Church Voices

Michael Spencer gives us a little peek behind the curtain. 

Our employees sacrifice to serve here, making less than six thousand dollars in salary and taking on a community life surrounded by other staff and our students 24/7/365. We spend less than $20,000 a year on promotion of any kind. Many of our staff are full time volunteers. We eat food that is primarily donated or raised on our farm. Volunteers come to our campus by the hundreds in order to do construction, donate medical care, renovate buildings and just encourage us in ministry.

We do not turn away any student for financial need. Half of our students are on significant scholarships. We are the third least expensive school of our type in America. Many of our students pay nothing. Churches all over Kentucky and even some elsewhere support us with gifts large and small. Our endowment was almost non-existent for many years. We have never had a fund raiser. Never made a cold call. Never asked a corporation for a donation., Once a year we send a Christmas letter to our friends. Four times a year, we send out a newsletter telling the stories of our successful students.

There’s something of heaven in that.  Sometimes (or most the time) I wonder if we have a severe disconnect from the experience of the church described in the scriptures because our wealth (and yes, chances are if you’re reading this you have an embarrassment of riches) has made us tiny Castros of our own personal Cubas.  There’s no dependence on our brothers and sisters to get by, there’s no shared hardship to bring us together, and there’s too many opportunities for even more independence via wealth as time goes on. 

But here’s the kicker.  Even if you have the desire to live the kind of life Spencer has taken up, chances are you can’t.  The vast majority of us (and I include myself in this), in order to be qualified to fill the position of educator/administrator/preacher/counselor you end up owing thousands of dollars in student loans. And that’s only if you managed to live a frugal lifestyle and not end up owing on credit cards, and cars. 

Lets not pretend that this difficult road Spencer has chosen (paved only recently, so I’ve heard) is all rainbows and roses:

I don’t always like working for a ministry where I don’t have a secretary, where there’s a building full of other people’s donated clothes as part of my compensation and where I’m making less money than I did in 1979. I’m 51, and I still have to move the pulpit by myself every time I come into the chapel to preach. I’m assistant to the President, and I still get asked to substitute teach in middle school.

We can’t find a church, and the church I go to offers almost nothing that I can appreciate or enthusiastically endorse. Good people, but I can never really be myself there. That is difficult and painful, but it’s part of being here where this ministry is most needed.

But at the same time we need to recognize that the existence and success of Spencer’s school is the result of lifestyle (avoiding debt, both personally and institutionally) and focusing on the mission.

A few years ago, our school lost its President to a sudden illness. A search process began to replace him, and a somewhat well-known minister had his eye on the job, so he asked to meet with the staff. After a brief presentation assuring us that the search process was going well, he made his play for our support by telling us we were long overdue to get raises, more benefits, perks and compensation.

Now he was quite right. There were people in that room who made so little money it was embarrassing. I’m grateful that kind of omission was made right by our next President. But what happened next has always stayed with me.

One of our houseparents, a man who, along with his wife, has spent almost three decades here as a night shift houseparent and locksmith, living in a house trailer and dealing with our students at their worst, that man stood up and said something like this:

“Sir, we appreciate what you’ve said today. But you obviously don’t understand us. None of us came here to make money. No one here feels like they have sacrificed at all. They are privileged to be part of this ministry.”

Uncomfortable silence took over that meeting as two sets of values collided. As much as everyone of us in that room would have loved to see a few more dollars in our paychecks, the truth was that we knew it’s a gift to live anywhere near the way, the values and the Kingdom of Jesus. You can’t put a price tag on the treasure Jesus gives.

That, friends, is as intense as it comes.