By Pastor Jared Stillions, St. Peter Lutheran Church, Bay City, TX
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1
I am a new pastor serving in my first call. Like many of us first call pastors, I attended an ELCA seminary on debt, graduating with $30,000 owed to “Aunt” Sallie Mae with an average of 5% interest.
All through discernment and candidacy I was told, “Be spiritual; don’t let money stand in the way, God will provide you at the very least a loan.” (The gift of the Spirit is only a loan? If it’s God’s blessing why the sorrow of interest? (Prov 10:22)) As I continued through the process, I encountered this “serve yourself now, pay for it later” cheap grace attitude more and more on all different levels- institutional, synodical, spiritual, relational, congregational.
My bank of common sense – filled with deposits at a world-class research university, studying and working in engineering – was bought out and liquidated by this new thing the Spirit was doing in all our lives. “A fool dies for lack of sense” (Prov 10:21) and I was terminal.
Apparently I missed hearing Romans 13:8 “Owe no one anything, except to love one another” every time it came up on Proper 18A (Lectionary 23). Perhaps this verse was really Faux Paul or the work of a later redactor or that which did not preach Christ or something to be reduced for the sake of the Gospel or just something to be “contextualized.” And if I missed Romans 13:8, I also missed Proverbs 22:7 “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender” (Proper 18/Lec. 23 B) and 2 Corinthians 3:17 “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (Transfiguration C).
I had not tested and discerned this spirit of the new thing, this Neuedingegeist (I made that word up to sound like an important theology word), and I was deceived and in bondage (1 Cor. 12:10, 1 John 4:17, 1 Tim 4:1, Col 2:8, Gal 4:9). I had been shanghaied! I was an indentured servant to a new master, serving Aunt Sallie “Maemmon” $317 per month for 10 years. (Matt 6:24, Luke 16:13).
I wasn’t alone. My friend Kevin who attended an ELCA college before an ELCA seminary was $100,000 over his head (with seminary and candidacy consent!). No wonder it’s difficult to find “first call congregations.” Didn’t we used to call this simony?
So there I was in the rural/small town parsonage, making synod minimum guidelines, in bondage and in need of a liberator. I was engaged to be married and without a clue or a plan. While at our First Call Theological Process retreat just before my wedding I was introduced to Dave Ramsey’s work and his Financial Peace University.
I came home and researched it. I told my fiancée about it, saying, “I think this will be good for our marriage; we could start here and develop these good habits first instead of trying to overcome bad ones later.” Of course we knew that finances were a major cause of first year strife. After a couple of days of discernment, she agreed this would be healthy for our marriage.
We both thought the no credit card thing, the no car loans thing, and the pay your mortgage off early thing were weird, but we were ready to stop conforming to Aunt Sallie’s demands and learn a better way, or maybe even be transformed like Romans 12:2 says “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.”
The nearest class was 60 miles away and first met on our wedding night. Needless to say, we made arrangements to miss the first two classes. Thirteen weeks later we had a clue and a plan. The Holy Spirit was active transforming and liberating us and our checkbook. We heard the call to freedom and we wanted it. We knew the gate was narrow and the road was hard that led to life (Matt 7:14), but we wanted life.
As the weeks became months we came to understand the feeding of the 5,000 personally (Mark 6). “You will repay this.” “Lord, not even six months wages will repay this!” “What do you have?”
We began to see that God had already given us everything we needed even if sometimes it looked like a measly five loaves and two fish; and what is that compared to the demands of thousands? Our two salaries – a first call pastor and a teacher- were plenty, more than enough – as in with-baskets-left-over more than enough! We were given the power to avoid additional debts and other financial mistakes.
Our giving to the congregation and our alma maters cheerfully increased. We began to base our congregational giving on a percentage of our income rather than a particular dollar amount. We decided to simply give 10% of whatever our paychecks were. And we also added Lutherhill’s capital campaign, “A Place for All People” to our planned giving.
We had some help along the way. Our wedding gift registry surpassed our needs and wants. Our congregation recognized their pastor’s need for deliverance and graciously followed the synod’s Compensation Guideline’s suggestion to help me with payments. The Guidelines suggest providing 5-10% of the monthly payment in additional compensation. St. Peter gave us an additional $40 a month (12% of the minimum payment) which became $840 toward our $30,000 goal.
We lived on cash. Our honeymoon, trips home to family, furniture and inevitable car maintenance were all paid in cash- our own cash. This wasn’t some “Prayer of Jabez/Creflo Dollar/prosperity gospel/pray hard enough and God will give you more” nonsense. Instead God renewed our minds so that we would see him present and active in our actual circumstances. Or, as others like to say, we “learned to live life on life’s terms” and not Visa’s.
It turns out a plan, a clue, and minimum balance in the checking account really are “Murphy[‘s Law] repellant,” as Dave Ramsey likes to say. God had already richly blessed us for the mission at hand. We call this stewardship.
While in Financial Peace University my wife and I learned how to talk about money. We learned to articulate our wants and needs, our desires and wishes. We learned to set mutual goals and measure our progress toward them. We learned to leave our old ways and cleave to our new way (Gen 2:24). We learned a godly, reverent way to manage our finances (the eusebia of 1 and 2 Tim). We learned to live in today, trust for tomorrow and not pay for yesterday. We experienced Hebrews 13:5 “be content with what you have; for he has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’” We had no choice but to play together on the same team. Our God was big enough to provide for our future; we didn’t need Wells-Fargo to cover for him.
In January of this year we had a little over $26,000 left to repay. In February our congregation hosted Financial Peace University for our community. As I facilitated the class our desire for deliverance increased. If the devil prowls like a roaring lion (1 Pet 5:8), then debt chases you like a cheetah after a gazelle (cf. Prov 6). We shifted from repelling future financial stupidity to “gazelle intensity” to out run that cheetah.
Now for the miracle – which really wasn’t a miracle at all but what happened when we both, working like a team, worked the plan that we agreed to…On September 29, 2010 Aunt Sallie cashed our check that entirely paid off our debt! (Actually, as I type this, I am awaiting a $0.66 refund due to Aunt Sallie’s overreach.)
Today, we have no credit cards, no student loans, no personal or family loans, and no car loans. We both have life insurance, are finishing a three-month’s salary cash emergency fund and look forward to building IRAs and increasing our giving.
We can’t wait for the Friday we’ve arranged our work schedules so that we can call Dave Ramsey’s radio show and scream to the world “WE’RE DEBT FREE!”
We often think of financial stewardship questions as issues for “church administration” or “household financial management.” My wife and I have learned that our hearts and our wallets are clearly linked. This has been a journey of spiritual growth, of soul care, for us. We look forward to a new kind of freedom that God has brought us to as we will continue to manage our finances, live within our means, and avoid the ravenous cheetah of debt in our lives.
Author’s note: Thank you to Dave Ramsey for many of the Bible verses and the idea of “Gazelle Intensity”.
