Episode 113 - The Coming Revolution in Church Economics? with Mark DeYmaz
Today’s guest is thought-leading writer and recognized champion of the Multiethnic Church Movement, Mark DeYmaz. He’s the author of several books and is on the show today to talk to us about his latest, The Coming Revolution in Church Economics.
Mark shared how churches can respond to the steady decrease in tithes and donations happening around the world—especially in light of recent events. He has some radical and creative ideas on how church leaders and business leaders can work together, and we think you’ll be interested in what he shared.
At the end of the episode, Henry and Rusty go back and forth on this topic, and we invite you to join in on this conversation as well. Feel free to comment, contact us, or reply to the newsletter. As always, we love hearing from you and making this show your show.
Episode Transcript
*Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The FDE movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast special edition. Today we have Mark Deymaz with us in the house, really excited about our conversation. We're talking to a guy who is a pastor, knows God, endeavors to know him more fully every day and help others to know him as well and also really cares about entrepreneurship and economics and bringing them all together. We had a neat conversation right before we got started about just a bunch of folks kind of aligning themselves in this movement, circling around and trying to figure how do we bring this together in a way that allows them to be in formation in away that's really an encouragement to the communities that we're within. So, Mark, we can get in all that, of course. But let's start off actually at the beginning, of course. Tell us about your personal story. Who are you? Where do you come from?
Mark Deymaz: Yeah. Well, great to be with you and appreciate your podcasts so much. Thanks for having me today. You know, I was born out of wedlock 1961, my mother's single parent home. No brothers and sisters, no father. Only six percent of kids at the time were born in America without fathers. That was me. And really, the reason I share that is because in a sense, I've been gigging all my life. I learned it from my mother. My mother had a full time job with the federal government as a secretary. We lived in California. She worked in San Francisco. We lived in Alameda about an hour away. So every morning she got up. She's gone by seven across the bay and back late that night. And then at nighttime, from the time I was seven years old, we'd go on the street, knock on doors and sell Avon. You know, I was an Avon boy at seven years old and taking the products, bagging it all up, you know, sweeping parking lots at like the local 7-Eleven type store in sixth grade, working at the Phenix Playboy Club as a dishwasher at 13 and worked my way through Jesuit education over six years, white working in rectories. We were in the lower income category, so we received the work scholarship. And I was really able to get a wonderful Catholic and Jesuit education, but I had to work for it. Right, six years in the rectory. So essentially, I've been blue collar gigging all my life, you know, and I learned that hustle from my mom. Not only was she working full time with the government as well as selling Avon. But I remember back in the day when I was in junior high, she'd buy broken pianos and then she'd bring somebody in to repair them and then she'd sell them. I mean, she was eBay before eBay was cool and she was gigging before the term was even coined. And so I think that obviously is all part of my past that brought me here. I became a follower of Christ at 19 in college.
I played college baseball, but was too slow to get drafted after four years of college baseball. I was asked to be a high school pastor, didn't even know what that was, did that for a couple of years, then off to seminary 10 years later. Then I'd been a youth pastor, had a masters in exegetical theology, and I was brought here to Little Rock, Arkansas, by a large mega suburban church called Fellowship Bible Church. In 1993 it was 2000 people. By 2000, 2001, it was 5000 people. My youth group went from 150 to 600 but in the late 90s and towards the end of that journey, ninety seven. Ninety eight, ninety nine. One day I looked around that church and realized the only people of color in this otherwise amazing church were janitors. And that began to bother me. And I didn't know why at the time. It bothered me, but it did. And that took me on into a journey of the New Testament and exegetical theology concerning the nature of a local church in the New Testament, where I came to recognize that every church in the New Testament was what we would say today, multiethnic and economically diverse. Men and women, rich, poor, Jew and gentile, walking, working, worshiping God together as one. And this, the demonstration of the power of the Gospel of Christ to be lifted up and draw all people into himself as much, if not more, than the proclamation of the Gospel is what brought the world to its knees when three centuries and certainly in the first century there. So by 2001, I was no longer content to basically remain in a systemically segregated church, realized it wasn't just our church. I came to realize that 92% of all churches at that time throughout the United States were segregated by race, class and culture. And so I wanted to move into the community in terms of establishing or building a church where diverse men and women could walk work, worship God together as one. We did that in Little Rock. So I planted the Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas in the urban center of Little Rock and summer of 2001. And I can't even believe it. That was 19 years ago.
Henry Kaestner: So I'm fascinated. You're an entrepreneur. You're a grower. You come up and you've got this conviction about multi-ethnic churches instead of bringing people of different color into where, say, white people are, you went and did something very unconventional, and that is that you took your church planning strategy to under-resourced areas, which is a lot different. Tell us about that and how your team chose that strategy.
