I can’t agree more. And I patiently waited for someone to start this thread, then I decided I might as well. My driving desire is to determine what the Light of Scripture portrays on the subject. I fear the world’s perceptions and deceptions have distorted many Christians’ views on the subject. A couple days ago I had a brief visit with someone I occasionally run into at the local library and he asked me if I was familiar with Gary North’s books. Something I read that day is still going through my mind as I write this post. Here it is: Gary North, president of the Institute for Christian Economics, in his book Tools of Dominion The Case Laws of Exodus, writes,Pelerin wrote:Or: There’s something that grates about being expected to take a lower salary “for the sake of the mission” that’s being funded by some fabulously wealthy businessmen and businesses that give instead of going.joshuabgood wrote:I get what you are saying Dan, and I don't begrudge him at all. And I don't fault them. Still for the record, I also get what Hats Off is saying. There is something that grates on a 40-50K a year person that is scraping to donate/tithe to a nonprofit and then find out the nonprofit leader is making six figures or more. (Once in another life, as a Principal and then Assistant Superintendent in the NYC DOE I experienced salaries at or above that level.) Personally, though, now as the leader of a nonprofit Christian school, I don't like the idea of making a lot more than many of those who sacrifice/give to support our work. Same goes for pastors. I know there are pastors that make six figures, but it rubs me the wrong direction if they make more than their average offering givers.Dan Z wrote:You'd be hard-pressed to find many if any CEOs of $140 million organizations (even non-profits) who were paid only $100K, especially with the skill-set and responsibility needed to manage the fiscal, personnel, and relational realities of the position. Most donors would expect nothing less I believe.
I realize it means I'll never have a "cabin" in the mountains and I'll never have a "camper" or a college fund...but I'd rather do that than live off the backs of givers.
Or a little further: Being involved in a nonprofit earns a lot of social benefit for major donors and board members, especially in Mennonite circles. Is it fair to ask the actual mission workers to make sacrifices to subsidize a status symbol?
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We like to imagine the idealized hard-scrapping sacrificially-funded nonprofit, but in reality a well-run nonprofit needs a lot of funding—and wealthy people to provide it. I think the two pictures—yours and mine—are both true and they’re in tension. And I don’t think that tension will be resolved until we decide what we really think about wealth. But this is probably another thread.
I fully expect MN readers will wonder, “Why in the world did he dare to quote someone so far from an Anabaptist.” My reply, “Because just like the comparison of the ancient Jew to today’s Protestant, if Jehovah could use wicked men to discipline the Israelites, He certainly can use the writing of a Protestant (possibly even quasi-liberal at that) to exhort Plain people to recheck His mirror whether Biblical principles of Stewardship are still to be found among them.We are witnessing today a recapitulation of Moses’ experience with the Jews of his day. Protestant fundamentalist Christians have their eyes on the sky, their heads in the clouds, their hearts in Egypt, and their children in the government’s schools. So, for that matter, do most of the other Christian groups . . . If the modern church were honest,. it would rewrite one of the popular hymns of our day: “O, how hate I thy law, O, how hate I thy law. It is my consternation all the day.” But the modern church, hating God’s revealed law with all its Egyptian heart, is inherently dishonest. It is self-deceived, having no permanent ethical standards to use as an honest mirror. The hearer of the word who refuses to obey, James says, is like a man who beholds his face in a looking glass, walks away, “and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was” (James 1: 24b). The modern Christian refuses even to pick up the mirror of God’s law and look.
Discuss and disgust at will