.

But how do we do this in practice?

Failure of Attempts at Evangelizing Work

Those who enter the religious order or congregation do give all their earnings to their respective order or congregation. They do not withhold anything for their personal, family or social needs. They left their families, so they see no obligation to support them, except in very specific circumstances of dire need. Their personal needs, like food, clothing and shelter, are taken care of by their religious group or order. And their social needs, like recreation and personal interrelationships, are also taken care of by the order or congregation.

The question now is: By their giving of all their earnings to the order or congregation have they done what they should do to fulfill the great commission? Certainly not. Many nominal Christians still live even just outside the confines of their monasteries or religious houses. Perhaps they themselves are still nominal Christians.

They give all and yet the work is still not done. What happens is that the funds are devoted to the well being and spread of the order or congregation and not to the spread of the good news.

Let us take another case. There are church and para-church organizations which purportedly exist to fulfill the great commission. There are hundreds of them. Almost all Christians have come across some of them, like Campus Crusade for Christ, The Navigators, Overseas Missionary Fellowship International, etc. These organizations are spending millions of dollars for their ministries. The crucial question is: Have they successfully fulfilled the great commission? The answer of Barrett and Reapsome in the book I cited is that they are nowhere near the target of fulfilling that great commission.

Why? A sizable amount of the donations they receive goes into meeting their personal, family and social needs instead of being spent for the spread of the good news.

Notice the websites of these organizations, they have a button for donations. Almost all of these organizations think that the donations contribute to the spread of the good news. If we investigate this carefully, the opposite is true. Those donations hinder the spread of the good news. I learned this the hard way.

There is the mentality even among Christians that organizations can do more than individuals. If one person can tell 10 other persons about the good news an organization of 100 persons can do more than that one person, maybe more than 100 times. They tend to forget that after a while the purpose of that organization will be to maintain itself in existence.

The only practical solution I see in this is for individuals who are convinced of fulfilling this great commission to work and earn something for the explicit purpose of funding their ministry, like what Paul of Tarsus did.

The objection we often hear is that the minister of evangelization or evangelism would be more fruitful if he devotes all his time to the ministry and others enable him to do this by giving him their tithes or love gifts. But as we can see this objection is not really valid. A greater percentage of what is given to this minister goes to his personal, family and social needs, instead of being spent for the spread of the good news.

Removing This Obstacle

If we are going to be really serious in spreading genuine Christianity we have to give all that we earn to this task, saving only a little amount for our sustenance.

When Christians are spiritually awakened from their centuries’ sleep in missions we shall have an ever widening spread of genuine Christianity among us. It is indeed a long overdue time for spiritual awakening.

Click Here!

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritworld for knowing more about spirituality or spiritual realities

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

The Obstacle To The Spread Of Genuine Christianity

In 1988 there have been 788 plans to evangelize the world from the beginning of Christianity. These plans were documented by Barrett and Reapsome in their book SEVEN HUNDRED PLANS TO EVANGELIZE THE WORLD.

Today 22 years later it is possible that there have been already more than 1,000 plans to evangelize the world, an increase of 212 more plans from the publication of that book.

And yet the conclusion of Barrett and Reapsome in their book on page 66 is still very true and very sadly so: We have not yet fulfilled the great Commission of spreading Christianity as we should.

Why? Why have we failed in spreading genuine Christianity around the world?

The Obstacle: Giving Only What Is Extra

There is one obstacle which has not been seen by almost all Christian leaders. This is the obstacle I want to discuss in this article.

This obstacle is most clearly described in an advertisement of a Church for getting funds to support its projects.

The advertisement airs a conversation between two elementary kids. One says that he will spend this much for transportation to and back from the school, another amount for snacks, then finally there is an extra 3 cents which he will give to the project of the church.

The second kid asks, What can 3 cents do for that project? It is too small an amount.

And the first kid retorts, If these 3 cents are combined with other 3 cents they can do a lot; they can save lives.

That is the advertisement. The Church that puts up this advertisement hopes to generate a sizable amount for its projects, like evangelization.

And that is the weakness of almost all the plans to evangelize the world, to spread genuine Christianity around the world. They rely on funds that are the extra or what is left behind after personal, family and social needs are met.

