Holy Currencies
During the past 4 months, our church council has been studying Holy Currencies by Eric Law. Law describes Holy Currencies as “a holistic model for stewardship and congregational vitality, moving beyond “time, talent, and treasure” to create missional and sustainable ministries. This model with its processes, enables church leaders to understand, develop, and utilize five other kinds of currencies besides money that are essential for creating sustainable and missional ministries. These currencies are: Time & Place, Gracious Leadership, Relationship, Truth, and Wellness. These currencies flow and recirculate to form a Cycle of Blessings which empower congregations to strengthen their internal relationships as well as reach out and connect with the diverse populations in their neighborhoods.” Too often churches fail to use all of the gifts and blessings that God provides, instead focusing only on material resources that a few committed members have donated. This results in a mission that stagnates, wanders of course, or slowly withers away.
The key part of this idea is that there are 6 key blessings that flow into each other and form a cycle or wellspring of mission that changes lives and the world around us. But each currency needs to be used and flow into each other currency for this to provide sustainable growth. This means that if you take one away, the cycle is interrupted (think of a garden that you tended well, weeded, fertilized it etc.… but failed to water it – the garden would not grow because of this crucial missing link). As a leadership team we have taken time to examine how we utilize (or not) these 6 key currencies (or blessings) that God has given us.
The 6 currencies are Relationship, Truth, Wellness, Time & Place, Gracious Leadership, and Money. Here are brief descriptions of the first three (adapted from Eric Law, Holy Currencies Chalice Press 2013).
Currency of Relationship: Refers to the internal and external networks of mutually respectful connections that leaders and members of a church or ministry have.
Currency of Truth: it is the ability to articulate individually and corporately the global and wholistic truth, both internally – the experiences of different individuals and groups within the church or ministry- and externally – the experiences of different individuals and groups in the community, the neighborhood, the town or the city, the nation, and the earth.
Currency of Wellness: This is the state of being healthy physically, socially, economically, ecologically, and spiritually within a church or ministry, especially as the result of deliberate effort. Wellness requires the regenerative and circulatory flow of material, human, financial, and natural resources.
To be continued…in our next summit. “Examining how the currencies flow into each other and how lives can be changed.”
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