Rev Andrew Doubleday, UCANZ Ministry Facilitator by Supplied

Adjusting the Poverty Mindset

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I am confronted by the reality that most churches live with a poverty mindset. There never seems enough to go round. We are always looking for ways to make a little go farther. And for ways to spread the few dollars we have even thinner. Sometimes it is a matter of lifting our eyes and seeing what could be. And then risking ourselves in making an investment into it.

My observation is that mostly we only think in terms of ‘cost’. What we spend is sunk – all to simply keep going. I have seen parishes reduce costs to the extent that they simply threaten their own long-term viability. They literally shoot the goose that could potentially lay the golden eggs. They just haven’t seen it yet.

I once read a story about a church in the American South trying to help a poor family. The church gave up when they noticed that the family had started stripping the weatherboards off their house and feeding them into their fire, presumably for cooking. Winter was still months away. The issue for the family was simply day-by-day survival. They needed to survive today – what came next was not on the radar.

Many of our churches operate out of this mindset. Totally understandable. We just need to keep going, doing what we have always done. And it is all about ‘cost’.

Rarely do we have any sense of ‘investment’. Investment in the future. Investment in mission. Investment in the Gospel. A willingness to risk a little. In possibilities. In who we are. In who we are, and yet could be. In who we are, and yet could be, in the community.

So often we don’t see what we are or have. Either good, or bad. Sometimes it is a matter of seeing what an outsider might see. Noticing.