Be Debt Free For Ministry
On Sunday I preached that if God directs your life and delivers your soul, he deserves to distribute the spoils.
Giving is a recognition of the blessings of God. It’s His victory. All we have is from Him. And His blessings are more than stuff.
I never want to treat His spoils like they’re mine—that’s what those wicked men of Belial did, and David set them straight in 1 Sam. 30.
CREATIVE GIVING. My wife had the idea to try a “no-spend” month—only spend on essentials and cut all the extras for a while. We talked about it on Monday at our date night, and we decided to put everything we save into an offering for our “BE DEBT FREE” offering. Meaning, whatever we would have normally spent, we instead put in a jar for the debt payoff.
It means getting creative. Two areas we found ourselves regularly spending money was on 1) weekly date nights, and 2) weekly Taco Bell on the way home from church! We’re just EATING our money away!
DATE NIGHTS. Every Monday night, just the two of us, we go out to eat. Our meals regularly cost about $25. Instead, we are going to eat cheap:
- Groceries (or food we already have)
- Gift cards
- $5 rotisserie chicken from Costco, or $1.50 hot dogs
If we keep it to about $5/week instead of $25, I see that as $20/week that can go toward our debt payoff!
SUNDAY NIGHTS. Almost every Sunday night we pay for the convenience of just being able to go home and crash. We eat cheap—usually between $12–$17 for the whole family—but for the next couple of months, we’re going to do “Cereal Sundays.” That allows us to put another $15 per week toward the debt, and it’s a fun way to involve the whole family.
“GIRL MATH.” A humorous trend going around these days is “girl math,” which is girls talking about how the sale price of a shirt is actually like “saving money.” For example, if a $30 shirt is marked down to $10, they actually saved $20, so now they have an extra $20 to spend on Starbucks!
In a way, Jamie and I have been treating our “savings” like that too. We went to Old Navy to pick up an online order, and after shopping around a bit, I DIDN’T buy $100-worth of clothes! So it was like I saved $100 to give to the offering! Girl math for Jesus!
IT ADDS UP. None of this feels like a lot on its own, but cereal instead of Taco Bell adds up in the long run! We figure that we can sacrifice in some creative ways to try to be a part of what God is doing at CBC. Even if it’s only $35/week between now and May, that alone is over $400!
EVERYONE. It will take all of God’s people to be involved in this. I was given some anonymous numbers about our annual budget:
- 20 givers cover over half the church budget.
- 10 givers cover about one-third of the budget.
We are decently balanced in this, and I am thankful for everyone who sacrifices! For that extra $100,000 we need to pay this year to be debt free, that would break down as:
- 10 families giving $10,000
- 20 families giving $5,000
- 100 families giving $1,000
By God’s grace, we are already 1/5 of the way to our goal! We have barely even talked about it yet, but God is already providing. I believe we can be debt free this year, and that will allow that money to go to ministry and not the banks!
Pray with me.
Get creative with me.
Sacrifice with me.
Let’s be debt free for ministry.
-Pastor Ryan