It’s a common scam: find the leader of a do-gooder organization. Change your display-name so that an email looks like it’s coming from that executive to their staff. Ask the colleague not to phone, but rather communicate only by email, since the senior minister is 1-in a meeting 2-at prayer or 3-otherwise occupied, and request gift cards. My staff knew to call or email me anyway and ask if this was really me. They prepared a warning for others.
I told one fellow pastor my philosophy, shared more than once from the pulpit: if I were standing in front of you asking you for money, please do not give it to me. They responded, “Oh, that’d be different.” So let me reiterate: no, it would not. Wise churches do not allow pastors to handle hard currency. Too many have done too much harm already. My family member who has been defrauded out of 6 figures (that we know about) spent it all on gift cards for strangers. He never met one of the hundreds of people offering to be his friend.
There are those who think that religion itself is a pyramid scheme, a sort of ponzi scam. Manipulate followers into passing the money upward and move on. We are no better on this view than a west African gang calling it “reparations,” or a televangelist selling snake oil. There is no non-criminal version of this, so they claim.
I was with two lawyers recently with nearly 100 years of practice between the two of them. They were lamenting this poor firm, that unjust practice, the other entity that gives their profession a bad name. Not dissimilar from the stories of abusive religious practices we all know well. And I realized: no one says, based on such experience, “We should have no laws.” We all want better laws, better enforced; more reputable law practice, especially when you’re on the business end of a legal problem. But no one is in favour of anarchy or chaos, except those who stand to benefit by preying on the weak.
So how is what we do when TEMC asks for money any different from scammers or ambulance-chasing lawyers?
When we invite an offering, we are asking you to join up with God’s mission to repair creation. Everything we do as a church is part of that endeavor. Not just our earmarked moneys for refugee benefit or the food bank or digging wells overseas or for housing the vulnerable here in Toronto, but also our light bill and employee pensions, every kopek and drachma. We must treat every dollar as precious as every child. We all worked for each one, did we not?
There is no other organization that can do what we do in Toronto. There are other social benefit organizations, including several layers of government. They cannot and should not speak of God. There are other religious organizations who speak of God in ways we find harmful. They do not usually work to help our most materially vulnerable neighbours as much as we’d like. When we give to TEMC, that money becomes part of God’s redemption of all things in Jesus Christ, for the benefit of generations yet unborn. No one else can say that except the Church.
The great Darrell Guder likes to say “it’s not that God’s church has a mission. It’s that God’s mission has a church.” God’s mission is for the healing of the nations, the making-whole of every molecule God bothered to create in the first place.
And for that mission, I will be unscrupulous in seeking support. But I will never ask you for money for personal benefit. If I ever break this promise, please know, I am not myself. But God has mercy even for those now compelled to do harm by others’ abuse. One day, there will be no compulsion, only freedom, no buying or selling, only banqueting, no sinning, only salvation. Bring that day soon, Lord Jesus, Amen.
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