Living Abundantly When Resources Are Scarce
by Craig Brian Larson
January 1, 1998
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As much as I have tried to ignore money, it influences everything. When I have enough, my life feels like a crisp autumn day filled with sunshine. When I lack money, it feels like I'm hit by a cold front hammering down from Canada's Hudson Bay.
For most of my twenty-two years in ministry, my personal finances have been difficult, sometimes desperately so. In my first year as pastor in Chicago, my income was around $14,000. Over the next eight years the church gradually increased my salary. When I left it was around $25,000. Throughout this time my wife did not work.
Our possessions reflected our situation. In Chicago we drove a 1974 rusting Chevy Malibu. The rubber door seals had decayed, and when it rained, several inches of water collected in the floor well of the rear seats. In the trunk I stuffed newspapers in the rusted-out tire wells to keep water and debris out.
We lived in a second-floor, two-bedroom apartment. When the wind blew from the south, the astringent fumes from one factory were nigh to unbearable. The building's old windows rattled loosely in a winter breeze, and the drafts were terrible. I became proficient at catching mice (for bait use peanut butter, not cheese), adding to my many pastoral hats that of the trapper. I felt locked in by our penury. We never had any savings, and it was all we could do to keep up with quarterly tax payments.
When we moved to Arlington Heights, a western suburb of Chicago, I received roughly the same salary but now lived in an area with a higher cost of living. On one occasion after our annual church business meeting, in which expenses including my salary were reported, a church member said to me, "I didn't know it was possible to live in this area on less than $30,000 a year. ...
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