The story has been around since I was a boy. A circus strongman entered the center ring violently squeezing a lemon and declared, "I’ll give $1000 to the person who can get another drop of juice from this lemon." At each performance in every city people would step forward and do their best to get another drop from the strongman’s lemon. Strong football players, construction workers, and overconfident men who had toned their bodies to perfection strained to gain the promised $1000.
At one evening performance a skinny older man stepped into the ring after all others had failed. The crowd hooted and laughed! How does this scrawny fellow think he can do what others stronger than he has failed to do? But, the older, physically challenged man began to carefully massage the lemon, carefully kneading the fruit apparently squeezed dry by the professional strongman. And, one, two, and then several more drops of juice spilled to the circus floor. The crowd cheered! The strongman was bewildered. The circus operators scurried about to find $1000 for the promised reward.
As the crowd sat in awed silence the strongman asked, "How did you do that? After years of challenging crowds no one has ever done what you have done tonight." The quiet lemon-squeezing gentleman said, "I have practiced for years. I am my church’s treasurer."
The first time I heard the story people laughed nervously. I thought it was funny, then, but not now. It isn’t funny for several reasons. First, the story reinforces a common opinion that church members are loath to support ministries financially. I have found the exact opposite. God’s people are the most generous people in the world. When authentic disciples of Jesus see a need, an opportunity to affect redemption, they run toward it with abandon. In my experience, shortages are experienced when the mission is presented without defining the nobility of the mission, not because of the people’s stinginess.
Second, true Jesus followers are oriented to "other-worldliness." They believe that investments in a redemptive ministry here on earth will bear dividends in heaven. We followers believe Jesus’ simple instructions and act on His truths. I know what moths, rust and thieves do. I have been victimized by them all. But Jesus followers also know that when they give, the gift returns, good measure, pressed down and running over.
Another thing I have discovered is that churches who strain forward, trying, reaching, stretching toward those who need her message most experience God’s provision. Groups that accept the limitations of what it has, in effect practically shut out God. Maintenance mode, or "We-can’t-afford-it-thinking" will grip a group around the neck and close its financial breathing tube. Opportunities come and go because, "We don’t have the money." Consider that when Jesus was confronted with feeding more than 5000 people he didn’t ask His disciples to raise a massive offering. The miracle began with gathering a few fish and loaves of bread. The rest is shouting material!
I speak as one who has led others and one who understands that I teach what I believe and reproduce who I am. In short generous churches are uniformly led by generous pastors and elders. Generosity is contagious. One of my favorite authors, D. Elton Trueblood wrote, "A religion that is not contagious is not genuine."1 Some may be comfortable with squeezing lemons, conserving hard-earned juice and saying "No" to opportunities deemed too risky, too expensive and too outrageous. Others, say, "Hey! If we obey, we’ll get to witness a miracle!"
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