Fraud, Deception, and Business as Usual

American banking interests have long been aggressive in their marketing of loan products to consumers. Some have shown remarkable capacity to increase their profits by utilizing plans for mass market solicitation. Invariably the targets of these efforts are consumers with an immediate financial need that the institutions suggest can be remedied quickly and easily by their easy to meet terms.

Now before I go any further, let me say that I have significant respect for financial institutions and their necessity for both making reasonable profits and their need to cover the risks of their financial lending decisions. What I find striking is the fact that they are willing to offer ever increasing amounts to consumers who do not have the means or capacity or record of timely payment and responsible financial management. That is where there seems to be a rub.

Loan sharks and street lenders who charge exorbitant interest for small loans for short periods are the subject of many dark novels and the back pages of many crime reports. They are joined by many “finance companies” that fall under more lenient lending structures, in terms of commercial banking laws, and in turn move interest rates into the 20-30% plus range. Banks and credit unions began to offer their customers short term loans with warnings about the serious overuse of short term debt in light of its high cost. Similarly, credit card companies stepped in to offer their version of “quick loans”via cash advances and monthly “cash” check offerings. Now we are coming to my point.

Somewhere along the line, the lines between the street loan shark and the corporate institutional lender were merged. Today, the greatest schemes in the world are mass marketed with the names of worldwide lenders attached to them. Banks of high renown are the ones who solicit in the microprint the consumer to use their “low interest”cash availability…only to find in the microprint the statement of immediate 4% fees attached to the availability of those funds. For a short term debt, if the fees are added, the APR moves to astronomical figures…in other words …you have been taken. If bychance that consumer is a vulnerable one financially and circumstances cause them to be late in any payment, formerly “market interest” can be transformed overnight to amounts that sound less reasonable than the thug with the wad of bills and a baseball bat for repayment insurance.

Interest rates in the twenty and thirty percent zone become the consequences of slow payments and some even allowing for that increase in light of any late payments on any of a creditor’s credit reports. Suddenly…the consumer loan user is put over barrel after barrel of legalized “thieves” taking more and more out of their pocket while forcing an ever spiraling increase in costs, fees, penalties, and interest.

The add-on schemes are equally galling. They start with the offering of a service, a form of insurance, or a freebie to be yours simply for signing below…then in the fine print, you are told that this service comes with annual charges, monthly added costs that will be automatically billed to your credit card. In the middle of many of those offers for free things there is a microprint disclaimer noting that if this “Free check” is cashed, you will be automatically enrolled in an offering of one sort or another that will be billed monthly thereafter. People with poor vision would never know they had signed up for anything until after the charges started automatically accruing to their account.

Last week, I received a notice in changes in one of my credit card agreements. It was a multi-paged microprinted document with so much doubletalk, I do not believe a Harvard business school finance major could have understood it. It described its formulas for imposing fees, increased interest rates based on payments, and a new policy regarding the minimum payments for those who only paid minimum payments. It was as confusing a statement as any I have seen in my life. And the gist of it all was simply, some people are going to be taken for a very long cash depleting ride as they use this particular card.

Is all this legal…by current laws?…apparently. Is it right? Questionably not. The scriptures remind us that things hidden will one day be shouted from the housetops. Perhaps this sinister or not so sinister “theft” by fineprint should be regarded as a matter of justice for all and taken to lawmakers for better regulation. Where is the Christian community when it comes to speaking for fairness, clarity, honesty, and integrity in the marketplace? Should we not be making more of a ruckus about such clearly destructive behaviors on the part of corporate entities when the results can be so devastating to so many in our community?

There is another reality at work, as Proverbs 28:8 says so well…”He who increases his wealth by exorbitant interest amasses it for another, who will be kind to the poor.”

The Cost of War

Economies of scale similar to the expenditures for prolonged modern warfare equal the gross national product totals of many nations. Current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are costing hundreds of billions of dollars. It must be considered that rarely do we count the cost in honest evaluations of the investments made in war machinery and its related upkeep; much less do we begin to consider the immeasurable factors of grief,death, suffering, loss, pain, disease, hunger, animosity, anger, fear and unending tragedy associated with the ongoing progression of such conflicts. In the midst of such conflicts,the only numbers that seem to matter are “our” casualties. How many bodies have we sent home to be buried? How many more have we sent home mutilated and maimed in countless waves by bullets and bombs and shrapnel of all sorts? How many have we sent home with all their body parts, but with their minds in agony, confusion, and disarray? How many can’t sleep? How many can’t work? How many can’t relate to their children for fear of an ingrained response to every sight and sound around them? How many come home and find that things are not the way they were when they left? How many lose their spouses, lose their jobs, lose their dreams? How many suffer from the delayed consequences of exposure to unhealthy environments, physical conditions that bring debilitation and pain? How many beyond our “own” suffer because the collateral damages are just a part of war? Who counts the children caught in the crossfire? Who counts the children laden with explosives and sent into populated places? Who counts the wounds of the natives, the innocents, the local poor who cannot escape the conflict zone because they have no means? Who counts the enemy dead beyond those on the“most wanted” card deck hit list? Who counts the dead in the refugee camps who die from disease and starvation? Who counts the dead who die trying to get to safety or trying to rebuild their country? Who counts the cost and does not see the need for somebody to make an effort to make peace?

Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”Matthew 5:9 NRSV.