Mark Deymaz: Yeah, well, as I said, I was in a wonderful church, an amazing church, just so much good about it. But again, I grew discontent by the lack of diversity in our church at that time and the fact that most of our local service projects, if you will, our ministry, the community, our service was always at arm's length. In fact, the book was written by the pastor of the church at that time, and the metaphor was building a bridge to the community. And that works for the first year of the second year. But it can feel like here comes the great white hope once a year to go into the inner city, into the community and clean it all up and paint the classrooms of local schools and all that do a blood drive. But then the community doesn't see you for another 364 days and something over two or three years became... it was good hearts. I'm not saying people didn't have the right heart or the right spirit. But from a systemic level, I realized there was a dichotomy and I was no longer content to build bridges to the community. I actually wanted our church to be the community to reflect the community. This is what happened at Antioch. I mean, think about it. Jerusalem was actually a segregated church. It was filled with Jewish believers who had become Christians. Of course, there were a few proselyte, but by and large, Jerusalem was a segregated church. The first church that is intentionally integrated in the New Testament is the Church of Antioch. It's multi-ethnic, it's missional, it's multi-site, it's mega. It's everything any church wants to be. Which church sends missionaries to the world? Not Jerusalem, Antioch, Paul and Barnabas. So the first missionaries to be sent intentionally by a church and they come out of a healthy, multiethnic church. And you ask yourself, why is that? Well, because Antioch was a church that reflected its community. And when your church reflects the community, mission isn't a program, it's who you are. And I wanted that to be true for me and my life and my family and for the church I serve, let alone the under-resourced community of 66 percent of kids without dads in the community, 30 percent poverty, highest violent crime in the city. And I wanted Matthew 5:16 not to be a slogan, but to be actualized so that people could actually see the good work of a church in a community and ultimately so Christ would get the glory.
Henry Kaestner: Matthew 5:16. Tell us.
Mark Deymaz: Yeah. Matthew 5:16. You know, let your light so shine, you know, that they see your good works and anything more by your father in heaven. So notice that Jesus didn't say let him hear your good words. You know, by and large, we're pretty good in the American church at words. Right. We have a lot of good words, a lot of good preaching and a lot of good stuff online. But we kind of don't always have the good works to back up those words, particularly when it comes to cross-cultural engagement, ministry, relationships, competence, intelligence.
And because of the systemic segregation of the church, you know, our credibility is injured. I mean, our ability to advance a credible gospel on an increasingly diverse society is actually hurt by systemically segregated churches. I'd rather have one hundred people in a church who are walking, working, worshiping God together as one beyond the distinctions of this world than 5000, all white, all black, all Asian or Hispanic church in the same church. I'd actually have more influence in the community because it's not about size. It's about influence. And the greater your diversity, the greater your influence in the community.
Henry Kaestner: I follow that. I follow that. Part of the premise for your newest book, which I want to start us talking about, is the idea of the churches in North America today have over one trillion dollars in assets that are significantly underutilized. The subtitle for your book is Why Tithes and Offerings are No Longer Enough. So I want ask you point-blank, why aren't tithes and offerings enough?
Mark Deymaz: Well, first, let me correct the one trillion dollars. I said that early on. There's a man named Dan Cook who's done some research. He's a friend of mine. No one really knows exactly how much of unused or underutilized assets the American church has. But clearly, it's in the tens of billions of dollars, if not in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Dan Cook, Building God's Way. He founded that. He's written about it. He's an architect. He's done the deep dove. So no one knows for sure. It may not be one trillion, but it's definitely in the tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars of unused assets. On that note, that is there. Why are tithes and offerings no longer enough? Well, I just wrote sixty thousand words of why that is. But in a nutshell, tithes and offerings are no longer enough due to the growing needs and demands of local churches, both in terms of their internal structure as well as the needs in the community. So, you know, just something as simple as health insurance for staff, right? The rising costs of health insurance or bringing additional people on the cost of maintenance of your facility and all that's just related to the internal church, let alone people are hungry in the community or without jobs or immigration and all the different issues that plague communities that we are to engage ourselves in. Those needs are going up and they require money. Right. So we have the largest food distribution in the city of Little Rock. How do you serve twenty thousand people in a thirty two thousand person zip code like we do every year? So in our community, we have the largest food distribution in Little Rock. 67% of our entire zip code depends on our church for three to four days and groceries every single month.
I guarantee you there is no way we could have done that if our mentality was restricted by tithes and offerings alone. We had to create multiple streams of income to meet the rising and growing demands of the community. So not only in terms of your own internal the cost of doing business, you guys know that, right? The cost of doing business, if you think about that, the cost of doing business as a church, both to sustain your own operation internally, staff salaries, the maintenance of a facility, health insurance, bringing on additional staff as well as to provide goods and services to the community. All of that just continues to go up every year. All the while, in fact, tithes and offerings by and large are not only stagnant, they're actually in decline around this country.
