At a time when many churches around the country are defaulting on their current mortgage, most churches probably do not want to hear that one way to redeem their buildings for missional purposes is to double their church mortgage.
However, this recommendation is not really about past debt, but about future debt and budgeting. Many churches, if they had followed the recommendation in this post, would not find themselves in the debt dilemma they now face.
The recommendation is that whenever a church seeks to spend money, they double the cost. The extra money would then go toward missional work and service in the community and around the world.
In essence, this recommendation asks churches to put 50% of their budget toward missions.
Church buildings are usually the biggest expense, but this principle could be applied to anything the church spends money on, from pastoral salaries to office supplies. The end result of this is not really that the budget doubles, but that the budget stays the same, and how the money is spent undergoes careful examination. Some churches already give away 50% of their annual budgets toward missions. I congratulate them, but even these churches might be helped by doubling the cost of items they wish to purchase to help them determine if the purchase is important or not.
