Q: What about being paid to minster?

A: I'm taking a step of faith with finances. I could possibly "work full-time," but I guess lately I've been feeling like God is suggesting otherwise--possibly for me to do full time ministry. However, Satan is definitely attacking my whole family with financial problems.

I feel pretty strongly that the “attack” that so many Christian workers feel in the financial area is actually pressure from the Holy Spirit to normalize their lives and finances by working! Biblically, the call to so called “full-time” work is for those whose traveling ministry precludes them from being able to work in ordinary work locally. Anyway, aren’t we all in full time work for the Kingdom and the King whatever he has called us to do? Our work is a huge part of our credibility. Even with all of Paul’s responsibilities, he much of the time choose to be a tentmaker so that no-one could level criticism at him. Work keeps us strongly grounded in reality, and it puts food on the table, and provides for us to have more to give to others as needed.

I'm not too sure what to do about getting income.

Biblically we are to provide for our household. The normal way to do this is through paid work.

I'm more than willing to take a full time job, but with all the Kingdom work I am doing and plans to go to seminary, it seems like full time isn't the best idea.

The fallacy with this way of thinking is that “we” need to do so much in the Kingdom. But actually we are more effective when we multiply out who and what we are. People who we are discipling will want to become like us. So if they see that we are “full-time” they will basically want to also be full time.

It's not that I feel God "needs" me to do anything - He's going to do it no matter what, and I truly believe that. But at the same time, I feel like it might be a call, to just take a step of faith.

We all walk by faith. I need faith to see work in my company so that none of my employees will be out of work. I am laboring this point because to me it is vital that in our simple church movements, we don’t just go the way of almost all movements from a traditional background. As you study the history of movements, they grow fastest when they are lay led and remain simple. So why do we hold up going to seminary as an ambition to be desired! Churches and church planting movements grow most rapidly when we put no “rate limiting step” in their way.

Here are my options. #1 I can send out support letters and pray. #2 I can get a full time job. #3 I can try to get 20 hours of part time, and be "barely" making it. #4 I can pray to win the lottery, and claim it in faith!!

My prayer for you and the many others that are being raised up of the Lord with a great passion for His work and His Kingdom is that you will do what is needed to support yourselves, AND still pour your lives out in the Kingdom. When I graduated from medical school, it was just taken for granted that I would do my residency, which involves working about 100 hours PER WEEK. If that is normal in the world of medicine, why is it so strange that for the Kingdom of God we would find the time to do all he has put on our hearts alongside the work that everyone else in the world has to do to just live! I hope that I have not come across too strong. But I do feel strongly about this. We hear so much in the West about our “right” to a typical work week of 40 hours. But now that we choose to be His slaves, we give up our rights, and we willingly lay down our lives. Do we need balance? Yes! Do we need quality family time? Yes! But the context is of the slave, not of the owner. God helps us find the balance. I have many times been unbalanced, not just in the Kingdom of God, but also in medicine! This is part of growing into maturity, which is the hallmark of Timothy and Titus type leadership. This type of growth only comes through life, not through seminary, and not through “full-time Christian work.”

The real answer in every situation is to hear what the Lord is saying and then to do it!

Tony Dale is co-author of, The Rabbit and The Elephant and helps to care for a network of simple churches.  You can find more about simple churches at http://www.simplechurch.com/