Practicing the King's Economy Quotes

“if you want to create the kingdom potluck at the margins, you must relentlessly pursue the sort of community that makes it possible for the marginalized to “bring a plate.”
― Michael Rhodes, Practicing the King's Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give

“At first I was surprised by how hard it was for our church to navigate all this.”
― Michael Rhodes, Practicing the King's Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give

“Sharing meals together forced us to figure out how to be the body of Christ reconciled across racial, ethnic, and class lines.”
― Michael Rhodes, Practicing the King's Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give

“New City was the first church I’d ever been to in my twenty-two years as a Christian that had a substantial number of members who were economically poor, who came as full participants rather than objects of charity, who called out to be recognized as eyes or toes or thumbs of the body of Christ rather than simply as folks with empty bowls on the other side of the soup kitchen line.”
― Michael Rhodes, Practicing the King's Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give

“You may not be able to imagine what it means to see upper-middle-class Indians wearing traditional African shirts and black Kenyans wearing Indian saris as they circled up to share the Lord’s Supper together. And I’m confident you cannot imagine the food.”
― Michael Rhodes, Practicing the King's Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give

“for a variety of reasons, US citizens are increasingly likely to live in all-poor or all-rich neighborhoods and much less likely to live in communities where they would ever even have the chance of becoming friends with someone from a different class.”
― Michael Rhodes, Practicing the King's Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give

“This economic arrangement worked only because their lives were so oriented toward the group that they didn’t even consider their possessions their own but “had everything in common” (Acts 4: 32 ESV). While this probably didn’t mean a one-time divestment of every single piece of individual property into a common fund, it absolutely meant people sold land and houses to share with the group.”
― Michael Rhodes, Practicing the King's Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give

“For twenty-three straight years, Barnhart Crane and Rigging experienced 25 percent growth every year. Whatever profits they earned beyond the “enough” the Barnharts set for themselves was invested in other kingdom work. For the last ten years, their company has given away one million dollars every month. In 2007, the Barnharts actually gave their business away to their charitable foundation. The enormously profitable business they built no longer belongs to them at all. “We never felt that we owned it, anyway,” Alan says.”
― Michael Rhodes, Practicing the King's Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give

“How did the Barnharts decide how much was enough? Our principle is that the Army cook shouldn’t eat a whole lot better than the troops. Those of us who’re in a position to generate wealth aren’t entitled to a different lifestyle than the rest of the body, the rest of the troops. We may need different tools, just like that cook, but our lives shouldn’t be so different.”
― Michael Rhodes, Practicing the King's Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give

“Our grandparents’ “normal” has become our “almost impoverished.”
― Michael Rhodes, Practicing the King's Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give

“From 1968 to 2001, US per capita incomes doubled. During that same time, the average church member’s giving fell from 3.10 percent to 2.66 percent of their total income.”
― Michael Rhodes, Practicing the King's Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give

“I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue—that avarice is a vice . . . and the love of money is detestable. . . . But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight. John Maynard Keynes,”
― Michael Rhodes, Practicing the King's Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give

“I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them. C. S. Lewis”
― Michael Rhodes, Practicing the King's Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give