As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
“A husband and wife team of pastors from Eden Prairie, Minnesota, are now facing tough questions after selling their longtime church to developers then splurging on a million dollar luxury lakefront home while telling their members that God now wants them to worship in ‘micro churches’ held in their homes.” - Christian Post
“A ‘brother’ and sister pair of Australian missionaries, who argued that it is ‘against God’s will’ to pay taxes to their government, were ordered by a court to pay more than $1.6 million they owed after they failed to convince the Supreme Court of Tasmania.” - Christian Post
“Religious donations dropped nearly $2 billion last year, reversing a years-long trend of steady growth, according to the Giving USA Foundation’s annual report on philanthropy.” - Christian Headlines
“The group that brought the federal lawsuit against the cash version of the clergy housing allowance has decided not to appeal the unanimous Federal Appeals Court ruling that upheld the thing. They have a clever title to this news: Appeals Court Blesses Housing Allowance.” - SBC Voices
“In the ordinary non-profit world, there are checks and balances on these things. There are boards which hold officers accountable for their actions. There are auditors… But things are very different in a Catholic context.” - Washington Examiner
Twice I’ve had opportunity to manage the finances of another individual. The first was my son Roger’s deployment to Iraq. He was a student at Saint Cloud State and a reservist in the USMC when he was called up and had to deploy. It happened rather suddenly. He and I took these steps:
One of the most telling characteristics of our culture is how we collectively determine an individual’s standard of living. The concept of a “standard of living” is something like a high-jump bar by which we gauge the quality of our daily lives. Some people cannot clear the bar and we say they experience a “low standard of living.” Others clear the bar with considerable room to spare and we declare that they enjoy a comparatively “high standard of living.” Those who fall between these two sub-sets keep jumping, but never seem quite sure if they clear the bar or not.
Read the series.
Kludge. Also kluge: “’An ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a distressing whole’ (Granholm); esp. in Computing, a machine, system, or program that has been improvised or ‘bodged’ together; a hastily improvised and poorly thought-out solution.”1
“He’s not trying to roast the pastors, but he just wants to raise a question.” - W. Examiner
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