Holy Currencies

Six Blessings for Sustainable Missional Ministries

Eric H F Law

• Publisher: Chalice Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780827214934
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Called a "must read for Christians paralyzed in survival mode, " Holy Currencies teaches you how your ministry can become sustainable, grow, and thrive.

Money is not the only currency your ministry needs.
Author Eric H. F. Law shows us how the six blessings of time and place, gracious leadership, relationship, truth, wellness, and money flow through successful missional ministries. And they can flow through your ministry too! Learn how to use these gifts to rejuvenate, recirculate, regenerate, and expand your ministry through Law's insightful stories, instruction, processes, exercises, and activities. Tools in the book help evaluate how your church uses each gift and enables church members to measure and value the six blessings. Holy Currencies will push you to think beyond your church's current boundaries and create rich, sustainable missional ministries.

CHAPTER ONE

Praise God from Whom All
Blessings Flow

The earth is the LORD’s and all that is in it,
the world, and those who live in it;

for he has founded it on the seas,
and established it on the rivers. (Psalm 24:1–2)

Everything belongs to God because God created everything (Colossians 1:16), including money (Haggai 2:8). God renews and recreates the earth so that there is an abundance of resources for all to share and enjoy. Since we do not own anything, we are not to keep anything.

When you send forth your spirit, they are created,
and you renew the face of the ground. (Psalm 104:30)

In God’s creation, everything gets recycled, including that which we consider to be waste. From biology class, I learned that the oxygen we breathe into our lungs is used to refresh our blood; in exchange, we breathe out carbon dioxide, which plants and other green organisms take in, working with the earth’s sun and water through a process of photosynthesis, creating not only food but releasing oxygen for us and other creatures to breathe in. Our roles as children of God are to be part the recirculation of resources so that all living things on earth may share God’s abundance.

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10–11, NIV)

In this text from Isaiah, God further instructs us to learn from nature’s recycling ways, applying them to human relationships and creating sustainable communities. We are to receive God’s word like water. As God’s word works through our lives, our communities, and our nations, it enables growth, rejuvenates communities, and then is recycled again. Even with God’s word, we do not own it but must recirculate it, again and again offering blessings to all who receive it.

When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” (John 6:12)

On these fundamental assumptions we begin our exploration of the Cycle of Blessings:

1.God owns everything.

2.God gives abundantly.

3.We are not to keep God’s resources; we are to circulate these resources.

4.God’s blessings are then recycled to create more blessings.

Currencies Must Flow

My family was considered poor by the monetary-minded world, but I did not know it. We did not have much money, because as far back as I can remember, money was coming in and going out, and coming in and going out again. However, in the process, no one was hungry. There was also a job for anyone who wanted to work and be part of the currency of money that moved through the family business. I do not want to paint a completely rosy picture, because there were times when I knew my mother was strapped for money, but, just as the stories often told to us, something always worked out, often in the form of “sisters”—my mother’s trusted friends—coming through with some money to help us. My mother once explained to me about our family business this way: “We don’t make a lot of money. But everyone who works in the business gets a piece of it.” My childhood experience, being formed by my mother’s way of managing currencies in her personal life, family and business, implanted a fundamental perspective I have had about money and other currencies that might have played a part in the success and sustainability of the Kaleidoscope Institute many years later. That is, I have always thought of currency as something that moves.

My parents started a music school in Hong Kong in the 1960s, which has continued until today in New York City with the same business model—a sustainable business that never makes much money, but certainly has made a lot of friends and provided livelihood for many people over the years—people such as music teachers who were like my parents’ daughters and sons, workers who were like brothers or sisters to us growing up, and students who had grown up and brought their children to take music lessons at our music school. When I visit the music school in New York, I often hear parents of students talking about how they were students at my parents’ music school in Hong Kong. In the last fifteen years, I have been involved in the management of the music school in New York and, indeed, the company has not made much money. But it is the movement of the money, the “currency,” that has kept the business going—providing jobs, learning, and enrichment for thousands of people over the years. Here is how it works:

My father was a furniture maker. He got in the business of assembling pianos, focusing on the carpentry work. My mother noticed that it was very expensive for a child to learn to play the piano—the family had to buy a piano and pay for private lessons. She also noticed that children did not have a lot of places to go after school. She further noticed that parents who worked could use a few more hours each week to do what they needed to do to support their families. What she noticed was the truth that drove the ministry’s need. With my father’s construction and carpentry skills, we built a number of soundproofed rooms in our apartment, put a piano in each room, and hired teachers to offer lessons. We charged the parents a modest amount each month; in exchange, the students received one half-hour lesson a week and could come to practice five days a week. The fee collected would be shared equally with the teachers—50 percent for the teacher, and 50 percent for the school to support the staff who administered, maintained, and coordinated the students and scheduling. Follow the flow of currencies and you will discover why this business model has been sustainable for over fifty years. The modest amount of money that the parents paid flowed into supporting a “time and place” for their children to learn. The arrangement also exchanged the modest amount for a few extra hours in the week that the parents could use to provide for their family, knowing their children were safe. This money further flowed into providing an income for the teachers in exchange for their “leadership” and expertise in this art. The currency continued to flow in providing jobs for others—the piano tuners, the cousin who lived with and worked for us in exchange for doing the maintenance of the rooms. The company never made any money because money did not stay; it kept moving. It flowed in constructive directions, providing blessings for many: the learning of an art, safety, extra time to build wellness of individuals and family, etc.

