Faith & Finance: An Interview with Bill Evans (Part 1)
Much could be said about the significance of money in contemporary life. For Free Will Baptists, there has not been a more important voice in the last twenty-five years than that of Bill Evans. Evans is a long-time pastor, financial counselor, tax preparer, and administrator. Though he and his wife Brenda are retired in Ashland, Kentucky, they still enjoy a fruitful ministry as they travel, write, teach, and preach in a number of different settings. Recently, Helwys Society Forum contributor Jackson Watts was privileged to host them for revival services at Grace Free Will Baptist Church in Arnold, Missouri.
The following is Part 1 if an interview between Jackson and Brother Evans, which readers may listen to here, or simply read below (the audio file has been edited for length). Part 2 will post on Thursday, which readers may listen to or read.
_______________________________________
Jackson Watts (“JW”): We’re here this afternoon at Grace Free Will Baptist Church, outside of St. Louis, Missouri. I have the privilege of being pastor here as well as serving as a managing editor of the Helwys Society Forum. It is as a representative of both of those organizations that I have the privilege to talk to you, Brother Bill. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.
Bill Evans (“BE”): Well I’m glad to be here.
Background
JW: Bro. Bill has been with us a few days now at Grace and has been sharing with us some revival messages, really challenging us to think a lot about what we might call Christian Stewardship, or the intersection between faith and finance. So most of what I’d like to ask about for both the benefit of church members who will listen to this or to people who will read the transcript of this interview later on the HSF, the questions will revolve around faith and finance.
Could you start by sharing with us a little bit about your background in Christian ministry? Specifically how did God lead you into ministry, and what forms did that ministry assume over the course of 50 years?
BE: Well I was exposed to the church and the Lord from childhood. My parents went to the church; my dad ended up being a deacon in the church, mother was a Sunday School teacher, so I was exposed to church. I received Christ as a younger teenager. But I had a lot of emphasis placed on me about making a good living, learn a trade or something, where I could have a comfortable life. As a result of that, I headed into engineering. But my sister went to Bible College (Free Will Baptist Bible College). She was on fire for the Lord, really had a tremendous influence on my life. Eventually I enrolled in a state school with engineering in mind, but the Lord would not let me go. And I finally surrendered to go to the Bible College.
JW: …which is now Welch College in Nashville, Tennessee?
BE: Right. I transferred in January of ’59 and three and a half years graduated. And I had, in that time, received a call that I was convinced was to ministry of some sort. And I thought probably local church ministry. So that’s what I surrendered to. And when I graduated I accepted a church—a little mission church—in northern New Hampshire. And I followed that with ministries in St. Louis and Farmington (MO) and Kansas City, Colquitt, GA, and eventually Ashland, KY. But all during those years I had been exposed to the needs of the church and individual Christians in managing their funds and thinking about the transfers that come at death. I had gone [attended] Robert Sharpe School for Estate Planning. I had been exposed to a number of other briefer seminars in that regard [area], and I had been elected to the Board of Retirement and Insurance [FWB] to serve on the board. So I got exposed to some of those kinds of needs and that just fit my mathematical skills and bent.
About five years before I responded to anything overt, a parachurch ministry from the west coast contacted me for each year for several years in a row. A friend of mine who worked there would call and say, “Are you ready Bill? Is it time Bill? I think you need to consider this Bill.” So once I got to Ashland, I had taken that church sort of as a desperate move, because I couldn’t find any place to go to pastor. And he called me again, and I said, “This is it.” The Lord made it clear. I flew out was interviewed and he immediately put me to work. And for seven years I worked for that parachurch ministry, doing estate planning for individual Christian families all over the United States. I was involved with a lot of lawyers, went to a lot of intensive estate-planning seminars led by some of the premiere lawyers in this country, and got an education in that area. And so Bro Herman Hersey called me about the Board of Retirement.
JW: Herman…??
BE: Hersey. He was the founder of the Board of Retirement for FWBs. And he called me and asked if I would be interested. We spent some time together. I had been the chair of the board for about eight years. He knew me well and told me of his plans to retire. So I came to Nashville in ’90 and did an understudy work with him. And it’s gone from there.
JW: So in some sense, while certainly all of your ministry prior to coming to the Board of Retirement was meaningful and important, in so many ways all of that prepared you for that long tenure at the end of your ministry at the Board of Retirement, before you yourself retired?
BE: That’s right. I had also during that period when I was in Missouri for a lengthy period (13 or 14 years), I worked with the state boards, was an officer of the state association, and worked extensively with budgets and treasury. Those kinds of things prepare you for dealing with finances.
Surveying the Landscape of Stewardship
JW: It’s obvious and it’s fair to say then, even if you might not word it this way, that you know much more about Christian stewardship and personal finance than most pastors. But do you think that pastors should seek out some specialized knowledge outside of theological education, outside of their normal ministry training, to facilitate their ministries—whether it be in the area of finance, counseling, architecture, etc.—or do you think a special calling is necessary? Or is personal interest enough?