And so that's not even to mention the current covid pandemic and what that's going to do in terms of wreaking havoc or the fact that government could someday take away Tax-Exempt status for a local church, or tax a local church property, or the fact that, according to Oxford University, 12-22%percent of jobs will be displaced by 2030 due to automation. So these are just some of the factors that increasingly, even from a sociological perspective, say there is no way tithes and offerings alone are going to be able to fund or sustain the impact your local church and its ministry have in the future.
William Norvell: Mark, William here, thanks for joining us. And it's a great place to pivot a little bit. I want to talk a little about church economics, but you were just leaning into you and your co-author Harry, lay out a number of facts that argue why churches specifically are going to have to pretty much fundamentally change the way they do business. I'd love for you to share with our audience a little bit of what's happened in the past couple of years that's creating this situation. And why are you projecting that to happen here in the near future?
Mark Deymaz: Yeah, well, it's a great question. Just like the last one and really flows out of the last one. We talked about automation. We talked about rising costs of goods and services, both internal and external, in terms of sustaining your ministry, talked about potential change in government, in terms of law, taxation laws, these things in some sense, they're real and also speculative also. But what is real and concrete are just a few things that we can add to that question or in answering and add to the conversation. For instance, there is generational. This is sociology. This is statistical. So this isn't speculation, generational differences in terms of attitudes and understanding towards giving.
So right now, 78.8% Of all giving in a local church is done by people born before 1964. So nearly 80% of all giving comes from people born before 1964r. If you're born after 1964, money is just a way to change the world. It's not the way to change the world. If you're born before 1964, you believe money is the key and primary way to change the world. And you also tend to trust institutions. So if you're born after 1964, you don't think money's that way and also that it's the primary way to change the world. And you don't trust institutions. Equal to giving money if you're born after 1964 is product endorsement and volunteerism. So if you're born after 1964 and you volunteer in your mind, that's equal to giving money.
And of course, we need volunteers. Right? Or if I get on Instagram or Twitter or somehow I endorse products, I say, hey, buy Tom shoes for every shoe you buy, they're gonna give another one away. They equate that equal to giving money. And that's fine. We need to volunteer. We should endorse, you know, good products that advance the common good. But at the end of the day, that doesn't put money, pure greenbacks in the plate to pay the electric bill, to pay the salaries, to pay the health insurance and to meet the needs of the community.
So there's a shift in generational attitudes towards giving. There are population and demographic shifts. For instance, you know, right now 1 in 2 people under the age of 20 are nonwhite. 43% of millennials are nonwhite. By 2042, one or two people in this country will not be white. You say, why does that matter in terms of church and church economics? Because of wealth gaps and income inequality. Right. So there's wealth gaps and income inequality between people groups in this country. What an average white person has in terms of wealth and or income that they're generating is different from blacks, different to Asians, different to Hispanics. Speaking of broad categories.
So the thought that a pastor can get four people, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, into a church and expect in general, on average, the same giving from each of them is erroneous due to historic wealth gaps in income inequality in this country between people groups. So what that means tied to the first thing in terms of generational attitudes towards giving. Let me ask you a question. If you are a pastor of a church and somebody is 65 years old and they go to your church and they die, or they move, somehow their money goes away, they're giving, how many millennials will it take to replace that person's given? Right. And what's the cost of acquisition?
William Norvell: I'm going to say 7.8?
Mark Deymaz: Any other takers?
Henry Kaestner: 7.9?
William Norvell: Ah. Price is right.
Mark Deymaz: That's the way to do it. Wherever I ask that question. The general answer is 10. Now, nobody has statistically studied it yet. To my knowledge. But virtually everyone says 10. And it's not just it'll take you 10 more people have to be in the church to replace or nine more people to replace the one. But then you have to think, what's the customer acquisition cost? If you want to think about in terms of business to get a millennial, to get young people to attend your church, you've got to spend a lot of money on children. You got to spend a lot of money on the band and the stage and the technology to get a 65 year old to come to your church. You say, man, we preach the Bible. We got a Sunday school class on there, you know.
So this is another fact. I'm really into the weeds now. Rise of dual income households. Almost 75 percent of households in America are two income households. And that's not because they're getting wealthy. That's just the lower middle class life. So very little discretionary income rises to income households and religious giving overall is down compared to giving to animal rights and to other things. When you look at the way people give to charitable organizations each year, religion still gets a hefty share. But at different years it's been going down. More money is being given to other charitable causes than just to mere religion. And that number has gone down over time as well. Not to mention middle class wealth is the lowest it's been in this country since 1947. So, I mean, I'm just rattling off a ton of reasons why tithes and offerings are no longer enough. And what we're going to have to do is create multiple streams of income to fund and sustain ministry long term in the local church where you may not be here in 10 months.
William Norvell: Mark, thanks for walking us through that. I think you're right on the edge of something that I know I've heard you argue before that churches really are their own sort of economic system. Could you maybe break that into some parts for us and walk us through how you think about that?
