tranzsend’s challenge: money or something deeper

by Peter Mihaere

tranzsend facing tough financial times

It’s a well communicated fact that tranzsend is now facing tough financial times and this is likely to continue into the future.

A friend said to me up front, “Peter, we need to know what went wrong, why it went wrong and get about fixing the problem.” My immediate response was, “It’s quite simple, we can only steward what’s been given to us.”

As I sat in Kelvyn Fairhall’s office one day shortly after that conversation lamenting tranzsend’s financial results I verbalised the feeling that even if someone walked into our reception and handed us a million dollar cheque, I didn’t think it would solve our problem.

A much deeper problem

Our problem is not whether we have enough money, it’s much deeper than that. If it was only about the money then we could put on a new fundraising hat, shake a few trees, get about sharing our vision and take the result to the bank.

We did that, in part, in June by sending an open letter to the churches about our financial crisis, and our denomination responded, for which we are truly grateful. Not with a million dollars, but we have probably cleared our potential deficit for this year. Praise the Lord!

So money is NOT the problem here. Something deeper is going on and I believe we need to tackle this deeper issue head on.

In my personal devotions at the moment I am reflecting on Nehemiah. In Chapter five, Nehemiah starts to have some internal problems with the community. There is slave trading and loan sharking going on and Nehemiah wants and needs to put a stop to it, so he reflects and then confronts the people with the issue. While I don’t think there is slave trading or loan sharking going on in our denomination I do feel the need to stick my neck out and confront us with an issue we are facing. It goes to the core of who we are….

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