You are the hero because you are trained in Special Forces tactics, well versed in dynamic nuclear systems operation, or have advanced degrees in physics and astronomy. When emergencies like this arise, you are the one everyone looks to for rescue. Bottom line, you are fully aware of the situation and you are fully trained and capable of doing what is needed to stop the impending doom.
With that being the case, the world will be saved, right?
Not so fast. Let’s add one more relevant piece of information to this story. Last night you decided to go out drinking and got a bit too pushy with a bouncer named Tiny. As dawn breaks the darkness of night, you wake up, only to find yourself shackled to a bed inside a steel cage at the county jail.
As you sit there fighting back the headache, you also fight back a sinking feeling, as through your cell you see on television this impending disaster you are fully equipped to prevent. Nobody else is coming to save the day, as it was you who fate had determined would answer the call. Yet here you find yourself stuck—and the worst part is, by your own doing.
Would you yell to the guards that you knew you could prevent the disaster if they would just let you out? Would you really expect them to believe you? Worse yet, could that kind of talk land you in a Department of Homeland Security detention center under the Patriot Act since your talk seems a bit too “alarmist”?
Would you fight the chains that bind you? Would you inform the others held in captivity with you in an effort to rally an escape attempt? Would you feel guilty about having done the wrong thing by getting locked up, which now places you in a position where you are unable to do the right thing? More importantly, would you actually be guilty of the world’s destruction?
We cannot do the work God has called us to do because we are not operating financially in line with Biblical principles.
As thankful as many of us would be for not being placed in such a predicament, we still find ourselves in a dire situation. Unfortunately, the bad news is that our current situation is eerily close to the one I just described. Because debt is so prevalent in our lives, our financial situation, along with that of our nation and the Church as a whole, is in bondage. We cannot do the work God has called us to do because we are not operating financially in line with Biblical principles. We are over our heads in debt and not making enough to thrive, not to mention we are losing the battle against inflation—all of which is affecting our mission and effectiveness as believers.
Would you like to be the hero in this story who’s not stuck in jail, but who is out doing the work God has called you to? Being an Evangelpreneur is the way to do this. What is an Evangelpreneur? An Evangelpreneur is someone who lives his or her life with the focus of spreading God’s kingdom and will through the empowerment He created in free enterprise. He or she uses the natural and supernatural to control the use of time and money to effectively live out the calling placed on his or her life.
This book will look at why I believe being an Evangelpreneur is God’s purpose for believers and how we start down that path. However, before we can become an Evangelpreneur, we need to get a handle on debt. And to get a handle on debt, we need to see just how much it’s crippling us, how it truly is keeping us in jail and from our rescue mission, just like the hero in the story.
Churches in Foreclosure
In 2010, Crystal Cathedral Ministries, which built one of the nation’s largest and most famous churches, filed for bankruptcy. I have never thought of money as the most important thing in life, but the news of the church’s financial collapse kind of shook me. Here, a church with thousands of members on location, and tens of thousands more watching on television around the world, had just gone bankrupt. My initial response was, “There must be more to this story.” Perhaps a board member was embezzling funds, a pastor abusing the tithes and offerings, or even a robbery. As I waited for further information to come out, I kept telling myself that this must be a mistake. Certainly a ministry that brought in tens of millions of dollars a year would have no reason to declare bankruptcy unless there was some case of abuse or misuse. As a man born into sin myself, I know that an individual will have moments in life where they fall short. So I was sure that a scandalous revelation was going to be appearing on the nightly news any day now.
I waited and waited, but no story appeared. The truth was not only harder to believe than a scandal, but in a way, worse: The Crystal Cathedral couldn’t pay its bills.
How could this be?
I remember thinking this would be easier to accept as true if there had been a misdeed by someone connected to the church. As bad and as scandalous as that would have been, I might have been more understanding. I had never been a donor of the Crystal Cathedral, but that really isn’t the point. The point is, here was a major house of worship collapsing before a national audience, and it was all because the church was broke.
Keep in mind that we are talking not about an individual, but rather a church: a group of believers coming together to worship, instruct, and grow in their faith. This means there is a poor-leadership aspect to consider as well. To those who attended the Crystal Cathedral, either in person or via television, their church placed the needs of the people and the calling given in the Bible on the back burner in favor of worldly financial desires. The church is now sold and has become property of the local Catholic diocese, which has renamed it “Christ Cathedral” and will use it as a place of worship. Those who counted on the Crystal Cathedral are now left in the proverbial cold because the debt gamble (yes, it was a gamble) did not work out.
When a church has debt, including a mortgage, it is usually not just one person who made the error but rather a board of people who are mature in their faith, who all have to sign off on placing themselves and their church (including all other members) in bondage—I mean debt.
To the reader who does not have a belief system based on the Elohim of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you may be asking yourself, “Why does this matter? What’s the big deal if a church has a mortgage and debt?” The question is a great one from the perspective of a person outside of that belief system, but to someone who does have faith in the Author of the Bible, that Author clearly states, “For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have suffcient to finish it?” in Luke 14:28, and “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender” in Proverbs 22:7.
My response to learning of this gross mismanagement of funds and poor stewardship as it relates to the Crystal Cathedral left me thinking what I hope you are thinking, that certainly this is a one-case situation. Surely there are not many churches in this predicament.
Then I started doing some research.
It turns out that the bankruptcy of the Crystal Cathedral is not an anomaly at all. In fact, I learned that the Western world is facing record numbers of church foreclosures!
As I mentioned in the Introduction, church foreclosures are at an all-time high, according to CoStar, and individuals in the lending industry say that this crisis may be even worse than what those official foreclosure statistics suggest, because nobody wants to look like the bad guy and go after a church.
This was confirmed by Scott Rolfs, managing director of religious and education finance at Ziegler, an investment bank, in a 2011 article on the Huffington Post. “Churches are among the final institutions to get foreclosed upon because banks have not wanted to look like they are being heavy handed with the churches,” said Rolfs.9
Now the average reader may be asking themselves, “Why does any of this concern me? I am not a board member of a church. I’m not a pastor of a church. Heck, I don’t even regularly attend a ‘traditional’ church.”
The answer, unfortunately, is even worse than what happened to the Crystal Cathedral. First, we need to realize that the Bible considers the true “Church” the body of believers, not an actual building or denomination. Second, when we look at the body of individual believers, the story, as I said, gets even worse. The leadership of Crystal Cathedral still had their own personal income and finances to sustain their