Anxiety and the American Gospel

What if the real barrier to generosity isn’t a lack of resources, but the stories we’ve believed about safety, success, and “enough”? 

When talking about the charitable assets sitting in donor advised funds, many people are eager to jump to solutions, as perhaps they should be. While we do want to address possible solutions to the DAF dilemma, we first need to uncover why this is happening in the first place.

Over the next several episodes we’re going to explore the various reasons why funds stay stagnant. And remember, we may be narrowing in on donor advised funds, but the behavioral patterns apply to all of us. You won’t have to look hard to find a story that intersects with your life, too. 

In today’s conversation, we’re going to discuss how our culture is shaping the way Christians behave with money. We'll explore the beginnings of our consumer-driven economy; we'll discuss why so many Americans suffer with money anxiety, and we'll also see how consumerism is showing up in our churches and shaping our faith.

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Idle Treasure is sponsored by the Center for Financial Discipleship.

Transcript

Setting The Problem Of Scarcity

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I don't think we understand how many billions of dollars are spent on us to make us want more and feel like we're not enough and to keep us in a constant state of scarcity. Which the irony is we have such wealth and we're so afraid.

SPEAKER_05 0:19

When talking about the charitable assets sitting in donor advice funds, many people are eager to jump to solutions, as perhaps they should be. While I do want us to address possible solutions to the DAF dilemma, we first need to uncover why this is happening in the first place. Over the next several episodes, we're going to explore the various reasons why funds stay stagnant. Once again, our job is not to judge these reasons, but to get curious about them. And remember, we may be narrowing in on donor advice funds, but the behavioral patterns apply to all of us. You won't have to look hard to find a story that intersects with your life too. In today's conversation, we're going to discuss how our culture is shaping the way Christians behave with money in an episode titled Anxiety and the American Gospel. I'm your host, Courtney Markley, and I'll admit, when I first heard how much money was in DAFT, I was shocked. But it led me on a journey to discover what really lies beneath this number. Some Christians say there isn't a problem. Others are frustrated by the amount of charitable assets not getting deployed. But this story isn't just about donor advice funds. It is about you and me. This is a story about how our culture has shaped the way Christians behave with money. It's a story about the goodness of wealth and the weight of responsibility we feel to steward at wealth. It's a story about the vulnerable reasons why we often keep money to ourselves. And it's about the opportunity of a moment. Journey with me as we seek the answer. How should Christians respond to this idle treasure?

SPEAKER_00 2:43

So let me share a story with you

Introducing Patrick Johnson

SPEAKER_00 2:45

about that real quick.

SPEAKER_05 2:46

This is Patrick Johnson, founder and visionary of Generous Church. Patrick and his team served the global church, equipping leaders from around the world to engage in biblical generosity. He started his career as a financial advisor, but through some wrestling with God's word, he was compelled to leave the advising world and begin spreading the message of generosity. The first 15 years of his ministry career were spent primarily focused on the American church, but his most recent years have spent almost exclusively outside of the U.S.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

One of my investment strategies has always been for us personally to own technology stocks and treat them like private equities. So I bought Facebook early on, I bought Tesla early on, I bought Amazon early on, and I'm a buy and hold strategy guy. I figured I'm gonna treat them like private equity, I'm not gonna sell them because I believe in tech. At the time, my my thinking is changing on this, but I saw the impact that technology was going to have on our world. And so I thought this would be a good thing to invest in. So I've held these forever and they keep growing and growing and growing. But in 2020, when COVID hit, I listened to Andy Krauss talk about the great freeze and how the world was going to, and I got I panicked. My wife's a physician, she's makes great money. I'm in ministry. We've we've made a lot of money, invested money well. But in 2020, I was walking to an airport in Dallas and I said, I'm gonna sell all my stock. Like I need to like liquidate, go to cash because who knows what's gonna happen to the world. This was like February or March of 2020. And I said, I'm gonna sell and be safe. And so I sold everything. And Tesla was one of my biggest holdings at the time. I didn't think much of it. I sold it, and it was six-figure, about six figures a million dollars. It was a five-figure sell. Okay, so it was not like insignificant money. I'm talking about significant money. I didn't think much about it because I was trying to keep our ministry afloat. COVID was going, everything was falling apart. But I think about like 18 months to 24 months later, the Federal Reserve was pumping all this money into the economy, stock prices were going through the roof. And I just had the thought in my office, like, I wonder what my Tesla stock would be worth right now. And I pulled it up. I felt incredible shame because I saw like what it could have grown to. And my strategy, I'd always been true to my strategy of just buying and holding it. For five days, I was depressed, I felt ashamed.

