How we use our gifts to bless others key to our worth

Richly blessed pastor misses the main point

17 Feb 2007 // The Rev. Mac Hammond says he's misunderstood. He might be right.

Hammond is founder and senior pastor of Living Word Christian Center in Brooklyn Park, Minn., a 10,000-member congregation that also has three "satellite" congregations - one of them a downtown Minneapolis nightclub.

A Washington-based watchdog group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics complained to the Internal Revenue Service, alleging that Hammond illegally benefited from the church's nonprofit status by getting "sweetheart" loan deals to acquire such things as multiple homes, luxury vehicles and an airplane.

Hammond said the watchdog group, and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reporters who broke the story about it, just don't get it.

Hammond got "amens" and "hallelujahs" from his massive congregation Sunday when he told them, "God says if you base your life on his covenant, these blessings are going to overtake you. You can't do anything about it, friend."

Well ... Hammond can count me among those who don't get it.

He makes it sound simple. If you do what God wants, God gives you lots of stuff, whether you want it or not.

He doesn't directly address the obvious reverse: If you don't have a lot of stuff, does that mean that God isn't happy with you?

To hear Hammond's version of the Gospel, one might think that St. Francis of Assisi got it wrong when he shed all trappings of the wealth into which he was born (including the clothing he was wearing), and embarked on a ministry that included intentional poverty.

If riches are a surefire sign of God's favor, maybe we need a new edition of "Butler's Lives of the Saints," with St. Francis expurgated and Donald Trump added.

Mac Hammond seems to be telling us that for him to do anything other than flaunt his wealthy lifestyle would be a slap in the face of a generous deity.

But focusing all our reflection on this one man, and his lucrative approach to theology, would cause us to miss an opportunity to examine our own lives.

Christ said, "No one can serve two masters ... You cannot serve God and wealth." (Matthew 6:24)

I read this not as a scolding, but as a gentle warning. Not just to Mac Hammond. Not just to Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, who took money from true believers like my grandmother and used it for luxuries such as a climate-controlled doghouse.

People don't necessarily need to have that level of wealth to slip, probably without noticing, from serving God to serving money.

It can happen to any of us, any time.

Where did I get this insight? From none other than Mac Hammond.

A Star-Tribune thumbnail profile of Hammond includes this quote: "A person that makes a lot less than someone else, but consumes everything of themselves, really is more in the wrong than the person who makes a lot of money but uses it to help others or promote the Gospel."

OK, it sounds like a rationalization, an excuse. Maybe it is, maybe not. Only God knows.

For now, however, I'll glean from that statement some sound theology - that God measures our worth not by how richly we are blessed, but by how we use our gifts to bless others.

Jerde's e-mail address is lyncjerde@peoplepc.com.