Welcome to our series on your church and Bitcoin. If you’re not a Bitcoiner but you’re interested in learning why your church should care about Bitcoin — or if you have a Bitcoiner in your congregation who is interested in donating it — this series is for you. If you yourself are already a Bitcoiner and want to get your church onto a Bitcoin standard, you may prefer to start with some of our other talks, such as the How to Orange Pill Your Church series.
First, let me introduce myself. My name is Jim McAndrew, and I’m an entrepreneur and software engineer. I started Magnalia with Tim Fox to help the church understand Bitcoin in light of the riches of Scripture and Christian theology. I’m also a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.
Why the church should care about money
Your church may not have deacons, or your deacons may function more like the elders in our denomination — but even so, I’m willing to bet you have members who perform the same role. Historically, the office of deacon has focused on sympathy and service for those in need, which is often called mercy ministry.
Deacons first show up in Acts 6, when some widows were being neglected in the daily distribution:
And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty.”
Acts 6:2–3
In other words, the first deacons were appointed to care for the physical and material needs of the poor — which of course involves collecting, saving, and using money wisely on behalf of the church.
The church is first and foremost to provide spiritual nourishment for God’s sheep, but this is not to the exclusion of providing for those in need. James warns against exactly that error:
If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?
James 2:15–17
So the church is to be concerned with both the spiritual and the physical well-being of our brothers and sisters. This means we should take care to avoid the things that prevent us from doing this well, and we should be diligent in looking for new ideas and technologies that will help us better serve the kingdom and bring even more glory to God in the process.
At Magnalia, we believe Bitcoin is a great example of a new technology with tremendous potential for the church, and as a ruling elder I’ve spent many years making the case for it at the churches I’ve attended. The content in this series comes from my own experiences and learnings over the years, and I hope it helps you better understand Bitcoin — and the Bitcoiners in your midst.
A word about Bitcoiners — and grace
If you’ve already encountered a Bitcoiner, you may have experienced how zealous they can be, and sometimes that excitement comes across as arrogant, condescending, patronizing, or even spiteful. If so, try to extend an extra measure of grace and patience, realizing that when many people finally understand Bitcoin for the first time, it can be an eye-opening experience, because the ramifications are profound.
We try to encourage Bitcoiners to spread Bitcoin with love, and we’d encourage you to be open to receiving it with love — even if you’re currently opposed, or you’re having to interact with a less-than-gracious, or even toxic, “Bitcoin maximalist” who thinks Bitcoin is the solution to every problem.
Bitcoin is great, but it’s obviously not our savior, and it certainly won’t solve all of your church’s problems. Having said that, if your church is struggling financially, or if you’re looking to grow and make a bigger impact for the kingdom, you owe it to yourself and your church to honestly and openly consider Bitcoin — even if you think you already know everything about it.
Michael Saylor, one of the most intelligent, outspoken, and articulate promoters of Bitcoin, gave a talk called 21 Rules of Bitcoin. His third rule is simple: you will never be done learning about Bitcoin. He also makes the point that everyone is against Bitcoin before they are for it — and if someone is against it, it’s usually because they don’t yet fully understand it.
Shrewd as the sons of this world
If you’re still wondering what business we have, as Christians, concerning ourselves with worldly topics such as economics and money, consider the parable of the dishonest manager. Jesus paints the picture of a man very much involved in the affairs of this world — in particular, managing his master’s accounts. After failing his master by wasting his possessions, the manager does something wise: he collects on a bunch of debts that were probably considered uncollectable, and his master — and by extension Jesus — commends him for his business acumen:
The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.
Luke 16:8
Jesus seems to acknowledge the conventional wisdom that Christians can be naive or unwise with money, and then he warns his followers that they may not be entrusted with true, spiritual riches if they can’t be faithful with the common, physical riches of this world. We can’t use our Christianity as an excuse to ignore the affairs of this world; instead, God expects us to operate with shrewdness and acumen like the sons of this world. That doesn’t mean we all have to become economists, but we are expected to maintain some level of knowledge and understanding of worldly ways — and that takes effort.
This series is meant to help you focus that effort efficiently, so you can ultimately spend less time thinking about Bitcoin and more time on ministry, sympathy, and service. Along the way I’ll point to many sources we trust, and I’ve gathered them all in one place in our resource library — bookmark it and check back, because we keep adding to it.
So what is Bitcoin, really? We’ll talk about that in the next part.