OVERWHELMED
WITH MONEY

Topics: Generosity; Giving; Greed; Money; Stewardship

References: Matthew 6:24; 1 Timothy 6:10, 17–19

Warren Bailey, eighty-eight, died in July 2000. He had no family. And to the best of anybody’s recollection in St. Mary’s, Georgia, Bailey hadn’t been to church in at least twenty years. He did, however, make annual donations of about $100,000 to St. Mary’s United Methodist Church, a 350-member congregation with an annual budget of less than $300,000.

Members of St. Mary’s probably weren’t surprised when Bailey bequeathed money to the church. But there was stunned silence among the assembled parishioners when Rev. Derek McAleer broke the news that the man who owned 49 percent of the region’s Camden Telephone Company had left the church $60 million.

“This is a number that doesn’t have any reality,” the pastor said. Bailey’s will included no instructions on how the money was to be used, so the church has set up an advisory board to decide how to handle the money.

McAleer has been besieged by calls from people asking for money. And he admits worrying that greed could consume his congregation. “How do we remain a Christian church with all this money?” he laments.

—Associated Press (October 30, 2000)