Giving according to the missionary gracing - Part 1

The other day as I was discussing with Angie a message I was preparing to share with our Bolivian congregation. The topic I was teaching on was giving money to the local church and noteworthy projects. My natural tendency was to teach that giving to a good program or even to the church is always a good thing because is helps the local church (I do not know any local church, including our own Bolivian church, that could not use more finances). But the question that arose on the inside of me was, “Is it good that everyone in my Bolivian congregation give at the level that Angie and I give?” I am still in the process of assessing the question. On one hand I believe that giving money is always good but the on other hand I would never demand or even expect the people of my congregation to give at the level that our missionary family gives. So here are my thoughts on missionary giving.

Missionaries should give more because they are called to a lifestyle of giving - There is something that I call a missionary bias. I guess this is not limited to only missionaries but I think in our case it is a little more exaggerated. It is the tendency to expect others to live up to the same convictions that God demands of you. For example in the case of a person that God convicts that they stop eating sugar. The person stops eating sugar because it is something that the Lord wants them to do and it a good thing. Their health gets better. So as a result of that conviction they make the wrong assumption that God want everyone to stop eating sugar. So they go on a campaign trying to motivate everyone they know to stop eating sugar literally making everyone else miserable because of a personal conviction that God is dealing with them about. Now when it comes to my missionary world there is a certain level of giving that God expects from us. To put things plainly: my life is giving. Not just financially either. We give above what is generally expected from the average Christian because we are sent to Bolivia to give. That is just a part of the job description. But I will have to confess that sometimes there is a tendency to expect that everyone should give at the same level that we do but there is only one problem, not everyone is called to be a missionary. So carrying the missionary bias in the area of financial giving is not exactly fair. Not everyone is called to be a missionary.

I hope you enjoyed this first part. I will post the other half in a few days. I would love to hear what you think. Go ahead and leave a comment.