I grew up with a Chinese saying, “Water is money.” I often heard it as a joke, especially when it was raining—all the rain became a wish or a symbol of financial abundance. In spoken Cantonese, I also heard people use the word for “water” in place of money. Perhaps we should think of the currency of money or any other currency as being like water—it should move and flow. In the summer, I make sure that there are no pools of stagnant water around the house, because they will be a breeding environment for mosquitoes and other insects that are carriers of diseases. When water does not flow, it creates opportunities for destructive things to grow. In other words, it rots. I would say the same thing goes for money and resources: when they are not flowing, or when we hold on to them, they turn rotten and become breeding pools for trouble and unsustainability.

There was the same amount of money in existence before and after the 2009 financial crisis in the United States. Where did the money go? Some people in the financial “industry” had been reaping benefits from inflated financial transactions for years, but instead of recirculating the money back into the system—especially back to investors—they held on to it and stopped the flow. It then turned rotten and is stinking up the whole country.

Some give freely, yet grow all the richer;

others withhold what is due, and only suffer want.
(Proverb 11:24)

Blessing or Curse—Our Choice

In 2010, we witnessed not only the stagnation of money in the United States, but also the use of money in exchange for destructive and divisive causes. For example, in the November 2010 election, Meg Whitman, a candidate for governor of California, reportedly spent $144 million on her campaign. Living in California, I remember being bombarded by negative ads over and over again on all the major TV channels. We are talking about $144 million, all going to buy time on TV for negative, divisive ads! Imagine what we could do with $144 million for constructive, life-giving, relationship-building, truth-telling, and leadership-developing efforts! How about helping 1440 families to keep their homes, supporting 144 California schools, empowering 144 sustainable communities, creating 14,400 jobs, or forming job-training programs for 14,400 people! I am sure if Ms.

Whitman had done any of these constructive things with her money, she would have gotten the votes she needed to become the next governor of California!

So, we have a choice in what we do with the resources over which we have control. We can choose to hold on to them and let them turn rotten, or use them to further divisive and destructive causes; or, we can choose to let them flow in life-giving, truth-telling, relationshipbuilding, community-enhancing ways.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live. (Deuteronomy 30:19)

From Money to Blessing

Recall an earlier time in your life when money was flowing in a way that gives blessings. It could be a story or experience in which your parents, relatives, friends, or elders had used money in a way that built relationships, told the truth, fostered wellness, or built up the community.

•Where were you?

•Who was there?

•What were you doing?

•Where did the money involved come from?

•What blessings did the money exchange for?

•Who or what group was enriched?

•What long-term benefits did this create?

How did this experience impact the way you use money today…

…personally?

…for your ministry?

Currency Redefined

The word currency comes from the Medieval Latin word currentia, which literally means “a flowing,” and from the Latin word currere, which means “to run or flow.” It was John Locke in 1699 who first used the word currency to refer to circulation of money.¹ Since then, the word currency in the English language has been used most often as referring to money.

Merriam-Webster.com defines currency as “something that is in circulation as a medium of exchange.” I would like to ride on the word something in this definition and explore the concept of currency beyond just money. From the example of my family business to the formation of the Kaleidoscope Institute, there were certainly other currencies besides money that were in circulation as mediums of exchange, which made these ministries sustainable. When I researched different sustainable ministries and how they functioned, the key question was: “What other currencies are flowing through this ministry?” As I learned more and more about what made these ministries sustainable and missional, several currencies—mediums of exchange—kept surfacing as keys to their successes. They are (as mentioned in the Introduction):

•Time and Place

•Gracious Leadership

•Relationship

•Truth

•Wellness

•Money

These are not the only currencies, for others are at work in many sustainable and missional ministries. I am simply pointing out, from my research and observation, that these are the essential ones that a sustainable and missional ministry must have circulating through ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedications
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow
• Chapter Two: Do More with Less
• Chapter Three: Currency of Relationship
• Chapter Four: Boundless Compassion
• Chapter Five: Currency of Truth
• Chapter Six: Feeding the Multitudes
• Chapter Seven: Currency of Wellness
• Chapter Eight: Reach for Wellness
• Chapter Nine: Currency of Gracious Leadership
• Chapter Ten: Road to Emmaus
• Chapter Eleven: Currency of Time and Place
• Chapter Twelve: GracEconomics
• Chapter Thirteen: Currency of Money
• Chapter Fourteen: Living the Cycle of Blessings
• Appendix A: Currencies Inventory of Your Church
• Appendix B: How Are the Currencies Flowing in Your Ministry?