A few days ago, I was part of a group conversation of a number of persons involved in simple churches. One, who has in the past been an institutional church pastor, and is now involved in missionary work, pointed out how the messenger does have an effect on the message. From his training and background, he knows how to present a financial need to a crowd to get a response, but for him, as a matter of honoring Jesus in purity, he would not do so any longer. Further, it is one thing for him to speak to others involved in simple church on how the early church only spent money on helping the poor and to support those who would go and communicate the message of Jesus where it has not been heard, but as a person prepared to be one of those itinerant missionaries, his saying the same thing still can come across as his having a financial interest in the process, particularly among those believers who have not fully come to understand why the traditional way of raising money in the church really doesn’t have a scriptural basis, when those scriptures referring to this issue are understood in proper cultural context.
I believe, therefore, as a person who is not in a position to go to another portion of the world to communicate the message of Jesus’ gift to mankind by geographical movement, at this time, I should reiterate that message. We, the believers in Jesus, the true church, have not been directed by God to do a lot of things we have been told are things we should financially support, although I believe that, in a sense, we are free to still support those things, at least until the Spirit speaks to one about it. The directive of scripture is clearly, though, to support our brothers and sisters in Jesus who desire to physically go to the geographical areas in which the 28% of the world’s population which has not heard God’s message before all the other good things we can imagine which scripture has not directed us to financially support.
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