Sometimes damage is done by well-meaning Christians giving their money in the wrong places.
Example: if a church planting movement is dependent on outside funds to pay their church planters, there is a natural (financial) limitation as to how many church planters can be involved. This will limit the growth of what is going on.
Some friends of ours in India encouraged all their local church planters (those not traveling to train others) to find a business that could support them and offered to help them get started. Unfortunately, other Western ministries came in and offered the church planters money to work with them instead. Effectively these people were "bought" by Western money. The churches they planted now counted towards the "success" of the ministry that paid them.
Giving can be a hand out or a hand up. It's the old picture of give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Now obviously there are some situations in which a person has no hope without a hand out, but there are many more where training in a skill would equip him to earn a living.
We lived in the East End of London for more than 15 years. In those days 92% of the housing was govenment funded. Many of the people who lived there had been on welfare for generations. A government handout had imprisoned the people in a life of poverty and dependence. Compare this, for example, to the microfinancing initiatives of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh which has transformed the lives of the women of that nation.
We need great wisdom from the Lord as to where our finances should go.
Any ideas?
Subscribe to Get Simply Church Updates
Join our mailing list to get occasional updates from me!