Mark Deymaz: Yeah. I mean, if you take off your ministry hat and just think about the church as a business for a moment, we provide goods and services just like a restaurant. A restaurant is a system. Right? I go to a restaurant. I pay for a meal. But I didn't cook. I'm enjoying it in an environment I didn't create. I didn't buy the groceries for that meal. So I received goods and services. And at the end of the meal, I get a bill. And the bill not only pays for my food, but it also pays for portions of the expenses, the electricity and the salaries of people involved in the rent and the mortgage of a building. And on top of that, it also pays for profit because the owner has to make a profit.
So that's a system, right? Goods and services being provided. In part, I'm paying the bill or paying a portion of the bill. If you think about a church like that, it, too, is an economic system. Right. So what are the goods and services of a church? Well, if you're sick, we'll visit you in the hospital. We'll provide children's programs, teaching and worship. We organize people into small groups. You know, you're pregnant or you give birth to a child. We bring meals for a while. So there's these goods and services that a church provides. And in return, people are expected to pay a portion of the bill. We call it tithes and offerings. But that's how it works, right? So for these goods and services, somebody has got to pay the bill, the salaries of the pastors and the staff, for the building, et cetera. Somebody has got to pay that bill. And the bill we give people, if you will, is the encouragement to be generous through tithes and offerings. So we don't actually give a direct bill, of course. But if you think about it like that, it's no different than any other economic system. We provide goods and services and the people to whom and on whose behalf we provide those services are expected to pay a portion of the bill. We just call it tithes and offerings.
Rusty Rueff: What's fascinating about that is I think and I want to get to know how pastors have responded to your book because, you know, churches are basically startups that start up all over again every week. Right. I mean, there's no sass business here, you know? So it's basically thinking about, as you said, products and services. But that demands an entrepreneurial mindset. And not all pastors, I think, probably have that. So, you know, you wrote this book for them. How are they taking this?
Mark Deymaz: Yeah, it's a great question, a very fair one. The first thing I'd say is if you're a pastor listening to me and you're not entrepreneurial by nature, in terms of business, business savvy marketing, be encouraged. You don't have to be the person that pulls all this stuff together. You don't have to be the person that starts new businesses or monetizes existing services or even figure out how to leverage your church in terms of facilities and creating rent rolls. That's why God has given you faith based marketplace leaders, entrepreneurs who know how to do this in their sleep. But what we have in the American church is a compartmentalization. So no one says this, but I've been a pastor now 34 years. OK. And I'm telling you, this is an unspoken, deep-seeded part of the ethos of ministry across the country. And pastors don't even know it. But this is the truth. Pastors see the role of the marketplace leader is to make money and then you give me the pastor, the money, and I spend it on spiritual things, and that's how this whole thing works. And they're compartmentalized. But what we need to do is bring them together, not enmesh those worlds, but bring them together. And so if you're a pastor listening and you're not entrepreneurial, that's why God has brought other people, men and women, who are marketplace leaders, entrepreneurs, business leaders, that you empower them to think about these things on your behalf and on behalf of the church. Right. No different than we hire youth pastors, worship pastors. We advocate in the book churches hiring a business leader to leverage the facility to monetize services and ultimately to start new businesses on behalf of the church. But let's just say so. Don't get overwhelmed. If you're a pastor listening.
The other thing I've got to tell you real quick and maybe we'll get into this in a moment, but this is not so much about making money as it is about good stewardship. When we think about good stewardship in the American church and this is what we have to do, if you're a pastor listening or even a marketplace leader, we've got to free our mind because we have some erroneous understandings when it comes to money and the church's role related to money based on the Bible. So, for instance, I'll just give you one and we can talk more about it if you want. But people will say, you know what, Pastor? Just preach the gospel. Just trust Jesus. Just be the church. And God will take care of the church. Right. And so that's an appeal to faith. Well, let's say you said that to me and I'd say let me ask you a question.
Have you ever been to a doctor? Have you ever taken prescription medicine? Have you ever cosigned for a loan on a car that you couldn't otherwise afford? Have you ever cosigned on a loan for your kid to go to college? Where's your faith? Where's your faith? Just trust God, He'll heal you. Just trust God and somehow, magically, your kid will go to college or you can afford that car. Just read your Bible and pray all day and then go check your mailbox for checks and money. Right. Individuals in the church don't live like this. Why would you expect that the church would look like this? So in other words, we have erroneous understanding when it comes to what faith is. It's always about our partnership with God in terms of being intentional and wise and good stewards with our resources.
Rusty Rueff: So what are the some of the things that you've done in your church that could be very practical here for pastors who are listening? Because I think there's a part of me, if I was a pastor and I'm taking the message, I'd go. "But I'm trying to do my thing." You know, and balance faith and being entrepreneurial. But maybe I don't have anybody to teach me. Maybe I don't have any place to go.
