Business as an Act of Creation
By Barton Hinkle

Books on how to get rich quick rank at the top of the best-seller lists right alongside relationship and diet guides. Even Americans awash in more wealth than their parents ever dreamed of having find there is no such thing as “enough.”

 

This is as true for Christians as anyone. Even the voice of God can be drowned out by the clamor of Mammon. That’s why the 3,000-member Bon Air Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia sponsors a small group that meets in a classroom to learn money management according to Christian principles.

 

Bon Air sits at the lower end of the “megachurch” category—where some institutions claim 20,000 members. Like many of these large houses of worship, Bon Air offers a smorgasbord of study courses rivaling that of a community college. Subjects range from introductory Spanish, to a “New Life” class for singles, to a summer music camp. Critics of megachurches deride what they call their “Wal-Mart of the spirit” approach to attracting members. By trying to be so many things to so many people, some ask, do they risk diluting the message of the Gospels?

 

It’s a fair question. The notion of “Christian financial management” has a slightly incongruous ring to it, along the lines of “Muslim drinking games” or The Great Big Hindu Hamburger Book. But the producers of Bon Air’s courses point out that the Bible contains more than 2,300 verses related to money. The reason, they say, is that God knows that money competes with Him for our attention more than anything else.

 

Every class at Bon Air begins and ends with a prayer. Students also share prayer requests of a personal nature. Each financial class deals with a specific subject: investing, work, teaching children to spend wisely, gambling, charity, etc. Workbook lessons show students how to make a budget, balance a checkbook, and pay down debt. Those who start the financial course expecting to become masters of the Wall Street universe soon learn otherwise. While investing and money management makes up a significant portion of the ten-week class, it is ancillary to the principal subject of managing money according to God’s will.

 

A portion of class time is spent discussing God’s word, and the proper frame of mind in which money matters should be approached. Students are counseled that it is not enough to give to charity simply to fulfill an obligation, but that donations should be a way of honoring God. (Graduates of this course at churches nationwide reportedly increase their charitable giving by 50 percent.)

 

The broad goal of the course is financial freedom—with two meanings. In the obvious sense there is freedom from debt and material worry. This does not require making bales of money, but merely living within one’s means and planning for the future. The other, deeper goal is not freedom from, but freedom to serve God, do good works, and lead a fruitful life.

 

The course stresses stewardship—the idea that the things we have do not really belong to us, but to God, who entrusts them to us for safekeeping. One textbook introduces a concept that could strike some Americans as alien: setting a ceiling on wealth. Once you have earned enough to live comfortably, you can stop thinking about money and turn your life over to service. How much good might be done in a community, one videotape asks, if 20,000 residents used their financial freedom to donate $50,000 a year to a good cause? That’s a cool $1 billion per year.

 

The notion of doing good while doing well has gained popularity. Thompson Financial reports that the number of faith-based mutual funds more than doubled between 1999 and 2002. An Internet search produces a wealth of sites offering Christian financial advice, investments, career opportunities, and financial services. The course taught at Bon Air is produced by Crown Financial Management, a non-profit Christian organization based in Gainesville, Georgia with nearly 300 employees (most of whom volunteer their services as a personal ministry), whose workbooks are used in small-group sessions attended by 100,000 people each year. (Others are reached through radio broadcasts and international programs.)

 

One Bon Air discussion focuses on what it means to be rich. One can be as wealthy as Bill Gates, yet lead a spiritually empty life. Conversely, people with only modest amounts of money can lead lives that are full, deep, intense, sumptuous, rich. And a believer ultimately succeeds by storing up treasures in Heaven, not on Earth.

 

Bart Hinkle is an editorial writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.