Digging into my archives I found - "When bricks and mortar go to water" - the title of an article in The Sydney Morning Herald, which offered advice about purchasing an investment property.
The first sentence of the article advises that when buying property to generate wealth, keep your cool and plan carefully.
Chris Tolhurst provides this warning from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute: 25 per cent of investors sell their investment property within a year of buying it, because of poor financial planning and not doing their homework. This is simply a recipe for personal financial meltdown.
The five considerations to generate wealth were summarised as:
(1) not to take a short term view;
(2) steer clear from buying on emotion;
(3) be careful about the type of finance you get;
(4) seek professional advice (could save you a great deal of emotional and financial heartache);
(5) consider the cash reserves you'll require to fund the interminable sundries.
I've been pondering on those five considerations and reflected on the one component that was missing from that list.
Christian Churches and Missions
The Holy Spirit is the most important and absolutely essential to Christian Mission property purchases and I wonder how many Churches and Missions have considered these five principles (above) when investing monies.
Yet, I would create a different set of five principles that are more pertinent considerations for Churches and Missions to take into consideration when praying about such projects, and probably more often used.
I call these the five fundamentals of Christian building or purchasing projects:
1. The short and long term need
2. Developing a prayer network for the vision.
3. Collating people of like mind to see the project through.
4. Conveying the vision to the congregation or mission supporters.
5. In faith, trusting the Lord.
These five have nothing whatever to do with 'generating wealth', but more importantly, everything to do with the Spirit of the Lord touching a faith project.
Considerations
In my ministry of 39 years - the privilege of seeing mission projects come to fruition; not on the basis of those 'generating wealth' principles, but rather on what he refers to as the five fundamentals of Christian building or purchasing projects.
At my farewell from the small town of Moruya in 2005, after my wife Delma and I had set up various ministries under the Well-Being Australia mission, one of Moruya's leading businessmen said that he wondered at the lack of formal business plans.
He commented, he witnessed mission project after project, he marvelled as the business plan finances came out of thin air. He praised my approach, that my first consideration was always "will this help someone!"
Delma and I have kept this in mind in our current Well-Being Australia venture in Tweed Heads and the Laguna Quays Respite ministry. That same story is repeated and repeated in church and mission enterprises all over the world, over and over again.
These are completed on very different principles.
Dr Mark Tronson is a Baptist minister (retired) who served as the Australian cricket team chaplain for 17 years (2000 ret) and established Life After Cricket in 2001. He was recognised by the Olympic Ministry Medal in 2009 presented by Carl Lewis Olympian of the Century. He has written 24 books, and enjoys writing. He is married to Delma, with four adult children and grand-children.
Mark Tronson's archive of articles can be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/mark-tronson.html