Today Kerrick is teaching live at The Journey as we continue our Financial Peace series.  The topic: How Do I Overcome the Desire for More?

Have you fallen into the trap of materialism?  Do you find yourself constantly wanting more or coveting the latest gadget or filling up more and more storage spaces? If so, maybe you need to ask God to break the bondage of materialism in your life.

I’m away today for a long weekend with Kelley and Alexander.  We will be benchmarking with this church and this one (both are alumni of my Advanced Coaching Network).

Have a great Sunday!

Nelson

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that you will do things differently.” – Warren Buffett

This week, we are discussing four financial commitments I’ve made and that I’m challenging you to make. Today, let’s examine commitment #3:

3. The commitment to become an expert on biblical stewardship.

I don’t think I had a single class on stewardship in seminary, so I had to go searching for the knowledge.  Here are the books that helped me the most:

Money Possessions and Eternity by Randy Alcorn

Money Matters in Church by Aubrey Malphurs and Steve Stroope

Rich in Every Way by Gene Getz

Developing a Giving Church by Elmer Towns and Stan Toler

Financial Peace Revisited by Dave Ramsey

I encourage you to pick up these books and work through each of them. With the current economic problems, now is the perfect time to become an expert on biblical stewardship.

I’ll wrap up this series next Tuesday.  In the meantime, have you taken me up on the offer to receive a free copy of my resource “Debt Free Pastor: Free Yourself to Lead Your Church”? You can request it by sending an email to cristina@churchleaderinsights.com with the subject line “Debt Free Pastor” and we’ll send you a free download – no questions asked.  And if  you know someone else who might want it too, just invite them to contact me.

Nelson

This week, we are discussing four financial commitments I’ve made and that I’m challenging you to make. Today, let’s examine commitment #2:

2. The commitment to give more than the tithe

Within weeks of becoming a Christian I was taught the biblical principle of tithing. I remember thinking: “What a great deal! God has gives me heaven and forgiveness and all he asks from me is 10%!” Now I’ve grown in my understanding of God since then, but my excitement about tithing has rarely waned.

I am a committed tither – not because I think God will punish me if I’m not, but because I believe it honors Him when I am. Here’s what I believe about the tithe:

1- The first 10% of all income I receive should be returned to God.

2- I return it to God by giving it to my local church

3- By returning the first 10%, God blesses the other 90%

I believe that I argue these three beliefs on solid biblical foundation (but please don’t send me argumentative notes or comments until you read the resources I’m recommending in tomorrow’s post). Here’s a belief that I’m not sure I can back up with one or more specific verses, but I do believe it captures the spirit of giving as found in the New Testament:

As I grow as a Christian, the percentage of my income I return to God through his local church should increase in proportion to my maturity.

This is why I’m committed to giving more than the tithe! Do you need to increase your giving to the local church? Is your giving increasing as your maturity is increasing?

More on the pastor’s financial life tomorrow.

Nelson

P.S. A friend of mine is committed to become a reverse tither by giving 90% of his income to the local church and living on 10%. I love it!

P.P.S. Have you taken me up on the offer to receive a free copy of my resource “Debt Free Pastor: Free Yourself to Lead Your Church”? You can request it by sending an email to cristina@churchleaderinsights.com with the subject line “Debt Free Pastor” and we’ll send you a free download – no questions asked. And if you know someone else who might want it too, just invite them to contact me.

Yesterday, I talked about four financial commitments I’ve made and that I’m challenging you to make. Today, let’s examine Commitment #1:

1. The commitment to be DEBT FREE for the rest of my life.

In 2002, just after Kelley and I had started The Journey Church, we were surprised to discover that we had over $16,000 in credit card and graduate school debt. (For the sake of this post, I will not focus on mortgage debt. Mortgage debt, if incurred through a conservative loan, could be considered secured debt – but now I’m splitting hairs!). Back to the story…about four months into our new church we felt like God was saying to us, “Get out of debt!”

We put together a 3-year plan and through God’s power we were debt free in 2.5 years!

I learned a great number of stewardship principles through this process of becoming debt free. The most important one is that a pastor’s personal stewardship will impact the stewardship life of the church.

In other word, how I manage my money will promote or limit God’s blessing on our church’s finances. I believe that one of the reasons our new church was able to become financially self-sufficient in less than three years is because I honored God by getting and staying out of debt.

I would like to give you a resource where I describe the exact process I used to become debt free. It’s called:

Debt Free Pastor: Free Yourself to Lead Your Church (FREE Download)

It’s my gift to you as an encouragement for you to become debt free. To receive the free download, send an email to cristina@churchleaderinsights.com with “Debt Free Pastor” in the subject line.

If you are in debt, I hope you’ll make the bold decision to become debt free. If you are debt free, I hope you’ll determine today to remain debt free. The future stewardship vitality of your church just might depend on the financial decisions you make.

Nelson

For the last two months I’ve been preparing for Financial Peace, a new series we started on Sunday at The Journey. This preparation made me think about my own financial journey.

If you know some of my story (and I won’t repeat it here) then you know that in my teenage/pre-Christian years I made a lot of money writing computer programs and building a computer business. Basically, I earned more money than any 16 year old should be allowed to earn. I wasted quite a bit of it but also used some of it for good (to graduate college debt free and to start my first evangelism ministry after I became a Christian).