BE: I think personal interest will determine to a great extent how far they go, or how inclusive their training will be. I think it would be a mistake to say that every pastor ought to study architecture with the idea of becoming an architect, or being able to design a church. But I think it would not be harmful were he to study enough to know it’s a complex thing and needs special attention. There are preachers who are called to preach who have the gift of other things as well—but not every preacher’s an architect, so they shouldn’t set out to design a church. They may have some ideas, but they need to be filtered through professionals. Same is true of counseling, investing, and on and on. A little knowledge is important in a lot of fields because pastors are going to deal with people who have bents in those directions. But to be an expert in everything? No. You don’t have time. Life is too short.
JW: What do you think, as you survey the landscape of churches and American society in general, is the greatest challenge facing the church in the area of financial stewardship at the present moment?
BE: I think the church as a whole is dependent on the older folks to carry the load. Now that’s a two-fold challenge. One is that they have been trained, for the most part, in discipleship and stewardship. If there’s any stewardship training, they’ve had it. Now a lot of our churches have not had any because “That’s secular. That’s worldly. Money is evil” and all of that kind of stuff we know is not true, but there’s that tendency to think that.
I believe that newer believers, newer converts are coming along, who are not being trained in discipleship for finances. Tithing is not taught very much anymore. I think it’s key. I think it’s important for us to teach tithing. I think it’s important for us to go beyond that with free will offerings. That fits our theological bent and name pretty well. A tithe is not the criterion of faithfulness, but it is a basis for faithfulness. And young people are not being taught to deprive themselves of very much. And tithing requires saying “no” to self.
JW: I was going to ask if you thought there would be a different challenge for the next generation of the church’s life, but if what you’re saying is true about younger Christians not being taught these things, then that will carry over and be a challenge in the next generation won’t it?
BE: Well, we’re moving more and more to a disconnected generation. There’re an awful lot of young families of our country now who are not tying into a congregation. They attend church, but they are peripheral. They are not part of the church. They don’t get engaged in the activities and programs. They’re attenders. They go to ballgames, they pay a price for a ticket, and they have no further real connection to the team. They want to be entertained or blessed, they want to know the Lord, but they don’t want to be committed. That’s one of the things we’re being challenged with. And if you’re not really committed, you’re not going to tie your money up with that church. So stewardship is, hey, you just don’t want alongside the wagon. You hook your horse to the wagon and pull.
JW: It is striking your use of the word de-connected or disconnected since we have so many ways to be connected these days with the communication technologies we have and so forth. Is the financial aspect of things what causes us to be connected in other areas but not in the church? Tease that out a little more.
BE: I think what it comes down to is that most of the people who come to church are going to drop something into the offering plate. But when you talk about a tithe, it’s different. You’ve got to give a tithe before you give anything else because that’s the Lord’s portion. I think the ease of connections—technology that allows us to reach anyone, anywhere, anytime almost—also allows us not to be deeply engaged. We can know. We can then choose. Fifteen or 20 years ago we started talking about the smorgasbord church where you could just kind of pick and choose what you wanted, and I think now it’s even more available where you can pick and choose how you want to be involved. Now there’s some value to that, but there’s some weakness to it as well.
JW: So let’s imagine for a moment then, since this has been a real experience of yours in ministry, that you do have that Christian who will admit to you, “I don’t tithe any of my income simply because I don’t believe Scripture commands it.” What would be your brief/short answer to that kind of comment?
BE: My short answer is, “Will you let me sit down with you and go through the Scriptures with you and convince you, or at least confront you with what I think of is a scriptural basis for this responsibility?”
JW: The people who listen to this interview or who read the transcript later won’t be aware of this message that you preached at our church here yesterday evening, and you addressed the subject of tithing. And I would describe what you did as a sort of biblical theology of tithing since you went through redemption history and hit some key points from Genesis all the way to the time of Christ. Do you think one reason why it is difficult to get people to engage that is because they’re just looking for a command: “Thou shalt tithe” or “Thou shalt not tithe.” Do you think that’s part of the problem?
BE: I think it is. And because it’s not one of the ten it’s just sort of lost in the mass of law as in Deuteronomy and Exodus and even Leviticus. But who’s excited about reading Leviticus? [laughter] It just sort of gets lost in the maze of things. And then there’s this disconnect at the New Testament because Jesus didn’t say, “Thou shalt tithe.” But He did say, “These things you ought to have done,” and that is, tithe on the spices raised, “and not left the other undone, the weightier matter of the law.” But that doesn’t mean that He doesn’t believe in tithing. There is a complexity to life that Jesus looks at, and He takes in the whole.
_______________________________________
JW: Part 2 of this interview will post Thursday.
Recent Comments