WHERE DO YOU GO TO CHURCH? and other tricky questions that organic church people dont know how to answer. I have a few of you on the email waiting to hear me on this, so let me start with my first thought, and then keep adding thoughts as
I get them.
THOUGHT 1.0 - BANKING
Lets talk about banking. A similar question “Which bank do you belong to?” used to be approprite but is now redundant. You probably have an account in one bank and a loan from another. Your kids may choose a different bank altogether. Your consultant is from a non-related organization. The financial management software on your computer is from somewhere else, and yet it manages to bring all those numbers together on one page.
BUT YOU STILL BANK!
The question “Where do you bank?” still does not solve the problem.. You may initiate transactions from your phone, the internet, or by handing your visa card to the shopkeeper. And the most accurate database of all those transactions is probably your home computer, rather than the computer at the bank.
In a way, you are now the banker. The empowerment of banking is in your hands. The financial institutions are now your servants, your advisors, your consultants, your administrators. That is, of course, unless you owe them money, in which case they are no longer your servants but your masters.
YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE BANK.
As your advisors, you view the Bank with suspicion. They say they want to help you but really they want to make money from you. They gave your father piggy banks when he was young because they wanted him to develop healthy spending and saving practices, thus protecting him from the curse of debt. But now, in this post-piggybank era, they want you to borrow and not to save, since they rely on interest from your debt to survive.
WHO DO YOU TRUST?
You find advice from a consultant who is not a puppet of the banking system, but who nonetheless knows the system well enough to navigate its system and use it for your benefit. Because, even though the system may be flawed, you know that it can still work for you and you don’t intend to leave it entirely
BANKING NOT ABOUT JOINING A BRANCH BUT ABOUT MANAGING YOUR FINANCIAL ASSETS. A BANK IS NO LONGER A PLACE.
RESPONSE: (Scot Mathis) "True enough, but this implies an intensely individualistic financial experience. I don't stand in line and chat. I don't identify with other people who use my bank branch. I manage my accounts from my computer. When I need cash, I go to an ATM. I don't like the idea of a spirituality that exists in isolation from the community (actually, I do like it, but that's my weakness, not my strength!). It's not enough to sit alone in a darkened room checking your spiritual balance, or to stop by the automatic dispenser for a bit of bread and wine." SM
AJ - Thanks Scot. Maybe homeschooling/unschooling is a better analogy. Homeschool kids dont go to school, as ours didnt when we were full-time RVers, but they were educated nonetheless.
Follow the Thread to 1.1 Mobility