Mark Deymaz: Yeah, well, that's a good plug. Come our way because we help you. We got coaching and cohorts and economic accelerators and all that. But let me just break this down and answer that question by starting with a definition. What is a definition of church economics? It's really three parts. And it answers a question. How do you leverage the assets of your church, which are people, money and buildings? Right. So how do you leverage the assets of your church to bless the community, which is to advance the gospel and the common good? Matthew 5:16. But at the same time generate some measure of sustainable income or in the business world, you know, you call it, ROI, right? If you keep giving everything away for free under the guise of ministry, you won't be here in five years. You won't be here in eight years. We've got to make a long term play.
So church economics is ultimately about understanding how to leverage your assets, people, money and buildings to advance your mission. But at the same time generate some measure of sustainable income. Now, with that as a backdrop in terms of the definition, there's three big ways you can do this. And so the first is by renting your facility, we call it benevolent ownership. In other words, when we run our facility, which we do to the tune of about twelve thousand dollars a month currently just by renting our space to several businesses, we don't rent that space at top dollar. I'm not in it for profit. Right. I'm not in it for top dollar profit. But at the same time, I'm not just going to say, oh yeah, come use my space. Because even at a micro level, who pays for the toilet paper? Who pays for the electricity? Who pays the water bill? Right. So even at a micro level, there's expense related to when I just say, oh, sure, come use my space. Right. Or come use the church. So I don't want to charge top dollar. I'm not in it for top dollar, but I want to charge something. And like any good businessman, I don't just want to charge what covers my expenses. I want to use or leverage this as an opportunity to get further ahead. So benevolent ownership is about creating rent rolls where it's a win for small business, a win for the community, and ultimately a win for the church. So the first way to leverage the asset of your building is to rent it. Number two, then the second way to do this is to monetize existing services. There's already a number of things that churches do that already they're paying for and they're doing that could be monetized.
So in the book. You know, I'm talking about like coffee, right? Most churches give away free coffee. Well, think about that. Like in our church, when I inquired about that a number of years ago, I said, how much does it cost us to give away free coffee? And they said about three thousand dollars a year. Well, where does that money come from? It comes from people putting money into an offering plate as unto the Lord to further the Lord's work. And then some committee or an elder board decides we're gonna take three thousand dollars of those tithes and offerings given to further the Lord's work and give it away in the form of free coffee. And it walks out my front door every year. I could use that three thousand dollars for PBS, for youth scholarships to summer camp. There could be a better purpose. So what we did, like, you know, in our case, we just said, hey, what if we monetize that and take that space, you know? So we started selling Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits, making a dollar per biscuit along with the coffee. Eventually you sell 3000 biscuits, you pay for the three thousand dollars of free coffee and you return three thousand dollars, as it were, to your budget. Right. For real ministry purposes.
A janitor company, churches, they hire a janitor. Why don't you take the money and start a janitor company? Put people to work, get contracts in the community that ultimately allow you, in a sense, that company to clean your church for free. The people still get paid, but they make it from the net profit they're earning on contracts out in the community. So there's so many things churches are already doing. As I said earlier, but when pastors use the word ministry in the context of money, it means a financial loss. We put tip jars out. Right. So we give away coffee and then we put a tip jar. And let's just say it cost one hundred dollars a week to give that free copy away. And the tip jar brings in 60 dollars a week. Every single week. You're losing 40 dollars. No business, as you know, gives anything away for free. Right. Even if they give something away for free, they've got a plan to recoup that money. Right. So if I'm a car dealer, I say, hey, come on down to my car shop. We'll give you five hundred dollars off the sticker price if you come see me today. But that person doesn't really give you five hundred off because when they get you in the insurance room, they sell it on the back end and they get their five hundred back. Pastors have no plan, right? We don't spend one hour of one week of one month of one class in an entire degree program and seminary being taught or thinking about economics, not one. And that has got to change.
Henry Kaestner: So a fair amount of our listeners are probably listening now, maybe with two different types of concerns. The first one is at the outset. We've talked about this challenge with tithing and giving going down. What would you say to people, and I'll tell you, I'm one of those people. I believe that with as much that the Bible says about money, that a newer generation doesn't fully get that and that the biblical message of generosity is something that sets us free to worship God more fully and that we're not giving as much as we could financially. And I hear what you're saying about volunteering or endorsement become a new currency. But what role do you see churches playing in teaching about the biblical message of generosity? And the second one, I'd want you to comment on, as some number of people are also saying, gosh, I'm thinking about Jesus and money changers and Jimmy Dean Sausages making an extra dollar. So take those two objections and just riff on them each. First one addressing the problem. Churches don't have enough money. Can we be talking to them about the biblical message of generosity in a way that they are indeed more generous? And it's not just buying Tom shoes. And I check the box on my generosity. And then to how do you feel about the money changer argument?
