The economy sucks right now. It just does.

Arguments for not giving money to the local church, ministries, or charities are easy to find.

The church of which I am a pastor has approximately 600 people in attendance on average, 400 of which are adults.

Our approximate giving each week is around $5,000. If we are to divide this number by the number of adults…we’re looking at $12.50 from each person each week.

We currently do not own the building we are in. We rent it from another church that has moved into a larger, newer facility.

Our church currently has 4 total full-time staff people which averages out to 150 people per staff member. The average in the United States is 75 people per staff member of a church.

Each week, we are scraping by and we’ve come up with some seriously creative ways to keep things running. God has provided for our needs in incredible ways. Our desire would be to own the building we are in, so that we don’t have the fear of “homelessness” (although admittedly…we are almost overly-trusting) and so many limitations we are currently experiencing…such as limited use of the building.

As a pastor, I’ve heard a wide-variety of thoughts and opinions regarding giving to the local church. Personally, my wife and I have given more than 10% of our overall income to the local church for more than 5 years now. It’s rough honestly. I’d much rather have that money in my pocket, but I also recognize it was never mine in the first place.

One of the hardest parts of being in ministry is knowing the calling that God has placed on us. We know that God has called us to do incredible things in our city, many of which cost money. This gets sketchy because we know that God will provide us with what we need, but we don’t know how much of that is dependent upon the obedience of his people.

God doesn’t need our money to do things. He just doesn’t.

That doesn’t mean we are off the hook though…especially since money is the number one contender for our hearts.

Thoughts??

Everyone’s definition of normal is a little bit different. Mine involves illness and injury. A man once told me that I seem to have some sort of a black cloud riding over me. Friends joke that if something was ever going to happen to someone, it would be me. I’m not quite sure what all of this means, but I do know that I’ve had a lot of strange things happen to me.

The current issue is that I discovered what looked like a spider bite on my leg a few weeks ago. It didn’t look bad, but it didn’t get better. About a week ago it turned into a raging infection and I went to the doctor. They ruled it a staph infection, numbed me up, and cut my leg open. The doctor took cultures of it to make sure it wasn’t something worse. I got called yesterday to let me know it was MRSA (an antibiotic resistant staph infection that can be deadly) and my first thought was…of course it’s MRSA. Why wouldn’t it be MRSA?

Honestly I’m not too worried about it. I’ll be taking care of myself and doing what the doctor tells me to do. God will see me through just like He always does. I just find it interesting.

It’s like the time I got bit by a Brown Recluse Spider…

…or how about when I had my ring finger almost completely severed.

Let’s not forget the time my two front bottom teeth were knocked out in a wood-chipping accident.

…or the time when I developed massive kidney stones and had to be taken to the E.R. – Collapsed lung, heart distress, and bloody sand for a week!

Oh, and that time I broke multiple fingers all at once.

…got bit by some insane caterpillar (yes…a freaking caterpillar) and had my hand almost explode.

Or when I had my throat swell almost completely shut in Honduras from inhaling poison ivy smoke.

…broke my nose a total of three times.

And there was that time I was jumping over a fire pit and I broke my tibia and fibula…

…the time I had an allergic reaction to ammoxicillin and I got leopard spots all over my entire body.

…the time I broke my big toe doing a perfect pirouette into a coffee table as I made fun of Allison for watching West Side Story.

Or how about that time I passed out behind the wheel, finding out later that I have what’s known as a shunt in my heart that can cause the occasional black-out.

…fell out of a tree when I was little and a piece of bark got lodged into my leg…resulting in surgery.

Ooh…and there’s that time that I got my face blasted in during a wicked game of dodgeball.

I can keep going if you’d like.

I’m just saying.