{"id":20019,"date":"2026-06-11T21:26:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T15:56:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/sacred-assets-tough-decisions\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T21:26:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T15:56:47","slug":"sacred-assets-tough-decisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/sacred-assets-tough-decisions\/","title":{"rendered":"Sacred Assets, Tough Decisions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div class=\"everlit-audio-embed\"><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>Many of us were taught an unspoken deal: Live faithfully, do the right things, and life will work out. In this episode, Amber and Tom gently &#8212; but firmly &#8212; challenge that transactional model of faith and money with Amy Butler, a pastor, author and founder of Invested Faith.<\/p>\n<p>Amy shares how her own ministry journey exposed the limits of &#8220;cosmic vending machine&#8221; theology and why she believes faith communities are called to something deeper: interdependence. Drawing from her books<span> &#8220;<\/span>Beautiful and Terrible Things&#8221;<span>&#160;<\/span>and<span> &#8220;<\/span>Holy Disruption,&#8221; she explores how churches can move beyond scarcity thinking and creatively repurpose their assets to fund social enterprises that challenge unjust systems.&#160;<\/p>\n<p>Along the way, the conversation gets refreshingly practical: why pastors need balance sheets, not just Bible studies; why financial literacy is a form of pastoral care; and why closing or transforming institutions can be holy work. It&#8217;s a hopeful, grounded look at how faith communities can steward money, power and privilege with courage, imagination and a little disruption.<\/p>\n<p><strong>About Pastor Amy Butler:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Pastor Amy Butler has led some of the most iconic pulpits in America, including becoming the first woman to lead New York&#8217;s Riverside Church. She&#8217;s a writer, community builder and founder of<span>&#160;<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.investedfaith.org\/\"><u>Invested Faith<\/u><\/a>, a movement helping congregations use their aging assets to fund the work of faith-rooted social entrepreneurs building businesses that are changing unjust systems.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pastoramy.com\/books\"><u>Amy&#8217;s books<\/u><\/a>:&#160;\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Beautiful and Terrible Things&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Holy Disruption&#8221; (co-authored with Dawn Darwin Weaks)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For more episodes and info, visit<span>&#160;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/religionnews.com\/money-meet-meaning\"><u>Money, Meet Meaning<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/2026\/06\/11\/sacred-assets-tough-decisions\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many of us were taught an unspoken deal: Live faithfully, do the right things, and life will work out. In this episode, Amber and Tom gently &#8212; but firmly &#8212; challenge that transactional model of faith and money with Amy Butler, a pastor, author and founder of Invested Faith. Amy shares how her own ministry [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}