Money Talks: Speaking About Money

What would you do if a member of your church came to you this week and confessed she was overwhelmed with more than a half-million dollars of debt? What if this person was the most unlikely of those you would suspect of such challenges?

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This week I read about a family doctor in Columbus, Ohio, whose original student-loan debt amounted to roughly $250,000 and more recently due to deferments, default charges, and compounding interest had ballooned to over a half-million dollars. According to the article, there is an estimated $730 billion in outstanding student-loan debt in our country and only 40% of that debt is actively being repaid.

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Here we have a person who by all appearances should be living a comfortable financial life. She is not exactly the unemployed, under-educated, or unskilled we might expect to be having money problems?

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What concerns me here is not the enormous amount of debt that this particular physician has or the impact it has on her personal finances but rather what our response would be in she came to us for help. Most churches are without a response because they don’t know the need is there, they don’t know how to recognize the problem, and quite frankly, aren’t expected to. Money is so taboo in so many churches that in order talk openly about these sorts of things would be highly out of the ordinary. And yet, I am confident there are endless numbers of individuals and families who wish they could share their financial lives with someone in the church. Unfortunately, if given the chance, most of us would not know how to respond.

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Knowing how to respond to the up’s and down’s of our financial lives is only one of many steps in eliminating the many barriers financial discussions in the church. Money Talks is a experienced intended to eliminate the fear and hesitancies of talking about money in the church. Money Talks can be used as a flexible retreat curriculum ideal for small groups, leadership teams, etc. For more information, contact me at jasonlewis@thefrankgroup.us