Possibilities for a Dysfunctional Family – A Word Study

• Dysfunction – impaired or abnormal functioning
• Functioning - serving
• Dysfunction – impaired service
• Dysfunction – abnormal service
• Dysfunction - serving in a broken state
• Dysfunction – inability to contribute to the development and maintenance of a larger whole
• Dysfunction – a breakdown in unity due to a failure of relationships
• Dysfunction – a weakening or failure in culturally and socially interdependent relationships
• Dysfunction - connected with, but not fulfilling the expected service of a person associated with their special relationship to others
• Dysfunction – impairment in fulfilling the acts or service expected of a person
• Dysfunction – a breakdown in fulfilling ones duty
• Dysfunction – impairment in usefulness
• Dys – bad, impaired, difficult, abnormal
• Dysfunctional – bad service; impaired service; difficult service; abnormal service
  

Those aspects of our lives that cause us to be dysfunctional should remind us daily of our need of grace, forgiveness, and God’s mercy. It should also remind us of our need to forgive others, to offer mercy and grace and to bear witness to the never failing, never dysfunctional love of God who calls us to move past the dysfunctions of our lives toward His divine purpose. When we discover in Christ the power from above -- and in turn begin to move and to act and to live in His strength, there are no dysfunctions that can prevent us from serving and honoring Him. To bring that relationship with Christ into the center of our families – at home, at church, and in community, is to discover the enabling power of God to transform circumstances broken by sin into places of forgiveness, places of love, places of upbuilding, places of positive influence, places of relationship that bear witness to the power of God at work in us.

Organizational Models and the Church

Exploring with churches the opportunities for ministry and service often shows significant need in the areas of organizational development and relationship building.Communities of faith have often been the unsuspecting recipients, rather than the instigators, of organizational models for church ministry. Many denominational bodies have utilized patterns for church development that are presented as models for duplication and in turn often frame structures and programming. At times those efforts have brought forth fruit, and on other occasions, they imposed a whirlwind that at best may have met the needs of only a very narrow range of churches.

We don’t have to look far to find evidence of great success and great failure in utilizing “packaged plans.” Church planting efforts staged by the North American Mission Board and its collaborators often evidenced a very small rate of success in “getting young congregations off the ground.” In fact, less than 1 in 20 according to some analyses were even in existence after 5 years. That realization should have sparked some significant reworking of church planting models, but it did not. Instead the patterns of “sink or swim” support for young pastors and churches continues to set the stage for ongoing weakness and a landscape of “tiny church” development that often creates dismal opportunity for future growth and effective ministry.

Specifically, data indicated that models of church planting that were not indigenous within communities, but rather were efforts imposed from outside those communities found little success. Some might ask then, “How did any church get started?” They were most often successfully begun by Christians who as members of a community joined together to establish a church. Short-term and artificially created communities do exist (i.e. military compounds, prisons, or newly planned communities established by corporate builders) but the gathering of those people who eventually form those communities, while random and a function of economic development, do eventually coalesce into some units of gathered cooperation over time…churches can at that point find the internalized initiatives within those communities to emerge.

Today, there is evidence that many congregations are limited in their abilities to carry out effective ministry by organizational models that were imposed upon them at some point in time, and perhaps with good result, but which in the meantime have continued without change and now hinder rather than enhance ministry endeavor.

Generational shifts alone have made some models of organizational “style”ineffective. Demographic changes equally have influenced countless congregations that may be vibrant in spirit, but poor in resources and burdened with a history of imposing structure and now derelict effectiveness.

Recalibration is an important aspect of scientific instrument use and measurement. Changes in temperature, humidity, and air pressure can create differencesthat must be taken into consideration for precise measurements. Similarly, churches that fail to recalibrate their organizational structures in accordance with changing conditions often find their effectiveness diminished.

Church documents that “show their age” by reflecting a structure of organizational relationships that no longer exists need updating for more useful explanation and clearer effectiveness in charting the course of responsibilities and expectations. Models that often need rethinking are those that repeatedly exclude certain groups of persons within the church from participation. Self-perpetuating models that become “clubish” more by habit than intention should not be allowed to stand over against mission, all the while diminishing the work of the church. The opportunity of as many as possible of a Christian community to be equipped and engaged in ministry and witness is critical to the life and vitality of congregations. In other words, there should not be a felt need to “get permission” to act in the name of Christ. Structures that mitigate against ministry rather than for it should be recalibrated, discarded, or reworked.

Churches that have suffered fractures of relationship, theological diversification to the point of disunity, and that continue to show an unwillingness to seek reconciliation inthe spirit of Christ’s love, will continue to be suffer the outcomes of dysfunctional witness. Such a state yields broken community, suffering souls, and the abandonment of shared dreams and visions. Only in repentance, renewed commitment, and in a recalibration of present circumstances will such congregations emerge from conflict to a restoration of grace and grace-giving.

Organizational models have never been the basis for effectiveness. Personal and corporate commitment to the way of Christ has marked the vitality of ministry and service in congregations that are showing effectiveness today. Testimony, service, discipleship – all are marks of congregations that find at their core the incentive of grace to share their faith in ways that bear witness to the world. We must organize and yes,value that organization that allows creative, positive, Christ-like witness to the world. But we cannot stand still; we cannot refuse to acknowledge the present as our time for engagement and service; and we cannot be intimidated by the past in such a way as to refuse to act to bring glory and honor to our Lord today.