Hey Fletch … I am an elder in a church plant. Sadly, a couple who joined our church at the beginning is now in divorce proceedings. The wife and four children attend church faithfully. The husband is providing financial support but it’s not enough to pay the bills. So, we began providing a significant amount of financial support every month. She just told us that her husband said he’s not going to fund the car payment any longer. A member has given the wife information about various welfare programs but she still hasn’t signed up. I hate the thought of telling a hurting member to hurry up and get on welfare so we can stop supporting her so much. I’m looking for your thoughts on when a church should and shouldn’t financially support a member.

Fletch—It is nice to see your genuine care and concern for this woman and her four children. She certainly is in a difficult place and your church wants to help her. Your church is modeling I Corinthians 13:4, “Love is patient, love is kind.” 

You have a significant issue and it is complicated by many factors. For starters, here is a recent article on XPastor that may give you some perspective: How Not to Take on Undelegated Responsibility.

The crux of your problem seems to be the church’s desire and responsibility to help versus what the woman, husband and their families should do. I would encourage you to:

  • Discover ways to help the woman make the right decisions. She may be temporarily paralyzed by the problem but she needs to begin to make major decisions. Some of those decisions are about public assistance and moving in with family. She needs to set a budget based on current income, family assistance (such as free housing) and any court mandated payments from the husband. 
  • The church needs to set or use existing guidelines on how much assistance can be given over a certain period of time. If you don’t use guidelines, you may be supporting her for the indefinite future. How long are you going to give assistance—a year, until her kids enter elementary school or longer?
  • Walk with her as she makes the hard decisions, but don’t make them for her. She and her husband decided to have four kids, and now both of them need to decide how they are going to support those kids.

Giving money is a fine first step, but it is not the ultimate answer. Giving money over the long haul will make her emotionally and financially dependent on the church. You want to see her emotionally healthy. 

Perhaps as the husband realizes the cost of his actions, he will clean up his act and the marriage could be healed. He may need some financial pain to sober him up. If you make things too easy for him, you may be helping him evade his responsibilities and not feel the pain of his actions.

I’m just giving some thoughts here to a complex problem. I’m sure that I’m missing many of the nuances of the situation—but the principles remain the same. Get her to a place of making decisions and get him to a place of supporting his family.

And here are some XPastor articles on Benevolence:

God’s best in all this. This gets at the essence of XPastor’s motto of The Business Brain plus the Pastoral Heart. Please keep me informed of how things go.