Church Planting Economics 101: Paper clips

So I was digging out some old sermons from the filing cabinet today and kept finding these annoying little paper clips holding each sermon together. I hate little paper clips and believe they are wrong in every way. Paper clips are meant to be big and thereby useful!

So I started wondering why I had not used real paper clips back in 2001 and it suddenly hit me: I couldn’t afford them. We were into year one of planting Grace Fellowship Church and since I had to work to support myself and there was no real church budget yet, I bought the cheapest clips I could find.

Thankfully, we can afford real paper clips now and they afford me weekly joy.

Let that be an encouragement to you, Church Planter, if you are working hard with little money in those early days. That kind of frugality will teach you much and the fact is, you will live; even with little wannabe paper clips.

Besides that, who knows? Maybe one day God will prosper the work enough to buy the real ones.