Issue No. 428 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting announces a new book out just today—Soul and Stuff by Wes Willmer. Another must-read! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my Top-10 books of 2019 and my Book-of-the-Year pick.
Gut-Check: Soul-Check
I measure books on a sliding scale:
• Level 1: Readable—but not worthy of a review.
• Level 2: Readable/Reviewable—but may not land on my annual Top-10 list.
• Level 3: Must Read/Must Review—with new and arresting insights. (Hmmm. Never thought about that before.)
Here’s a Level 3 book—just released today: Stuff and Soul: Mastering the Critical Connection, by Wesley K. Willmer with Micah Hogan.
The authors don’t beat around the bush. They write, “When Jesus said that our heart is where our treasure is (Matt. 6:21), he showed the vital connection between our stuff and our souls. Where is your heart right now? Ask yourself what and where your treasure is, and you’ll know the answer.”
Even if you’ve read a dozen books on joyful giving, generosity, and stewarding your resources, it’s a prudent discipline to read one more—year after year, after year. Why? My friend Dick Towner often quotes Ben Patterson:
“There is no such thing as being right with God and wrong with your money.”
So…here are four reasons why “Soul and Stuff” (hot-off-the-press) is the book I’m reading—and re-reading—this year.
#1. Mastering the Three T’s. Many of us have heard a zillion sermons on the three T’s, right? Time, Talent, and Treasure. But Willmer and Hogan flip the script on us (a mark of a Level 3 book):
• T1 – Stuff is a TOOL. They quote A.W. Tozer: “Any temporal possession can be turned into everlasting wealth. Whatever is given to Christ is immediately touched with immortality.” (Whew. Think about that!)
• T2 – Stuff comes with a TEST. “…the best thing is that this is an open-book test, and you’re allowed to look at your neighbor’s answers! We should constantly have our Bibles open when making financial decisions and also ask our friends and neighbors who are further along in generosity for help and guidance.”
• T3 – Godly use of stuff is a TRADEMARK. “When God’s children bear their Father’s trademark, their giving becomes a means of others worshipping God.” Our giving and our generosity highlight God’s character. (Think about that!)
#2. Quotable Gut-Checks. Stick-in-the-ribs questions and quotes are peppered throughout each chapter like these:
• “Who sits on the chair of your own soul?”
• “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” (Jim Elliot)
• “The object of life, according to Jesus, is breathtakingly simple: Be rich toward God.” (John Ortberg)
• “In the total expanse of the human life, there is not a single square inch of which Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, ‘That is mine.’” (Abraham Kuyper)
• “Nobody is so poor that he or she has nothing to give, and nobody is so rich that he or she has nothing to receive.” (Pope John Paul II)
• “Being rich toward God is not a formula; it’s a way of life.”
• “The formation of our souls, Ruth Haley Barton says, takes place ‘incrementally over time with others in the context of disciplines and practices that open us to God.’”
• “I am convinced that the great deterrent to giving is this: the illusion that earth is our home…Heaven, not earth, is my home.” (Randy Alcorn)
• “According to a Barna survey across all generations, only one in ten Christians say that serving God with their money is their number one financial goal. One in ten! It is no surprise that the Israelites in the desert made their famous calf out of gold.”
• “Have you noticed that most financial appeals address you as the owner of resources or a donor and not the steward of God’s resources?”
• “For Jesus, generosity is an attitude of the heart long before it is a description of an act.” (R. Scott Rodin)
• “…radically and basically all sin is ingratitude.” (Karl Barth)
#3. Page 36 Gut-Check Chart. Yikes. Normally, as I’ve mentioned in other book reviews, page 25 often delivers the meat and potatoes of a book. But since this is a very short book (thumbs up!) with just 92 pages, plus a study guide and a three-page appendix, the authors gently coax us along before hammering us with the spiritual gut-check chart on page 36. They list six “Stages of Faith and Giving” with a three-column format on “Correlation of Stuff Use and Soul Transformation,” building on a model by James Fowler. I’ll list just three of the six:
• Stage 1: IMITATOR – It’s easy to pinpoint a few friends and colleagues here. “Is able to mimic the examples of others in giving when shown or instructed.”
• Stage 3: CONFORMER – “Gives because it is the thing to do. Likes recognition, tax benefits, and other personal gain from giving.” (Yeah—I know the type!)
• Stage 6: MATURE STEWARD – I think I’ll skip this one—it’s meaty. You’ll have to read the book.
My gut: page 36 is worth the price of the book. I’ve photocopied this page and taped it to my office wall—as a daily reminder about my stuff and my soul. (And LOL—as I was photocopying this page—looking out my office window, I noticed a classic 1950s cherry red Chevy drive by, prompting a subtle covetous leap in my soul.)
#4. Is it well with my soul? Read Chapter 2 on mastering the idea of soul—and you’ll never sing “It Is Well With My Soul” casually or thoughtlessly again. If you don’t know this great hymn’s origin, google the story of Horatio Spafford, who lost four daughters with the sinking of the SS Ville du Havre—yet could pen these profound verses.
There’s so much more—and I urge you to read this thoughtful book with a pen and a prayerful spirit.
To order from Amazon, click on the title for Stuff and Soul: Mastering the Critical Connection, by Wesley K. Willmer with Micah Hogan.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) The appendix in Stuff and Soul lists 10 “Biblical Principles for Stewardship and Fundraising.” Before you reference pages 113-115, write down three to five principles that you would include on the list.
2) Spoiler Alert! The summary statement reads: “When these principles are implemented, which rely on God changing hearts more than on human [fundraising] methods, the resulting joy-filled generosity of believers will fully fund God’s work here on earth.” Fully fund? Wow! Do you agree?
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“If I am always in a hurry…”
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook
One of the big ideas in the Donor Bucket, Chapter 11, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is this caution to nonprofit and church fundraising teams: “When you spend your days in fundraising, you raise money. But when you invest your life in growing God-honoring stewards, He raises up extravagantly generous givers.”
In alignment with Soul and Stuff is John Ortberg’s book, Soul Keeping: Caring for the Most Important Part of You. In his chapter, “The Soul Needs a Center,” Ortberg reminds us:
“We all commit idolatry every day.
It is the sin of the soul meeting its needs
with anything that distances it from God.”
“If I am always in a hurry to be somewhere else,
it’s an indicator that my soul has not yet found its home.”
Is it well with your soul today? (Click here to read my review of Ortberg’s book.)
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