In these cash strapped days how do we determine what ministries to fund?
This is an interesting question for anyone to consider and heart-breaking one for those allocating or receiving funding.
We live in a world where success is measured by outcomes. As we commence something we ask "what outcomes will you accomplish?" and as we assess the task we ask "did you achieve your outcomes?"
Outcome-based decision making is a sensible and prudent way to allocate resources and hold people accountable in their tasks.
But Christians are aware that the emphasis of the Bible is that God's people be faithful. The faithfulness of Isaiah and Jeremiah is to be praised even though the outcome was universal rejection, because the Lord had hardened the heart of the people so that the prophet's ministry was one of judgement. In 1 Cor 4 the apostle Paul states that not only is faithfulness to be the measure but that the manner of conduct is more significant than seeming success. So why should we use outcome as the means of allocating resources?
Though God's resources are limitless, as he owns the cattle on the thousand hills, he has chosen to allocate us only a limited supply. This means that though we may want to resource every ministry we must choose which ones we will fund.
As huge as the difficulty of deciding which ministries to fund is, this is not my main problem. My problem is helping us all to recognise, believe and live that outcome and worthiness are not the same thing. We cannot help being identified with our ministries, so a decision to fund or not to fund my ministry becomes an assessment of me. But to choose to fund one thing and not another is not a statement of the worth or godliness of those engaged in the task.
A few implications flow from this.
1. the decision to fund or not to fund is not a statement of a ministry's worth or the faithfulness of those involved. (If someone is not being faithful the discussions and pastoring should have happened intensively before we get to this point!)
2. Because humans have limited knowledge the assessment process about what to fund is not perfect. No one can foretell the future, and so there will usually be division and questions raised about the process
3. Separating faithfulness from funding enables us to better make heroes out of the faithful. To not separate them often limits us as any praise seems like a sales pitch for funding.
4. Decisions on what to fund based on outcomes are always short-term decisions in order to maximise fruit for the gospel; which will in due course enable more resources to be mobilised to engage in other ministries.
