Dr Paul Allen

McKinley-Theodore Roosevelt "Prosperity" Metal Elephant Coin Bank, ca. 1900 (Photo credit: Cornell University Library ) Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God , who gives us richly all things to enjoy.— 1 Timothy 6:17 We in the churches seem unable to rise above the fiscal philosophy which rules the business world; so we introduce into our church finances the psychology of the great secular institutions so familiar to us all and judge a church by its financial report much as we judge a bank or a department store . A look into history will quickly convince any interested person that the true church has almost always suffered more from prosperity than from poverty. Her times of greatest spiritual power have usually coincided with her periods of indigence and rejection; with wealth came weakness and backsliding. If this cannot be explained, neither apparently can it be escaped. . . . The poi...

Jesus is considered by scholars such as Weber to be an example of a charismatic religious leader. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Hebrews 13:5 ( NIV ) reads: “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you.’” The writer of Hebrews hits on the real struggle: our dissatisfaction comes from missing God’s intimate connection to the whole of our existence, not just our finances . We can’t fix a checking account balance unless we first fix what drives our priorities in this world. And our priorities must begin with God, not the inflated values of a world bent on gorging itself on one fleeting delicacy after another but never truly being filled. Like our physical diets, our spiritual menus must include real foods, not merely emotional candy that leave us unhealthy and always craving more. Spiritual energy and vitality come only from living lives devoted to a deeper understanding of who we...