Your Dollar is the Lever, Personal Spending and Community Vision
Our faith institutions in Canada are already economic powerhouses, generating an estimated $18 billion in economic value annually through their activities, according to research by think tanks like Cardus.
This substantial contribution proves the inherent financial capacity within our strength as people to come together around our beliefs. However, this capacity remains largely external and led me to the question, How do we internalize this strength and multiply it for more good?
This article shifts our focus from simply generating value to retaining and multiplying it, recognizing that our true wealth is built by the daily, strategic spending choices of every single person in our faith based community.
Since vision is the grounding force that guides financial action, we know that without a clear goal, your personal money habits drift.
If we had a shift in communal vision to simply want to multiply money within our network, we can use our individual investment choices everyday to make it happen.
The tragic reality is that poor planning on our part leads to huge capital leakage outside of our communities. Every time your household pays an external service, the dollar's potential to circulate within the community vanishes from the community ecosystem sometimes in less than 24 hours. That money should be the community's engine, but we are letting our fuel be depleted. That money should be part of our tithes and offerings, but it’s going into hands that likely don’t prioritize faith based giving.
Before you pay for anything, like an event planner, a mechanic, or a lawyer, the vision suggests you ask, "Which member of my faith community can provide this service?" This intentional step transforms your expense into an internal investment.
You strengthen a fellow entrepreneur while you empower them to hire and invest their dollars back into the same circle. Every time money leaves your account, you have the chance to correct the capital leakage, to increase the circulation rate, and to build the economic firewall around our faith communities. The work of building this economic structure begins with your next purchase. Our success depends on rigorous day to day commitment to multiplying our cash within our communities. When we adopt the habit of asking "who within the community can I pay/use/hire," we increase the circulation time of every dollar. This intentional choice creates stable internal cash flow, which helps us weather storms and can be reinvested in the community and our churches through generous giving.
Now the next question here, that might hurt a little, Is my business worthy of being invested in by my community? Let’s be the business people and workers who approach our work with a spirit of excellence be generous with people, complete work on time and on budget, consistently deliver, act out of the highest levels of integrity and be honest about your weaknesses.
Let’s take our inspiration for our work from Colossians 3:23-24:
‘Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.’
If we run after our work with this intention, imagine the excellence in products and services that will be sought after by the members of our community instead of just tolerated because we go to the same church.
Let’s get it.