Mark Deymaz: Yeah, great questions. I love to talk about this. All this, again, comes under the category of freeing your mind, particularly at a theological level. So to their first question, typically, how do we do that as church as well? We bring Dave Ramsey and teach Financial Peace University so and so. Why would I do that as a pastor? Well, I care. I'm a good shepherd. I want people to practice economic wisdom and biblical principles in terms of money management. So we'll have Dave Ramsey. We'll bring that FPU course and we'll teach it. And our church has done that. And I believe in that. Hey, that's great. Do that. And then, like you mentioned, the second thing is we teach generosity. Now, I believe generosity is not only a biblical concept, but I got to be honest with you, it's an industry in the entire American church. People are making a lot of money off of pushing generosity. It's an industry in the American church. And how did it arise? Because if we bring you up to the church and I help you get out of debt and practice economic wisdom, and somehow through that you have more discretionary income, just because you have more discretionary income does not mean you're going to give it to the church.
Right. So we have to teach you generosity. So think about this like a three legged stool. If FPU was one leg of the stool and I'm just using that as an approach and generosity is the second leg again. Yes. Yes. FPU. Yes to encouraging generosity, in fact. Yes to tithes and offerings. I'm saying there is a missing leg. Right. And the missing leg is church economics. So it's not to displace tithes and offerings or strategies like FPU or even encouraging generosity from a biblical mandate, as you're talking about. It's saying there's something also we must do and add a third leg to that stool, and that's church economics. Which takes you then to the second part of your question, which it is biblical, right to do this. So I'll just give you two things on the thing about the money changers or in terms of that passage. Again, just like with faith, we have an erroneous, shallow understanding of that passage. Jesus did not overturn the money changers because, you know, he's against fair profit. What was going on is two things biblically and energetically speaking. First of all, you had to convert Roman coinage to a half shekel, right, to get into the temple. You had to take Roman coinage and convert it to a half shekel. I'm sure you've been to an airport before and forgot to exchange your money at a bank in country and then you're stuck with exchanging it in the airport. And what happens? They charge you higher interest rate because you're a captive audience. And so this was happening. This is where the money changers were coming in. They were charging exorbitant interest to convert Roman coinage to the half shekel temple tax. And who does that hurt? It doesn't hurt those with money and means it hurts the poor. Right. Because you're exploiting the poor. In that case, and not only the money changers are making money, but the pastors of the church were making money off this. Right. So that's one thing that was going on.
But the second thing is it's also the seller of the animals. And in the same way, the animals, because they go into the temple, you have to offer a turtle dove. You have to offer that bull, whatever. And people are coming from 20 miles away, which was a long way back in the day. And you can't honestly bring your animals. So you show up at the temple, you pay the half shekel and you purchase an animal for your sacrifice. Well, likewise, they're charging exorbitant prices for these animals. No different than when you go to a stadium and you've got to pay eight bucks for a hotdog. Like, why does it cost you eight dollars for a hotdog at a football stadium? Because you're a captive audience. And they're going to jack the price up. And so it wasn't fair profit that drove Jesus to overturn the many changes. It was economic injustice. It was economic injustice on both those fronts on which both the business people and the temple leaders were taking advantage of people. And again, if you have means, no problem. The problem was with the poor. So we have to understand and think deeply and correctly about what was actually going on in the temple. Not fair profit. Jesus was against economic injustice. But there's an even bigger reason biblically for this. This is about good stewardship.
So what is stewardship in the American church right now? Good stewardship. And by the way, I believe in what I'm about to say, good stewardship is defined generally as this. Number one, we take care of those things that God has given us. So God gave us this facility. Hey, there's a hole in the wall. We got to fix the hole in the wall because God gave us this facility. We got to make sure that the yard is taken care of. There's no potholes in the parking lot. We've got to make sure the air conditioning works. God gave us this facility and we've got to be good stewards of what God's given us. I believe in that. Another way is we have to accurately account for money that we've been given. Right. So we practice good accounting principles and we want to do that. And then thirdly, we also have to clearly communicate to those who donate where that money is being spent. So good stewardship in the American church, typically as defined by those three things. And again, I believe in all those three things. We practice all those three things. And yes, that's good stewardship. But Exegetically speaking, biblically speaking, that's not good stewardship. You know what good stewardship is. You gave me five. Here's your five. And I made you five. Here's you gave me two. Here's your two. And I made you two. Well done. Good and faithful steward. One guy sat on his asset. Think about it. One guy sat on his asset in fear, he buried the asset, the talent, and he's called what? A wicked lazy slave. As we said at the top of this podcast, the American church is literally sitting on buried assets to the tens to the hundreds of billions of dollars of buried assets.
