Do you remember the old joke? The groom asks the minister how much he owes him for the wedding. The minister replies that the groom should pay whatever he thinks she’s worth. The groom hands over a five dollar bill. The minister mulls that over for a moment and gives him $3 back.
Pretty bad isn’t it?
Probably you know that a good portion of my work is helping marriages in crisis. Nearly a decade ago I developed a weekend turnaround workshop for marriages in trouble. By the grace of God, our success rate has been phenomenal.
Forgive my boldness, but I’ve noticed something over those ten years that I don’t think people “get.” When it comes to the things they need in life that they cannot buy at the mall, they tend to see as having little financial worth. For example, I’ve witnessed people paying $2,000 for a wedding dress and then offering the minister a crisp new $10 bill for giving up a day and a half of his life for rehearsal and ceremony. All too often people are so used to churches offering services for “free” that they come to expect all help to be free, no matter how much money they have.
If you think about it, no church or any other organization — profit or nonprofit — has ever offered anything for free, or even at dramatic discounts. Oh, it may be that the person that received the benefit made little or no financial contribution to what occurred, but it is a fact of life that someone did. Churches don’t build themselves. Utilities don’t pay themselves. And that church staff; think that they come in every day without receiving any salary to pay their own mortgage, buy their own groceries, etc.?
In truth, nothing in life is free. Really it’s a matter of who pays for what. Everything has to be paid for by someone. A free economic system in a capitalistic society functions that way.
So why do I bring that up?
A used car salesman told me years ago that he never charged less than $2,000 for a car — no matter how old — because anyone with any motivation can find a couple thousand bucks. I didn’t much like his motive — he’d sell you a car worth only $500 for $2,000 — but I understood his logic. People get the money to pay for what they want.
Interestingly, people gripe about paying money for things they need but never about paying money for things that they want. For example: A guy may chastise his pharmacist for the outlandish $20 co-pay on the essential medicine that keeps him from having a heart attack, and then walk outside to his new pickup towing his new bass boat and head off to the lake with a cooler full of premium beer.
You see this a lot in the marriage world. You encounter a couple with little money that are in crisis and want help. They will do anything they have to do to find the enrollment fee for a workshop or for paying counselors by the hour. Then you encounter a couple with a good living that are in crisis. They hear the cost of counseling or a workshop and decide that they’ll shop around for something less expensive. Fascinating, isn’t it? It’s not that they think the service not worth the money; they just want to find something “less expensive.” They’ll wear out their pastor. They’ll chide the church for not having a full time counselor on staff. Whether they realize it or not, what they are seeking is to have someone else foot part of the bill.
Think of all the things that have to happen to run an organization — even an organization focused on helping people: marketing and advertising, phone bills, professional staff, support staff, utilities, computers, software, Internet expenses, phone systems, copiers, printers, and other equipment, office furniture, and on and on it goes.
So the next time you need help for your marriage, for your troubled teen, or for your own despair, feel free to ask for help. If there is someone who can, s/he will freely help you. But just remember, someone is paying for it.
If you have financial means, shouldn’t it be you?