I believe it is very important that you are confident and feel great about how the money you give is used. So here it is…
1.
Mostly it is used for flights and the occasional hotel room. That’s really about it. And I have learned a lot and become pretty proficient at looking for and finding great travel deals.
We have a Reaching Seekers travel rewards card that we use for flights and hotels. We have already been able to use the frequent flyer miles from that for free flights. We also have used some of our personal miles for Reaching Seekers trips as well.
We do not stay in 5-star luxury hotels, by any means. Rather just cheap, safe and clean is about all we need.
2. We do not use money you give to Reaching Seekers for meals when we travel. Sometimes we eat in pastor’s homes and so forth, but when not, we pay for our own meals. We would have to pay for food if we were home, so we do the same when we travel for Reaching Seekers.
For example, one time when Janna went with me, we took a couple of days in the middle of the week to go to Lake Atitlan. Everything is pretty cheap in Guatemala, but we use our own money for anything like that.
3. Investing more time into Reaching Seekers ministry in 2020 means being away from The Seeker Church more often. The church obviously needs to compensate people who come and speak when I’m gone. So we are going to experiment this year with taking what we pay guest speakers and then deleting that amount from my salary.
Then, I will receive that same amount in “salary” from Reaching Seekers. I say experiment because we haven’t done this before. Hopefully it will work!
4. I want you to know that we are very serious about being wise “stewards” of the money that God and you entrust to us.
We have given at least 10% of our income to God and the cause of Christ in this world, me for 40+ years and Janna 27 or so. One time I added it up and it came to over $350,000. And God has really blessed us. We have no car payments, no credit card debt and our house is almost paid off.
So we’re not asking you to do something that we ourselves have not already done and continue to do.
While we don’t give to God just in order to be blessed, He promises to bless those who are generous. Here is just one example.
'Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it."' - Malachi 3:10.
If you ever have any questions about how the money given to Reaching Seekers is used don't hesitate to ask.
