news entertainment celebrity: Teaching Personal Finance and Financial Stewardship in Missions ...

One area that I am increasingly challenged in with regards to what we are teaching in our schools in Youth With A Mission (YWAM) is the area of personal finance, or financial stewardship. Debt is something that is crippling to missionaries and missions agencies when it comes to being released into what God has for them.

Even though personal and organisational debt is something that limits so many people in fulfilling God?s plan in their lives, it is not something that I have seen talked about much in teaching or schools in YWAM. Sure, there is a lot of talk and content about support raising for missions, but I have not seen nearly as much content created about personal financial stewardship.

Personal Finance and Financial Stewardship Training

There are many programs out there that can be implemented personally, or in our schools in YWAM. Two that I have been looking at are the Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover, and more recently Lazarus at the Gate, an Economic Discipleship Guide.

Both of these programs are things that could be very easily implemented on our schools in YWAM, whether it be on the YWAM Discipleship Training School, or a school like YWAM Denver?s Phase II / School of Ministry Development (which does offer a section on Stewardship in their curriculum). They are also programs that could be implemented with regular staff training and equipping that should be constantly happening are all YWAM Centres.

Dave Ramsey, Total Money Makeover

This is a program that I am very familiar with and one that my wife and I are trying to implement in our own life. The centre of the plan is the seven baby steps:

$1000 Emergency Fund
Pay off all debt with the Debt Snowball
3 ? 6 Months of expenses saved.
15% Retirement Savings
College / Education Fund for Children
Pay off home early
Build wealth and give

In addition to teaching these seven steps in his book The Total Money Makeover, there are other teaching packages and programs that could fit very well within a missions setting.

Some of the different programs are Financial Peace University and Generation Change. Here is a video explaining Dave Ramsey?s Generation Change, which I think could fit very well into a program like the YWAM Discipleship Training School:

Generation change is geared towards youth groups, which could suit the discipleship training school audience.

The other, and possibly better option for missions training schools like those offered in YWAM, is Financial Peace University. Financial Peace University has been used successfully by churches, companies, communities and non-profits to help people learn how to control their money.

I find Financial Peace University for Non-Profit Organisations to be especially interesting for missions organisations. Below is the video specific to non-profits and how Financial Peace University has helped them with their students, staff and clients:

Certainly looks to me like something that could be part of a missionary training course?

Lazarus at the Gate, an Economic Discipleship Guide

Lazarus at the Gate is a small group discipleship experience designed to impact global poverty.

While the Dave Ramsey program is a commercial operation, Lazarus at the Gate is an open source curriculum designed to be used by small groups to explore what the Bible has to say about personal finance. There are numerous resources available from their web-site, Simple Living for Just Giving ? Resources, including curriculum for adults, curriculum for students and a series of devotionals.

During the 12-sessions of the adult curriculum the participants are encouraged to make four different individual commitments:

Spend joyfully
Spend justly
Spend less
Give more

With the curriculum being open source there is nothing to stop the curriculum being rewritten from a missions perspective.

Lazarus at the Gate has the advantage over the Dave Ramsey material in that it is free and open source, but would require more work on the part of the facilitator to implement. The Dave Ramsey material has the huge advantage in the quality and breadth of material and resources provided with their different courses, including full training DVDs, CDs and more.

I think that either one could be a good option to implement in a missions training program.

What do we do now?

As missionaries personal finance is not something that we should take lightly. It is an area that the enemy can use to rob us of God?s desires for our lives. How we handle our personal finances shows a lot about our character and what we place value in.