In 1977 100 billionaires from the United States of America bankrolled a project called Here’s Life World. Indeed those billionaires gave a lot, but still it was the extra amount they could afford to foot the bill of that project. What was the result of this project? By the end of 1980 which was its target date it had not even increased genuine Christians by a 10 percent in population. It was a failure.

Why? Because the funds used for the project were only the extra that those billionaires could spare for such a project.

The obstacle to the spread of genuine Christianity is our mentality in giving to the project of spreading real Christianity all around us. We give only to the project what is extra, what we can spare after deducting from our earnings for our personal, family and social needs.

Give It Your All

If we are going to be really serious in spreading genuine Christianity we have to give all that we earn for this project, saving only a little amount for our sustenance.

The best example is still Paul the Apostle. He worked as a tent maker. The reason why he worked as a tent maker was not to meet his personal, family and social needs. The reason was in order that he would have something to spend for his mission of spreading Christianity among the non-Jews of his day. And he succeeded in a most outstanding manner.

When Christians are spiritually awakened from their centuries’ sleep in missions we shall have an ever widening spread of genuine Christianity among us. It is indeed a long overdue time for spiritual awakening.

Click Here!

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritworld for knowing more about spirituality or spiritual realities

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

A Cure For That Infamous Decree

When we commit a mistake and we realize that we have committed such a mistake the sensible thing to do is to correct our mistake. And we usually do this immediately in order to offset the committing of more mistakes.

But there are mistakes which seem to resist correction not only for days but even for centuries. This resistance to correction is made by men who are supposed to have scientific knowledge of the mistake made.

The Mistake in Astronomy

Take the case of the teaching about the movement of the earth and the sun. From 150 A.D. (and even before this by Aristotle and his followers) it was taught by scientists and learned men of the Church that the earth was a stationary planet in the center of the universe and the other planets and the sun revolved around it. It is obvious to us now that this is not true. You remember this as the Ptolemaic theory of the solar system. This was corrected in 1543, more than 13 centuries later, by Copernicus but his correction was not accepted by the scientists of his day. In 1616 Galileo tried to prove that Copernicus was correct but instead of accepting this correction he was condemned by the Inquisition and remained until his death under house arrest. More centuries followed before the Church leaders accepted the correction of Galileo and acknowledged their mistake. This was done by John Paul II on October 31, 1992. He acknowledged that the church leaders had committed a mistake and correction was to be made about this.

A Greater Mistake Than That in Astronomy

But there is a mistake more serious than that committed by the church leaders on the case of Galileo. It is a mistake with more disastrous consequences not just for science and scientists but for ordinary people like you and me. And billions of people have suffered because of this mistake. And this mistake has not yet been corrected by the church leaders or by the successors of those who committed this mistake.

I am referring to that infamous decree made by the Roman emperor Theodosius on February 27, 380 making Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. This was a most tragic mistake, the worst that any emperor made, because it involved falsifying the teachings of Jesus. And yet this mistake has not been corrected yet, after more than 1,600 years.

No church leader nor successor of the Emperor Theodosius has come out and publicly acknowledged that this decree was a tragic mistake and needs to be corrected.

Stages in Correcting This Disastrous Mistake

The first stage in the cure for this infamous decree then is to convince the church leaders, even the successor of Emperor Theodosius as Pontifex Maximus (one of the titles of the Roman Pope), to come up with a public acknowledgement of the mistake made, just like what John Paul II did in the case of Galileo.

This revocation of that decree would release all those who were made Christians by that decree from all their obligations. They would be given a chance to start all over again or deny Christianity as their religion.

The second stage in the cure is to put back the practice of the catechumenate and improve it. Some churches have already done this, the most successful that I know of is that of the Church of Christ founded by Felix Manalo in the Philippines. Before a person is received into this Church he has to undergo 28 lessons in the fundamental doctrines of the Church, then he has to attend 15 weeks of group prayer meetings before he can be screened for baptism.

The third stage in the cure is to follow up on new members to make sure that they develop in their spiritual life.

In this time of spiritual awakening when more and more persons in all churches are spiritually awakened and there is uneasiness and spiritual hunger for genuine Christianity—and the signs of a spiritual awakening are all around us—we need to wake up spiritually and see where have our church leaders committed mistakes and convince them to correct these mistakes.

Only when the mistake about that infamous decree of Theodosius has been corrected and cured will we have the beginnings again of real genuine Christianity spreading among us.

Click Here!

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritworld for knowing more about spirituality or spiritual realities

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.