Money and ministry -- usually intertwined

In the 1980s, a former boss said something to me that is still hard to forget. Discovering my decision to leave the radio news business after a decade to go to seminary, the secular New Yorker had a facile reaction: "Oh, I hear there's good money in (the ministry)."

Hucksterism is defined by Merriam-Webster as "the condition of selling in an aggressive, dishonest and/or annoying fashion."

Since that remark, this writer has long suspected a certain cadre of my former parishioners -- hopefully a small number -- felt my vocation was essentially hucksterism. As my ex-employer might have put it, "(Ministry) is a good strategy for separating people from their money."

Money and the church are inescapable. My attitude toward ecclesial financial matters was largely shaped by an instructor with the Alban Institute, who asked this question:

"How can you lead a local church and not know where and from whom the revenue to support its work is coming from?"

The Alban lecturer was aghast at the notion that a nonprofit CEO, which is what he said a pastor is, would choose not to know all about the organization's revenue streams.

This made sense to me.

From that moment, I chose to know who gave and how much.

Not all of the lay people I've led in ministry agreed with this philosophy -- and may have led a few to label me a huckster.

It probably cost me a job once, too.

As our oldest daughter, a French minor at Southeast, might put it, "C'est la vie," that's life.

I've been out of local church work for eight years. I don't regret the quarter-century spent in the pastorate, but I'm relieved to be doing something else today. In some ways, newspaper writing is the most honest thing I've done in 61 years of living.

Money can taint ministry.

Not will, but can.

Money is necessary, yes, because where there is no margin, there is no mission.

It is incredibly tempting, though, to become the servant of money, what Jesus of Nazareth called Mammon (Matthew 6:24).

Crossing the threshold between humble servant and potential huckster is not always a bright, easily discernible, line.

You think you know where the line is as a "man of the cloth," but others may believe you crossed it.

Case in point.

Jim Bakker is a disgraced televangelist who went to prison for knowingly overselling timeshares in a Christian theme park he developed in South Carolina.

When Bakker emerged from incarceration, he said all the right things.

He respected the line.

At first.

Lately, though, he has again crossed the line into hucksterism, touting a bogus "silver solution" for the coronavirus -- a virus responsible for more than 1,000 deaths in China and which has spread to an estimated 23 other countries, including the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese schoolchildren are being kept at home, their schools closed.

Bakker's website advertises the product in a 16-ounce bottle for $40 but shoppers can buy it in bundles costing up to $300. Close inspection of the "silver solution" label reveals the product contains deionized water but no other ingredients.

Buyer beware.

I'm all for government being a watchdog, an overseer, of parachurch ministries such as Bakker's.

My attitude is forged from personal experience.

As a Pennsylvania teenager, I worked for a summer for an organization operated by Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia.

The late Jerry Falwell started the megachurch. His son, Jerry Jr., is in charge now.

Back in the '70s, we teenaged laborers were told there was no money to pay us, so we were asked to defer income until the end of August -- at which time we would be paid.

The reader of this column probably knows where this story is going.

You're right.

At the end of summer, no money.

I wrote to the parachurch ministry that fall, to the individual who made the promise, and received no reply.

I wrote again.

No reply.

At the urging of a pastor friend, I wrote to the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C.

The SEC sent me a polite reply.

There was little that could be done, I was told in a succinct letter, but the SEC would make inquiries.

Within two weeks, a check arrived from Virginia in the full amount of what I was owed.

If in doubt, make a call.

Bottom line - there are hucksters in ministry.

Not many -- and probably not in your local church.

My suspicion is accountability is high in most places of worship. Parachurch groups, though, are often the Wild West of ministry.

Be very careful when you write a check to those folks.

Occasionally, people in ministry become money's servant and forget where the bright red line is drawn.