Panic Selling And The Siren Of Wealth

SPEAKER_00 5:20

And one day I was out walking and I was wrestling with God, and I sort of heard that still small voice. And what God said is, What if it was a blessing? What if I protected you by having you sell that? That's the danger. That's the illusion. That's the siren call of wealth. I think there's a proverb that says, you know, the Lord's presence is, you know, our strong tower. We can run to the Lord and be safe. And then it says right after that, the rich imagine that their wealth is their fortified city. They run to it. And I think that's what God was showing me during that time was basically, what if I protected you? Do you think this would be a blessing? What if I protected you? That was a huge lesson for my life. And I don't think we learned the lesson and we don't forget it. Because I can tell you, three years later, I can tell you another story that's crazy from India, where the same thing came up again in a really provocative way, where everything went up again. It started reaching numbers where I thought, I don't even look at it, but I looked at it one day when I was in India doing ministry among these poor Indian pastors. And as I was sitting across the table from them, the numbers got so big that I started thinking, like I couldn't minister to them. I was worried about whether I should sell my technology stocks again. And I thought about the juxtaposition between these pastors. They didn't have the written language where you could type out on a computer. Everything was handwritten in their native tongue. And I was ministering to these people, worried in the back of my mind whether I should sell my technology stocks for a profit. I mean, that is deceptive.

SPEAKER_05 7:11

I wanted to sit down with Patrick because he has a unique perspective from serving Christians inside the US and around the globe. And as you can probably already tell, he's not afraid to talk about his own vulnerability with money. I asked Patrick what the biggest obstacle to generosity is, to which he replied, fear.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

I don't think we understand how many billions of dollars are spent on us to make us want more and feel like we're not enough. And I think that is a very Western issue. Is we have billions of dollars through social media, through television. I mean, think about how we're bombarded with the messages that we don't have enough, that we're not enough, that we haven't done enough. And I think one of the biggest barriers to generosity in the West is a scarcity mentality. And I think a lot of our entrepreneurial infrastructure, our capitalistic infrastructure, is designed to feed those that lack of enough in us to want us to spend, to cause us to spend, and to keep us in a constant state of scarcity. Which the irony is we have such wealth and we're so afraid.

SPEAKER_05 8:50

We are seeing unprecedented amounts of fear and anxiety run rampant in the West. Now let's clarify these terms real quick. Many people use the word fear to describe their relationship with money, but what they actually have is anxiety. Allow me to explain. Fear involves a negative emotional response to an active present threat. Think about a person who's living paycheck to paycheck with no money and savings, who just lost their job. They are probably experiencing fear about how they will put food on the table or pay their bills. With fear, the threat is happening in real time. Anxiety, on the other hand, is a negative emotional response to a perceived future threat. Nothing has happened yet, but you're worried about what may happen in the future. Anxiety is often accompanied by an escalating sense of a loss of control and worst-case scenario thinking. Imagine a person who has a stable job and a healthy amount of money and savings. They carry little to no debt, and yet they are constantly feeling pressure that their money will run out. Their thoughts often imagine a series of events that cause them to lose money or suffer harm. That is money anxiety, and three out of four US adults experience it. If we are one of the wealthiest nations in the history of the world, why are so many Americans anxious? And to make the conversation a little more personal, we could also ask ourselves why Christians seem to be just as gripped by money anxiety, even though we serve a God who tells us specifically not to fear, worry, or be anxious.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

We have such wealth and we're so afraid. If you go to other parts of the world, they have struggles and no part of the world is perfect, but they don't struggle with fear. My belief is they don't struggle with fear like we struggle with fear.

Shame, Protection, And Trust

SPEAKER_00 10:48

And I think it's because of this the water we swim in in the West of abundance financially. So much is spent on us convincing us that we're not enough, we haven't done enough, we won't have enough, and therefore we live under a mindset of scarcity, which is really a prison.

