A Churchwide Financial Fast

In this month’s episode of the CSN Podcast, our host, Derek Sisterhen, interviews George Thompson, Pastor of Stewardship and Finance at Faithful Central Bible Church in a discussion about, “How One Church Used A 21-Day Financial Fast To Grow Contentment, Joy & Peace.”

George Thompson is the Pastor of Stewardship and Finance at Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood, California, as well as a devoted husband and father of two twin boys and a daughter. George has written several books including Millionaires In Training: The Wealth Builder, Set-4-Life: The Diary of a Champion, and coauthored The Total Package: The Keys to Acquiring Wealth and Walking in Divine Health. His most recent books are part of a series called Ready, Set, Grow where he has taken over 20 years of teaching and living out these life stewardship principles and turned them into easily digestible lessons for anybody to consume.

What to read more about this month’s episode? Here is an excerpt from the transcript of this episode’s conversation. 

Derek: Today we are going to talk about the 21 Day Financial Fast that you have led at Faithful Central. For our listeners, they can check out some of the details on the financial fast by going to FaithfulCentral.com/FinancialFast. So, George, as ministry leaders interested in seeing our people grow in their relationship with Jesus, we recognize how important spiritual disciplines are, reading Scripture, prayer. Usually, when we think about fasting, we think of not eating or taking the time to seek God through prayer. But you launched a financial fast. So, I want to hear what exactly is a financial fast and what started you down this road at Faithful Central?

George: That is a great question, Derek. First of all, about two years ago, Bishop Ulmer had come to me and said, “Hey, we want to do a fast a little bit different this year.” Because we had been fasting and doing the Daniel Fast for, I’ve been to the church 11 years, the entire time. We’ve always done the Daniel Fast. That was no meat, no sweets, and no alcohol. We found out that, hey, a lot of people don’t drink anyway or sometimes some people were…some people also wanted to just…they didn’t eat meat anyway, or they’re a vegetarian…or I don’t know, in California people try to eat healthy I guess. So they found out that they weren’t really doing all the elements of it. So one of the things he wanted to do, he said, “We want to do something in the area of finance and do a Financial Fast.” And he asked me to kind of make one up.

I’ve written about five in the area of finances. Bishop Ulmer has written two in the area of finance. So, between the both of us, I sat down and wrote down 21 principles that would just be good for someone to do with their finances. And then we would just walk through every day being a very special day in teaching them a financial principle and then go through it. Secondly, as you said, but you know, usually we’re used to using Scriptures or learning is a part of the financial fast. So that’s why we had built the financial fast. So, there are just different elements that I like to go over with you of the fast. But one of them is using the Bible. Meaning that we use SOAP which is, you know, that’s a way of studying the Bible by this method—the S stands for Scripture, the O stands for observation, the A stands for application, and the P stands for prayer.

So we used that during that period, but we also focused on…some of these Scriptures that we’re focusing on are…are financial Scriptures or also just teaching people about possession. Because as you know, most of the Scriptures in the Bible deal with about how people deal with what they have. And that’s stewardship.

Derek: This is great. I’m fascinated already because I didn’t realize that you had written so many books. So for all of our listeners, you have to go check out what George has put together in your little library, I suppose. So you’ve got these 21 principles, and we’re turning people towards scripture. We’re, also, I’m sure as we’re gonna talk a little bit more, you’re bringing in some practical application with this. Tell me, just ground level, if I’m someone who says, “Yes, I raised my hand. I’m signing up for the 21-Day Financial Fast, how does it work?”

George: That’s a great question. Because that’s what people have. That’s the first question Bishop Ulmer asked me. First of all, we have a text number because, you know, I want to be able to encourage millennials. I want to be able to encourage if you’re 8 to 108. So we have a text message that comes out every day, and that has a Scripture, you know like it has a scripture for every day what the scripture is and also what we’re studying for that day. So there’s always a scripture and while we’re actually online, I’m gonna look up, you know, our scripture that was actually for today in going through it.

So it was Proverbs 22:7. It talked about indebted slavery and then making somebody else rich by the sweat of your own brow. So then what we do is we teach every day to get out of the demons of debt. You already know debt is spelled D-E-B-T. So that’s doing everything but tithing. So we want to make sure that everybody knows that they don’t want to be not only caught up in that but just learning the techniques of that. But now your first question was…is though is that how does someone get started? So it’s either by email, they go to our website, they actually download the papers. And what we do is we just give you information about every day what you would do.

And so first of all, the basic elements are this is that we start moving from using…to just having a journal where they write down what they’re spending money on and that they kind of know that. And then also, a big principle is that we stop using credit cards. We even stop using debit cards. Then we go strictly to cash. So we start having people doing that. And then, by the way, we live in Los Angeles, so this is anywhere. We also understand that in 21 days you have to use a debit card or a credit card because I was doing the financial fast, and I took my kids to the dentist. And then when I pulled out of the parking lot, there was no attendant…there was no way of getting out of the parking lot without using a debit card. I understand that there are a couple of instances we have to do that if you travel. So just the first one is that we move to cash. You have a journal; you write things down. And then also, you only buy what you need, not what you want.

Three categories, as you know, from teaching. First one is, there’s a need, a want, and a wish. We only buy what we need. We find out when you go to use cash; you only buy what you need. You don’t buy all that extra stuff. As you know, as you know, what it says in Philippians is that “My God shall supply all of my needs.” It doesn’t say greeds. It doesn’t say wishes. It says needs, and it says all of mine. Then people do that, and then we start going through a tr