“OWE NO ONE ANYTHING”
DOES THIS APPLY TO CHURCHES TOO?

Owe no one anything! (Rom. 13:8)

It is one of those injunctions in Scripture that has a bite to it. In our debt-laden society such advice seems stodgy and old-fashioned, something you would expect grandma to say. One might be tempted to argue it is not really a mandate from God but something an ancient Jew would say out of the culture of his own times. Who in the real world of “plastic credit card” America can take seriously the notion of living debt-free? Whatever the reason, there are few of us who take that passage seriously, however inspired we may believe it to be. It is odd how we can be selective when it comes to the Bible, accepting some things with rigid compliance while ignoring others with reckless abandon.

I see in Paul’s apostolic advice a sound economic principle, for nations as well as families and individuals (and churches!). It is something I have always believed and practiced, even in my youth and long before I realized it was in the Bible. Staying out of debt has made me a freer and happier person all these years, but it is a difficult lesson to teach others, even one’s own children. I conclude that the apostle’s admonition is not true because it is in the Bible, but it is in the Bible because it is true. Getting what one wants (rather than what one really needs) through debt making has always been morally suspect, even from the foundation of the world, just as stealing has always been wrong. Stealing is not wrong because the Bible forbids it but the Bible forbids it because it is wrong. And borrowing what one may not be able to repay is akin to stealing.

Why does not “Owe no one anything” also apply to churches? The church press these days has numerous news items of churches that are overwhelmed in debt, some of them even to the point of bankruptcy, and these include Churches of Christ. Some churches are millions of dollars in debt! And to whom do they owe this money? The bondholders are often the aged, the retired, and the widows who supposed they could help the church with their investment money. Some of our big churches who owe millions are now asking those who trusted them with their savings to either forgive the debt or the interest or to wait for payment.

This letter from a woman in Texas that appeared in a Church of Christ newspaper should serve to remind us of the wisdom of churches staying out of debt like the Bible teaches:

I am a 73-year old widow. I read about Richland Hill’s debt. I have my life’s savings in bonds in that church and I haven’t received a penny of interest since May of 1989. I only draw Social Security. I use the interest to pay my insurance and repairs on my home. I may have to sell my home. I have written them and called them, and they just aren’t interested in my situation. How can they help the poor and do all that they are doing while owing people like me. I have lost sleep over this. At my age I need the money now, not when I am dead and gone.

The woman’s plea is persuasive. How can a church with good conscience and a sense of justice go right on spending money as usual, including large salaries for their staff, while owing widows who trusted them with their savings?

While the Texas sister spoke her mind, it was a Tennessee brother that really laid it on the same church. Here is his letter in the same publication:

The honest and heartfelt course for the Richland Hills church is to fire its huge staff and use its weekly income to pay its honest debts, and after its debts are paid, to resume its elaborate programs. I know of no other Christian course. I do not know of any rational reason why I at nearly 87 should be denied the income from my lifetime savings.

I should think it would be embarrassing for staff people of a church to go on receiving their checks at the expense of widows and retired folk. Such embarrassment could be avoided if our leadership would adopt a pay-as-you-go policy as the Bible directs. Our elders are often chosen more because they are business men than spiritual leaders, but even so they often take chances (with other people’s money!) in church business that they wouldn’t take in their own business. Just as there would be fewer wars if the kings who make them had to fight them, so there would be fewer churches in financial trouble if the leaders who make the debts had to be personally responsible for the debts.

We have ample evidence in the larger church world that a pay-as-you-go policy will work. You are not going to find a Seventh Day Adventist church in financial trouble, and they have a mission program in every country of the world. The Assemblies of God have baptized ten million in the past generation and established thousands of “base communities” in South America, all without a debt problem. And when the Mormons build a new church, or even an elaborate temple, it is paid for before the first brick is laid!

Even among Churches of Christ there is the Boston church that now has “plantings” on every continent and most major cities of the world, with tens of thousands of baptisms (All in just eleven years!), and they don’t owe a dime on a single facility —because they don’t own any facilities! They are the one group among us like the New Testament churches in this respect. You have heard that we are “restoring the New Testament church,” haven’t you? We are supposed to believe that we are doing this when we build edifices and sanctuaries that run into the millions. And then can’t pay for them!

If it is the primitive church that is our model, it is far more likely that it would have gone into debt to care for the needy than for imprisoning itself in a building. And prisons they often are. When a Boston church outgrows its rented facility, it simply rents a larger one. No sweat.

Owe no one anything. Is that inspired Scripture? Is it the word of God? What should it mean to us as a nation that has to measure its indebtedness not in the billions but the trillions? What should it means to us as individuals who go into debt not for what we need but for what we want? What should it mean to churches that tear down one “barn” to build a bigger one without ever getting one paid for?

But that is not all the apostle said in that passage that reads, “Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.”

So, I close recognizing that there is one debt we all owe and can never pay, however much we try, and we should keep trying. We love because God first loved us. Love is the debt we can never pay. And what a glorious debt it is! It is the inglorious debts that we can and must pay. And then stay out of debt like the Bible says. —the Editor