Our Relation to Financial Goals

The last days of earth's history are de­scribed by the apostle James as a time when men will resort to all sorts of schemes to amass riches. The mad rush for possession of money has caused the world to lose its sense of spiritual values, by making money its god. It is this love of money that destroys the love for spiritual things. The enemy of souls, knowing full well how necessary money is for the spread of the gospel in this last generation, is doing all he can to tie up the means among our people as well as in the world. He is trying to make it exceedingly difficult for our people to get hold of sufficient funds for the prosecution of the work.

This scarcity of money seems to make it necessary to call frequently for offerings from our people, as well as to project large finan­cial endeavors, such as Harvest Ingathering, Missions Extension Fund, etc., to secure money from the people of the world. The raising of these large sums requires many weeks and months of faithful labor, from both ministers and churches; so it is most essential that we see in this great gathering of means something far greater than a mere campaign for dollars.

I believe in the raising of funds for our work through these various endeavors, but I know of nothing that will bring greater ultimate dis­appointment to church members than to take part in such efforts, merely with the thought of reaching a certain money goal, unprompted by hearts filled with the love of Christ for lost souls. Unless we have constantly in mind the thought that such lines of service as Har­vest Ingathering afford us excellent opportunity to acquaint the people with the work of our denomination and the truths we advocate, and also with the broad work of mercy we are car­rying on for the unfortunates in the dark places of earth,—unless this is the prompting motive, the raising of certain goals will bring money into the church, it is true, but will not do much to develop us in the spiritual life so essential to salvation.

The Peril of Rivalry

From experience and observation, I fear a tendency is creeping in, at times, to see in the setting of large financial goals the opportunity of getting ahead of some other church or some other conference. Where such is the case, soul winning is subordinated, and practically all the people get out of the campaign is the thought that certain churches and fields made a higher record than others. It seems to me that this is similar to the offering brought by Cain. He doubtless worked hard, assembling his materials for his offering, which probably had a higher monetary value than that of Abel's lamb. But Cain was bringing an offering without any reminder of Christ.

Our financial goals have their place in this message, and we assuredly need all the money we can raise, but working hard for financial records, without constantly keeping our hearts filled with the love of Jesus, and without giv­ing special thought to the soul-winning feature of the campaign, may put us ahead on the score board, as it were, but it will bring us leanness of soul.

Personally, I believe that we as ministers should never launch our churches into these large financial campaigns without first leading our people into a deep spiritual experience in the Lord, so that they will enter the campaign with the primary thought of bringing the truth to the homes they visit, and of acquaint­ing men and women with our work as a de­nomination. When such visits are accompanied by an earnest appeal for financial assistance, it places us far above the thought of merely seeking to gather a certain number of dollars, and at the same time brings real joy to the worker.

We wish our people to do their full part in the raising of mission goals. It is right for the minister to desire that his district carry its proportionate share of conference responsibil­ity; but if a worker fails to have his people see the spiritual side in these financial efforts, he is signally failing to exert proper leader­ship among the people. The calls for means will doubtless increase, and money will be harder to secure. Unless we lead our mem­bership to see the spiritual phase of these efforts to secure means for the work, we will not only ultimately fail to gather in sufficient money, but we will find a smaller number taking part each year. A sure way to dry up our funds is for the churches to get the im­pression that our main concern is the reach­ing of a certain financial goal, rather than the winning of souls.

As the work closes, the gathering of money will be more difficult, but when we go forth to raise funds with hearts filled with the love of Jesus, to acquaint the people with this last message of mercy, not only will we be success­ful in raising a reasonable sum of money for missions, but we will go forth with true joy and happiness because of the consciousness in our hearts that our soliciting is lifted out of the professional, commercial class that has brought such reproach upon many of the so-called religious organizations of the world. South Lancaster, Mass.