If you have land and it's sitting there. Hey, man, at least rent it or give it to a commercial developer and make some type of profit on it. You don't have a sanctuary to put on it. Let some commercial developer develop it and get some type of profit going. At least you could have done that. Right. And what happens at the end of that story? Take the one talent. Take the one asset away from the guy who didn't know what to do with it and give it to somebody who knows what to do.
Henry Kaestner: Is there a point in time along the way that something feels right, but other things don't feel right? Is there a logical extension of that? Because I've been on a church elder board and I know how expensive it is to put in parking lots. Do you go ahead and to encourage people to carpool together? Do you charge for parking?
Mark Deymaz: I wouldn't advocate that. But it's like they always say in politics, there's nothing off the table if it makes sense, right? Now, I don't want, it's not like charging. Again, we're talking about benevolent ownership and wise stewardship. But we have to move away from the mindset that, first of all, just instantly shuts any thought of this down. We have to look at the Bible and understand what actually is happening in the exchange with the money changers or in terms of good stewardship or what really is faith. It's always partnership and intentionality with Jesus. We have to help people think deeply and biblically, sociologically. And yes, then we have these options on the table. And by the way, as I answer that question, I've talked about you're renting your facility and monetizing existing services. But the third practical way back to the question is starting new businesses. Right. And most pastors and churches do not understand that nonprofits can, in fact, start businesses for profit, businesses as long as the net profit is returned to support the nonprofit. And you pay taxes on that business just like any other business. What if you start a coffee shop? You've got to pay taxes just like a coffee shop. So this is a another way you can do it. So would I charge for parking places? Probably not. But there's other things that are innovative and creative and entrepreneurial. And again, it doesn't have to come from the pastor. Enlist others who understand this around you to think broad and deep and wide about what might work. And as you all know and anyone listening to this podcast, every idea doesn't work. Right. And so I'm going to encourage people because we failed at different things. Right. But you keep leaning in and it's not failure unless you fail to learn from that experience. But if some church sets out and say, oh, we tried to monetize our coffee shop and that doesn't work, and then they throw out any other idea just based on that one experience, man, don't do that right. Just learn and lean into it, but keep going because eventually something clicks. I'll just say this one last thing. Just on our building alone, as I mentioned, prior to this current pandemic, we generate twelve thousand dollars a month in rental income. Our mortgage is sixteen thousand dollars a month. Now, I want you to think about that. So not only is that one hundred and forty four thousand dollars more of tithes and offerings every year that we can spend on direct ministry and not pay down a mortgage, but it's 75 percent of our entire mortgage. I've also got another eighteen thousand square feet still to build up. So we're on track where someday I want to look our people in the eye and say, not one penny that you give into the offering to ascend to the Lord pays debt on this building because we practice smart economics and wisdom. And I tell you, in our church, people love that because that encourages them to give more, because they know we're conservative, we're frugal and we're hustling. Right. We're not just sitting back and getting fat and happy as pastors saying give, give, give, give, give to me man. We're out there hustling and working. Right. And we do this to buy so much more of this, but creating a nonprofit whereby you can generate grants and donations. Right. So this is also part of the tithes and offerings, grants and donations through a separate nonprofit serving the community. You move your justice, compassionate work into it.
And then also the for profit side. So there's so much to this, but it is the future. Yeah. And it it does take disruptive thinking. This isn't about sustaining innovation. This is disruptive innovation. And if you and your church and you don't get people around you, I'm telling you, if you're around in 10 years, you're not going to be relevant or effective. You've got to move into the space. And the sooner you do it, the more viable you're going to be. Let me just end with one thing that we didn't say that I think is an important take away on all this. Just to wrap it all up. Think about an American football team. Churches have to learn to play football. What do I mean? An American football team is actually one team made up of three teams. Offense, defense and special teams. The games, all three of those are separate games played by separate players who are never on the field at the same time. And to win the big game, all three of those teams offense, defense, special teams have to be performing at a high level all at the same time. The American church really has a one legged game. It's called the spiritual game. We evangelize disciple, all the things that would come under. We baptize people, teach the word. That's our spiritual team, led by a senior pastor. We're also going to have to develop a second team, a nonprofit team, a second nonprofit led by an executive director, and move your justice and compassionate work, as I just said, out from under the budget of the church into the nonprofit, whereby you can open up funding streams of grants and donations and do more community good than you could otherwise do if it was tied to your own budget or your limited budget. The third leg is the for profit leg, like we've been talking about, led by marketplace leaders who start businesses, monetize existing services and facilities to generate income. And the three teams play separate games. Right. This us how the church wins in the future. One coach is the senior pastor, the executive, and the marketplace leader playing those three separate games to tithes and offerings, grants and donations, for-profit business income. That's how the church is not only to be sustained in the future, it's how it's going to win in the future in terms of community impact and incredible gospel advance.
All right. Thanks so much for walking us through that. We are running low on time for a good reason. We really appreciate your time and running through a whole host of topics with us. And if you would be so kind to maybe share with us a potential scripture that God has been working in your life, in your heart, potentially today, potentially during this time. Just that's fun to see how God connects our listeners with our guests. So that'd be great. Thank you.
