What would it look like if I changed my mindset for Lent?  What if I looked at lent & my faith from a different perspective. What if I gave up ALL thoughts and actions that keep me in a worldview where I believe that there is never enough, that I am not enough, that there is not enough of what I need to live out my life or my faith. That viewpoint is called a “scarcity mindset.”  

Pastor Marc and the congregation council are currently reading a book called Transforming Your Congregation into a Powerhouse for Mission. Last month we read & talked about what our church might look like if we changed our mindset from a scarcity mindset to an abundant mindset. 

While I have learned that God has always been generous, providing for us abundantly. In the New Testament, Jesus performed at least 3 miracles where he not only gave people what they needed, but gave them a lot more than they needed. He gave them an abundance.  (The two large feeding miracles where many baskets were left over, and making the wine at the wedding of Cana.)  

God, in the Old Testament, has also always provided abundantly for his people. In fact, he wanted His people to trust God’s provision and so He created the Jubilee system whereby land went back to the original owners & all financial debt was forgiven. God also provided the manna in the wilderness. As the people were greedy & collected more than they needed, it became rotten (which meant that there was no trust in God's provision). God always provides enough.

When we are worried about our survival as an entity, it seems to me that often our outlook about the church flows from a world view of scarcity. A world view of scarcity in a congregation sounds like: We don’t have as many kids as we used to have; we don’t have as many people in the pews as we used to have; and we don’t have enough money to do what we want to do. We wonder why the old ways of doing ministry no longer work, but we can't, or won’t, imagine something new or different. According to this book, and according to my own personal experience, we can lose this world view of scarcity, even if it is only little bit by little bit (each day, each month, each year), and instead tap into God’s world view of abundance. I wonder what our church would look like if most of the members of the church adopted a world view of abundance.

In order to have a world view of abundance, we have to really look, in depth at whether we are really trusting God to provide for us.  Whether we really believe that God is a God of abundance. So how do we change our hearts and minds to a world view of abundance.  Everyone will have their own personal story, but if we can individually change our world view, then the community will change consistent with the majority of the community members. 

I’m going to start with my personal relationship towards a world view of abundance.  I have been trying for a couple of years to change my world view from one of scarcity to one of abundance. Before I began trying to change my worldview, I used to wake up and start my day with the idea that I didn’t have enough time to accomplish everything I wanted or needed to do that day.  Because I was convinced that I couldn't do it all, I didn’t allow myself, or couldn’t, see anything that might have helped me. I was living in a world where scarcity ruled. 

Also, at the end of the day, my list of undone actions convinced me that there was no way I could do all that I was either imposing on myself or that was being imposed on me by others. That was a scarcity mindset. Every time I think I’m making progress eliminating a world view of scarcity, another example of my scarcity world view shows up.  For example, I often get worried when there is a financial setback that I wasn’t expecting, like when my first condominium here in West Lafayette was flooded out & it was no longer livable. I needed to find new lodging while still paying the fees for the HOA where I could no longer stay. However, through repeated small actions, I kept giving all of these things to God and just letting them go. I had enough money to share a home with someone I had met at Holy Trinity for a time so I started letting go of that. I had no idea where the money was going to come from for me to buy something else because I lost a lot of money on the condo & I wasn’t even sure I could sell it. What showed up was a big enough case (before I completely retired from my California legal profession) to pay for a small down payment. As an aside, because I was so certain that I couldn't sell the condo or buy anything new, I was telling my client not to file this accounting petition. But she was uncomfortable with not bringing it (God at work?), so I prepared & filed the accounting. Because of that case, I took a risk & looked at a house. The realtor was able to sell my condo for cash in a short enough time that I could put down 20% down on the house I was buying with the proceeds of the sale of my condo & I then had the money from the case in order to make necessary upgrades to the place I bought. God’s amazing abundance. I should have known better. These kinds of things have happened to me for a while. When I ran my own legal practice, at the beginning, I would get a payment by a client in an almost identical amount as the bill I owed. I just had to trust that it would come in.

Changing a world view is a long time project. I thought I was making progress until I wrote this blog post. Then it reared it’s ugly head again as I was certain that nothing in this blog could help anyone & I stopped trusting God. It appears that changing our mindset is a life long activity.

Lastly, let me tell you how this mindset change goes hand in hand with gratitude (see my blog post in November). Through the practice of gratitude, I realized that I wasn’t doing it. God was. It was God’s abundance that has always been providing for me. Not usually in the way I wanted, but definitely in the way that I needed. God knew what I was going to need way before I did. 

It seems that when we try looking at the world through eyes of abundance, something strange happens. All of a sudden our eyes open so that we can see that something new or different that God had in mind for us all along. Abundance! And then gratitude and thanksgiving occurs for that abundance, and the cycle begins again.  Abundance/gratitude. Amen. 

By: Deb Blum, HTLC member