SPEAKER_05 11:08

Who created this prison uniquely mixed with abundance and scarcity? We only need to take a short trip back in time to see how our culture has slowly evolved to where it is today. Let's do a quick history lesson. In the 1700s, nearly 80% of the American population worked as farmers. It was a simple life. People consumed what they produced and traded with neighbors for necessities. Then the Industrial Revolution came, manufacturing began, and by the early 1900s, the percentage of farming in Americans dropped to 40%. Companies began making goods quicker, and the door was now open for people to begin looking beyond their neighbor to meet their daily needs. Then came World War II. Within weeks of entering the war, the US was retooling factories to create mass amounts of war supplies, and the industrial productivity increased by 96%. During this time, 17 million new civilian jobs were created and manufacturing was booming. Many people contribute the war to putting an end to the Great Depression that had been crushing the US for over a decade. Once the war ended, the need for mass amounts of manufacturing would end too, unless something changed. Politicians, New York City advertisers, and the businessmen of Wall Street gathered together to answer one dangerous question. How can we convince people to buy more stuff? Knowing their audience had just survived the largest economic downturn in the country's history, they had a tough challenge ahead of them. Most people were still prone to buy needs, not wants. They valued things for their usefulness, not their fashion. So how could they convince the American people to abandon the simple life and embrace the ever-changing world of technology, fashion, and mass consumption? The words of Wall Street banker Paul Maser give us insight into their thinking. He said, We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality. Man's desires must overshadow his needs. They would succeed with their mission. Today we call it consumerism. Consumerism is the idea that increasing consumption of goods and services purchased in the market is always a desirable goal, and that a person's well-being and overall happiness depend fundamentally on obtaining new things. I like the simplified definition. People think having a lot of stuff is important. The shift in our economy has been so profound that most Americans now believe it is their patriotic duty to shop. One person I interviewed specifically recalled the moment after 9-11 when President George W. Bush was encouraging the nation after the terrorist attacks, and he implored the people, amongst other things, to continue shopping. The change brought on by World War II had its positive effects. It created what is now known as the golden age of capitalism, a period of economic expansion spanning from 1945 into the 1970s. During this time, home ownership grew, higher education increased, we saw advancement in technology, and a wave of new manufactured goods beginning to appear. But the change in American shopping patterns wasn't without its downsides. Fast forwarding

Money Anxiety Versus Real Fear

SPEAKER_05 14:35

to today and the stats on our consumption are staggering. The average American now throws away 81 pounds of clothing per year. Americans now spend more money eating out than they do on groceries. Since the 1950s, the average house size has doubled, while the average family size is now reduced by half. So we have half the amount of people living in twice the amount of home. And these are just a few examples. As our wealth has grown, our consumption has grown as well. And this is the prison Patrick spoke of earlier. We have the ability to create wealth, but the potential goodness of it is often overshadowed by our own personal fears and desires for more. We are bombarded by messages saying we are not enough, we haven't done enough, we don't own enough, we haven't saved enough, so despite how much we have, it never feels like enough. In the words of Paul Maser, we have been trained to desire new things. With our growing consumerism and increasing anxiety, you may be wondering what's happening in the church.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

A big part of that movement appeals to people's felt needs to get them in the door. And you sort of like, okay, I get you in the door, and now I'm telling you, you have to give, you have to like sacrifice. Like, I wonder if some of the difficulties we have teaching on us because the methodology that we use to attract people is so different than the methodology that Jesus calls people into the life of sacrifice and giving.

SPEAKER_05 16:12

The church growth movement, also known as the seeker-friendly movement, came out of a desire to make churches more accessible to non-Christians. Worship songs became more contemporary, sermons became more entertaining, and the church buildings were overhauled to be more comfortable and casual. In this environment, there's rarely talk about sacrifice or suffering because of your faith. There seems to be a stark contrast between the way we do church and the way Christ lived. And perhaps we should be asking ourselves how our consumerism is hindering our witness and shaping our faith.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

One of the big conclusions I came to in working with the church in the West, which is so a good thing. So this is not judgment. I really value and appreciate the hard work that churches do in the West because of our individualistic culture. I mean, shepherding people like me who are highly individual, that's a hard thing. They've got a hard job. So I'm not criticizing, but I also think it's hard to disciple people in the West. And I think it's harder the bigger you get. I was talking to an executive pastor, former executive pastor of a mega church in the United States, who we would we all know the pastor because he's famous. And he said, Let me tell you a secret. He said, I don't think pastors who grow larger churches, most of them don't set out to create those large churches. It just sort of happens and they get stuck. They get stuck with all the overhead, they get stuck with all the staff that depends on the giving. And I think there's something unique about the way we do church in the West, which may make it more difficult to even talk about money because of the infrastructure that we have and the way we do church. And that's hard. I mean, that's sobering, right? That's sobering. And that's not a condemnation, not judging. I'm just saying I think it's a reality.

