I had tea today with Joyce and a pastor’s wife at Coffee Club Raffles City.  The café was packed and there were no seats for the three of us.  It therefore came as a very pleasant surprise when a couple at a table that could sit four got up, offered their table to us, and moved to a smaller and less comfortable table for two !

Over lunch, I learnt from the pastor’s wife that he had hardly been paid since starting work with his church.  The couple lived off the wife’s salary.  They were not poor, but still it was a not insubstantial sacrifice for the pastor to give up his rather successful sales manager with a five figure salary to enter into ministry.  What a contrast from the Durai saga and, sadly it seems, church leaders who seem inordinately rich.

I don’t think being a Christian, or a Christian leader, means that you have to be poor or that you cannot enjoy some luxuries in life.  But when Christian leaders appear extremely rich (some American TV evangelists especially), they become – fairly or unfairly – the target of criticism.  Is it too much to ask – requiring these leaders sacrifice a little more by living a little more humbly, so that no one has an opportunity to defame the name of God ?  On the other hand, many of these leaders have already made tremendous sacrifices of their time and energy, especially at the beginning of their ministry, shouldn’t they be given some space ? 

I don’t know what the right answer should be.  Perhaps it may be helpful if church leaders think in terms akin to Matthew 6 : 2 - 6, and 16 - 28, that when we have already received our reward in this lifetime (in the context of the passage, praise from men), there won’t be as much of it when we get to heaven.  (A not very theologically correct application of this passage, I concede).

And then there’s also 1 Peter 2 : 12 -

“Live such good lives among non-believers that , though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits us”.