Mark Deymaz: Well, you bet. You know, again, it's such a big topic. The verse that I would share with you is 2 Timothy 1:7. Right. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. That has been a verse that sustained me certainly over the past 40 plus days in this current pandemic, because I love the interplay of that verse. Right. God has not given us the spirit of fear. Right.
We have a spirit of faith. We have the Holy Spirit with us. We have a spirit of faith. But it goes on to say that that spirit of faith, power, love. And it says of sound judgment or of self-discipline. Right. And I love that verse both in terms of this time of pandemic and others, because it says, yes, we have faith, but we also exercise self-discipline, sound judgment. Right. And that's how God always works. I mean, how do people get saved? God just doesn't, you know write John 3:16 on the Rocky Mountains. He says you go Mark and tell people about me. So God in his sovereignty has set up the partnership. Yes, it's him, but it's also us on all of these things, from salvation to these money matters of the church. So, yes, we proceed by faith. But we also do it with sound judgment, wisdom, a sound mind, if you will. And together with God's faith and a sound mind is what gets us power and love and helps us advance a credible gospel in an increasingly diverse, painfully polarized, and cynical society.
Henry Kaestner: So Rusty. That was really interesting. My brain is swirling a little bit. There's some things that I found really interesting about the conversation. Other things. To be frank, were unsettling for me. And I'll start off with some of the things that were unsettling for me. I think that some amount of listeners and know I'll say that myself as a listener, wrestle with what is the role of the church? Should the church indeed be thinking about how do we market merchandise, coffee or any one of a number of different things that the church theoretically could do in business? Or should we be spending our time focusing on what I think of the role of the church traditionally in evangelization and discipleship in visiting people in the hospital and taking care of the widow and the orphan. And I just also wondered that when people come in. Do we take advantage of the fact they're coming for a sermon? And with this, like, how do we merchandise, how we monetize the traffic that we have in our doors? Does that make people feel uncomfortable? Is that an obstacle to the gospel or what do you think?
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, I share some of the unease that you do Henry, but maybe because of where I grew up and how things were. I mean, I grew up in a big Southern Baptist church in southern Indiana where, let me tell you, it was the best bookstore of any place in southern Indiana. Right. I mean, it was amazing. And the money from that paid for the bookstore paid for the staff and then was put back into ministry. You know, and so I can also think about it, you know, like the coffee idea there, you know. Yeah. Should I get free coffee or should I pay a dollar for the coffee? It's well below market. Probably for sure would be. And then that pays for that, which is actually a bit of a ministry because I get to have really good coffee when I go to church. And then that means my tithes, my offerings can go back to the more pure work of the church, if you will, that you just described.
So, look, I think there's a line in everything. You know, I remember growing up also, you know, going into the Kentucky Derby and there were churches that were right there outside of Churchill Downs with their parking. And it was the worst thing. Right. It was. No, no, no, no. Those churches, they couldn't, they would never do that. You go there now. You want the best parking spot. Churchill Downs, you pay thirty dollars to the Baptist Church around the corner. Right. So I think there's something in there. But I do believe that there's a line and I think he was trying to get at that. And I would like your perspective on it. When he was talking about the temple. Right. You know, when Jesus cleared out the temple, did he clear out the temple because they were merchants, or did He clear out the temple because they were taking advantage of people who were trying to go to the temple?
Henry Kaestner: Well, I don't know. That was an interesting perspective. And I had never looked at scripture from the lens that he had. And he may be right. I tend to think that the lesson there was that there is a place to worship God, and that's not a place for commerce. It's not a place for merchandizing to find the right price point. And he said well, they were profiteering. And so how do you wade into that space about whether that's the fair price for a product or service that allows you to serve a great cup of coffee or to give up a good dove or what does it all look like? And that was definitely his interpretation and maybe the right one. So I think that really this is one of those subjects and topics for each one of our listeners to think about. Is there a role for a church to be a Faith Driven Entrepreneur or is that a great opportunity for sustainable ministry to, as you had suggested, allow more of the time to go back into real ministry in the community instead of just paying for the lights that should have been paid for by that latte? Or is this just a place to just stay away from? I bet you that they're going to be some number of our listeners that are going to go on both sides. And for that, I'm grateful. Great topic to wrestle with. I'm glad that Mark was on the program. Rusty, as always, I'm very, very grateful and blessed to be able to process this with you. And I'm looking forward to our next guest.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah. I've found, you know, that that's one of the best things about what we're doing here, is we're allowing people to hear the things that Faith driven entrepreneurs and pastors are thinking and what's on their mind. And then just like we do so much in our faith journey. You know, we wrestle with things and God gave us great minds to be able to do that. And it's fun to be able to do it together here.