SPEAKER_05 18:04

I once observed an intense discussion between head pastors and their church leaders. Everyone was gathered to make a really important decision, and it was not a topic the group took lightly. The focus of their conversation? Well, which brand of coffee to serve on Sunday morning. People will not want to attend our church if they don't like the coffee, one pastor remarked. The sad part is he wasn't entirely wrong. I have interacted with church visitors who compare the quality of coffee served on Sunday mornings, and I know I'm not the only one. And if it's not the coffee, it's the worship music, or the style of the building, or the pastor's humor, or any other number of superficial things. While looking for a church home, we often look for churches who play the exact music we like, serve the coffee we like with people who make us feel comfortable. In short, we look for our brand of Christianity. Many churches have taken this to the next level and have created literal brands for themselves, selling sweatshirts with their logos, spending millions of dollars to publish their own music and platform celebrity pastors. They spend significant time and money growing their social media followers and crafting a very specific image of who their

How America Built Consumer Desire

SPEAKER_05 19:20

church is. It's seen in the megachurches, but it is just as prevalent in the smaller churches too. Consumerism has entered the church, and as far as we can tell, it's here to stay. The result then becomes church attenders who would rather consume than participate. They want to be entertained, not discipled. The church, and God for that matter, exists to serve them. When the methodology we use to attract people to church looks so different than the methodology of Jesus, we should pause to ask ourselves what we're really promoting. Are we inviting people into the kingdom of God or are we inviting them simply into our brand of Christianity? What has slowly happened over time, long before the seeker-friendly movement began, was that our definition of Christian started to change. What does it mean to be a Christian? In his book Eternity is Now in Session, John Orberg explains that most scholars use three central beliefs to define a Christian. A Christian is someone who believes that Jesus Christ was divine and part of a trinity. They believe that Christ died for the sins of the world, and they believe that faith in this doctrine is necessary to gain salvation. Orberg points out what is striking is that the intention to actually follow Jesus by doing what he said has no part to play in how we define Christianity today. Dallas Willard in his book The Spirit of the Disciplines observes that this failure has nothing to do with the usual divisions between Christians, such as between Protestant and Catholic, or between liberal and conservative, or between charismatic and non-charismatic, for the failure is shared on all sides. It stems from something the various parties have in common. We've somehow encouraged a separation between our faith and the everyday life.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

What is the gospel? It's the gospel of the kingdom. That's what Jesus went around proclaiming. It wasn't the gospel of salvation narrowly defined. It was the gospel of the kingdom. And what does gospel mean? That was a Roman word that meant good news, right? It was the when you won a victory in your Rome fighting against a foreign army, you would have a herald who would bring the gospel. Jesus said, I'm come to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom, the good news of the kingdom. I'm about to make things right. I'm about to bring the kingdom. I'm about to bring the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. So the gospel was not for spiritual laws. It was not your Sinner, but God has a wonderful plan for your life. Confess your sins and repent. It it because Jesus was using the word gospel before the disciples even knew about his atonement and what he was going to do on the cross. It's basically he was bringing in a kingdom reality into the false empire of Rome and was saying, if you follow me into that kingdom reality, you're going to find yourself. You're going to find your life, but you may lose your life in the process. I think we've narrowed gospel to a decision. And I think the gospel is a kingdom of which Jesus is the king. And he's leading us into what does it mean to be human and to flourish? It's about a kingdom with a king who's inviting us into a new reality of which love and generosity are the are key threads, key currencies, if you will, of that new reality. So that's why Jesus didn't say to the rich young ruler, Well, you're a sinner. I've come to die for you. Therefore, if you confess and repent, no, he said, I'm inviting you into a kingdom, but here's what you struggle with. I'm going to invite you to lay that down and to follow me into this new reality where you will find flourishing and find your life. When we talk about generosity, we think about meeting needs, we think about obedience, but really it's about flourishing. It's about us flourishing as disciples of Jesus. So think about it like this, too. So everything Jesus gave us in the Sermon on the Mount regarding provision, possessions, and generosity, it's like a yoke. You know, and the world has a yoke. The narratives of the world accumulate more. Look out for number one. You know, don't lose money. Get rich. That's a yoke that the whole system set up on, and that is a heavy yoke. That's a heavy yoke that you can bear. And Jesus, he said, okay, I'm going to tell you how to flourish with your provision, possessions, and generosity. Be careful, give freely, live simply, work diligently. All the things Jesus commanded, that is a light yoke. Every rabbi, every teacher had a yoke. It's not just the yoke that you put on an oxen and you know, that imagery. That's true. Like, you know, you can be yoked to Jesus, but if you were a first century Jew, you were looking at that and you were basically saying, the yoke is what my rabbi teaches me, how he interprets the Torah in order to flourish in life. That was called a yoke. And Jesus had a yoke when it comes to money and possessions and provision and generosity, and it was light. And I think that's what we're missing in the West. We bifurcate as Christians. We basically say, Oh, I believe what Jesus said, but it that doesn't make sense to live like that in a Western context. We have to take care of ourselves. We have to be wise. We have to be good stewards, even. That's a whole another issue. But we end up putting a yoke, a heavy yoke of the world, mixed with a little bit of Christianese, where Jesus said, I'm going to give you the light yoke to wear. And if you'll trust me, and if you'll move from that mindset of scarcity to a mindset of abundance, then you're going to carry a light yoke.

