As mentioned in my 2009 goals, I’m going to begin public speaking and have decided to start by teaching a six-part class at my local church titled “Understanding the Economy”.
I taught this class every Monday night for six weeks. To share this class with my readers, I wrote this article series to summarize the class. I finished the class several weeks ago, but have not had a chance to write this last article because of all the activity in the market.
Introduction
This six-part class is not just about the economy from an economist’s point of view, but from a Christian worldview with a prophetic understanding that we are living in the last days before the return of Jesus.
The primary theme of this class is to help people understand that the global economic crisis is part of Gods plan and He is in complete control. He will sustain us. We shouldn’t panic, and instead should get ready to help many people - the Church will need a tremendous response.
The title of this class was; Part 6: “The Tremendous Church Response (Response)”
The Class
This class is about how the true believers in Christ will be called on to respond to this massive financial collapse that is underway.
As the recession deepens, people will begin looking for answers. They will look to the Internet, the government, the educational system, their parents and their local churches for help and answers. How each of these groups responds will shape the futher of our nation.
Make no mistake about it, the real financial crash is still to come when the world drops the dollar. The housing market and stock market collapse are just the beginning of our financial troubles and the last push that is leading the world leaders to abandon the dollar as the world reserve currency.
As I said in Part 4 of this article series,
"It’s going to take more and more money to continue to support the dollar as the US budget deficit is expected to grow to $1 trillion in 2009 and the Obama administration is planning to stimulate the economy with another trillion. Bailing out the US economy from this recession will take the support of the entire world. It will take the combined effort of all wealthy nations acting together to support the dollar through this recession. This unilateral support for the dollar, in the mist of a global financial meltdown is unlikely to hold up and eventually the dollar will sink. "
Get Ready
With this foreknowledge, this understanding of what is going to happen to the dollar and the US economy, how can we prepare? How can we position ourselves as Christians to help the needy and be ready to give them the answers they are going to be desperately looking for?
The first thing to do is to get your personal finances in order, which was the subject of the previous article in this article series. The second thing to do is to get ready to teach a lot of people about Jesus and how he is the answer to every question on this earth. To do that, it will take a tremendous response of the Church to meet the needs of the flood of people that are going to be coming through the doors.
What I am saying is that the churches that are prepared for this will be best positioned to explode as they lead millions to Christ through the process of meeting their needs. Consequently the churches that are not prepared because they have no foreknowledge and they have not been listening to the voice of the Lord or following the current events with relation to Bible prophecies - as Jesus criticized this followers in Luke 12:54, will not be ready. They will miss out, like the Pharisees that missed Jesus pass by in front of their homes on a donkey several thousand years ago.
These churches that are not ready for 1000 people to come through their door and are not prepared to teach and have answers to the many questions that will be upon them, will likely dwindle as the people move on to look for answers somewhere else.
At the same time, Christian persecution will be increasing and fear will be upon the land, which will cause the churches that are just playing church to not respond and the churches that have the true believers to explode. This is exactly like Jesus described in Hebrews, when he said he will shake everything until nothing but his kingdom is left standing - as I talked about in Part 5 of this article series.
If your local church is not ready for this, then have your pastor read this article series and begin training leaders within your church to respond.
In Conclusion
Since the completion of this class, many people at my local church have asked me to teach another class and the interest to understand the economy continues to grow as economic conditions worsen. So far, I have not committed to teaching another class, but I am considering it in the fall. I think the need for personal finance classes will continue to grow throughout the year. Several other churches in town have also begun teaching Dave Ramsey and Crown Financial Ministry classes.
Another possible option that I am considering is to teach a class targeting small businesses, which are sure to increase with the unemployment rate. Over the last decade, I have started several small businesses and wrote an article series about my experience last year. I'm considering a class titled something like, "Born for Business: How to Start a Small Business".
For now, I am completely fascinated by the upcoming G20 meeting that has many world leaders threatening the US Dollar as the reserve currency of the world and suggesting that a new global financial system need to be put into place. Just today, China is considering to stop buying US bonds unless the US stops borrowing and printing so much money, which is likely to decrease the value of China's investments in US bonds. Japan is also considering their options.
These events are following my line of thinking just like this article series talked about, starting with the rise of the global economy and how America is not prophetically in the last days. I hope you enjoyed reading this article series and would consider reading it again every six months to see how the global financial system has changed with respect to what I talked about.
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