In 1990, shortly after I became a Christian, I learned the principle of tithing. I remember thinking, “This is great! God gives me salvation and all he asks from me, from a financial perspective, is 10%.” Sounded like a good deal! (Still does, although I’ve grown quite a bit in my understanding of what God expects.)

Over the next 11 years, through marriage, pastoring, moving and attending seminary, I racked up over $16,000 in credit card debt. This slide into the red began my journey toward becoming a student of biblical stewardship.

Now, I’m happy to say that I’ve been debt free since 2004 (see my P.S. for a free resource on this). And I’ve been living according to biblical stewardship principles at a higher level than ever before. I’m sure I have a long way to go, but I’ve learned a lot.

In fact, my up and down financial journey has led me to make four very strong commitments:

1- The commitment to be debt free for the rest of my life
2- The commitment to always give more than a tithe
3- The commitment to become an expert on biblical stewardship
4- The commitment to challenge others toward Godly stewardship

Let me challenge you to make these four commitments, too! I’ll be going into more detail on each one for the rest of the week…

Nelson

P.S. In 2006, after being debt free for a couple of years, I recorded a resource where I challenged my fellow pastors to also become debt free. It’s called Debt Free Pastor. I would like to send you a free copy – just send an email to cristina@churchleaderinsights.com with the subject line “Debt Free Pastor” and we’ll send you a free download.

A busy but fun week coming up – here’s what’s happening that may be of interest to you:

Monday – I don’t normally sleep in on Monday’s but today is the exception.  Kelley and Alexander are away visiting the grandparents and my first meeting isn’t until 10:30am.  I’ll be the guy with bed head around the office!

Tuesday – Watch your CLI email for a brand new resource I did with Bob Franquiz.  It’s called Church Planting Pitfalls (you can get a sneak peak by clicking here – its available now).  Bob Franquiz is an Advanced Coaching alumni and has become a good friend, a great CLI trainer and a phenomenal resource developer/writer.  This resource was his idea and he let me tag along for the journey.  We basically asked the question – what are the pitfalls that keep a new church from growing after they launch.  If you are in a church less than 5 years old this resource is for you.

Wednesday – I’m not a big fan of retreats (not sure why – I know they are all the rage.  Maybe I’ll talk about this in a future blog) but today I’m dong a one-day retreat with our teaching team.  Our topic: 2009 Preaching Calendar. It’s one of my favorite topics.  In a future blog post or maybe an MP3 download I’ll share with you any insights we learn about planning for 2009.

Thursday – Our teaching team is attending the Catalyst Conference today in Atlanta.  I haven’t been in a couple of years so I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of friends and being challenged by the speakers.  QUESTION: Are you attending Catalyst?  If so, I’d love for you to join me for a special Dessert Reception Tonight in Atlanta – read more about it here – or email cristina <at> churchleaderinsights.com for all the details or to RSVP.  We are expecting about 100 friends from the CLI family.

Friday – I’ll be attending Catalyst today and then flying to Florida tonight for a long weekend with Kelley and Alexander.  I’m sure ‘Disney’ will factor in here somewhere.

Thanks for reading my blog!  If you have any questions for me, just use the Ask Nelson button on the right.  So far I’ve been able to answer almost all of your questions by email or here in the blog.

Tomorrow I start a new series of posts on a “Pastors Financial Life.”  See you then!

Nelson

P.S. If you are going to Catalyst this week, I really hope you’ll let me buy you dessert on Thursday night.  You can read all the details here.

Today we are kicking off an 8-week “Financial Peace” series.  We planned this series in November 2007! We had no idea when we did the preaching calendar that we would launch this series in the middle of one of the greatest financial downturns ever.  Only God!

Today I’m teaching live in Manhattan for all four services and our location pastors are teaching live in Brooklyn and Jersey City (yes, we did 3 message run thru’s this past week!).

Here’s the breakdown of the series:

October 5 – How Do I Find Financial Peace?
October 12 – How Do I Overcome the Desire for More ?
October 19 – How Do I Get Out of Debt?
October 26 – How Do I Save in this Economy?
November 2 – How Do I Manage Wealth?
November 9 – How Do I Make Wise Financial Decisions?
November 16 – How Do I Honor God with My Finances?
November 23 – How Do I Start Living Like No One Else?

Off to the first service!  Hope you have a great Sunday at your church!

Nelson

The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all.”
–Winston Churchill

Today I’m 37 years old!

When I show up to speak at conferences, people who have never met me except via audio or books always think I’m much older than I am.  I’m never sure if that’s a good thing or not!

Hopefully when I’m 87 people will think I’m younger than I am!

On Wednesday, Kelley and I celebrated my birthday (even though my grandmother used to say it was bad luck to celebrate a birthday early).  She planned a ‘birthday in NYC’ for me, which include a visit to the Top of the Rock, lunch at Hill Country and then a taping of the David Letterman Show.  It was a great day!

Tonight Alexander and I will celebrate together by sharing a cupcake!

If the next 37 years are anything like the last, I’ve got a lot to be thankful for!

With gratitude to God,

Nelson