SPEAKER_05 25:26

I think many of us get stuck trying to live this both and life. We want the salvation of Jesus, but we don't necessarily want the lifestyle of Jesus. When discipleship isn't a priority, then we miss the significance of Christ as rabbi. He wasn't simply here to die for us. Yes, his death had immense significance, but his life had the utmost importance too. He was declaring the gospel long before he went to the cross. He was inviting us into a new way of living, and in this posture, his instruction around money and possessions is critical for the

Consumption’s Costs And Inner Prison

SPEAKER_05 26:05

Christian walk. So let's go back to the question: why do Christians suffer with money anxiety? Let's turn to John Reinhardt, founder and CEO of Gospel Patrons. We'll hear much more from John in a later episode, but I felt it fitting to include a piece of his message today.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

So many of us are anxious about money because we've actually trusted in it. We don't say that very often, but we're looking to money to do something for us that it cannot do. 1 Timothy chapter 6 says that we're not supposed to set our hope on the uncertainty of riches. But when we do set our hope on riches, our hope will be uncertain. That's how it works. We will feel the anxiety of riches because we've been trusting in them and they're not meant to hold our trust. Jesus says this in Matthew chapter 6. He says, Do not be anxious about what you're going to eat, drink, and wear. And then he goes on to say that God cares for the flowers of the field and the birds of the air. They don't have bank accounts, they don't store up in barns, and yet God meets the needs of all the birds. And then he asks a very interesting question. He says, Are you not more valuable than they? I love that Jesus leaves this as a lingering question. Are you more valuable to God than birds? He doesn't say you are.

SPEAKER_05 28:55

Fear of losing control, fear of making the wrong decision, fear of accidentally causing harm or offending a family member. It seems fear creates a paralyzing effect, causing funds to stay stagnant. As we think about the DAF dilemma, we have to remember the realities of the people using them. In a world suffering from anxiety, we're prone to count our losses instead of seeing the good. We are prone to run from pain instead of taking risks. We are prone to say we want change without implementing the actions to make it a reality. Our consumer-driven economy has given us little purpose to experience pain and it's given us every opportunity to run from it. But when we think about the early Christians and the various heroes of the faith, people like Paul, John Wesley, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, C. T. Studd, or Mother

Consumerism Inside The Church

SPEAKER_05 29:50

Teresa, we see men and women who found purpose through suffering. We see people who took risks and gave everything they had for the sake of knowing Christ. What makes their testimony so attractive is the same thing that causes us to retreat. But let's remember the words of Jesus that God did not send his son into the world to condemn it, but to save it. All throughout history, we see seasons of people walking away from God, followed by a beautiful return. And perhaps for us, this is the start of our return.

SPEAKER_04 30:45

Sometimes the hardest thing is knowing a way to hold. Sometimes the scary thing is finally letting go. I've spent so many days trying to heal my heart. I've spent so many nights preaching in the dark. Do you see me?

SPEAKER_05 31:44

Thank you for listening to Idle Treasure. Special thanks to Patrick Johnson and John Reinhart. Our closing song is Sometimes by Kevin Toke. Join us next week for episode number four, the Siren Call of Love.

SPEAKER_04 32:03

Sometimes I'm feeling it. Trusting in a dumb. So I'll keep letting go.