Jump ahead to a year ago last June. My husband unexpectedly lost his job through no fault of his own. We paid on our mortgage as long as we could while he was on unemployment but eventually it was impossible. We consulted with financial counselors and an attorney and put our home on the market. My husband continued to look for work but kept on coming up empty. Unless he were to work three to four warehouse jobs and destroy himself physically, it was impossible to keep our home.

We had two offers come in on our house, but due the housing market, the property value had fallen to less than the amount of our mortgage. The mortgaage company wouldn’t agree to very reasonable short sale offers. It was ridiculous. Keep in mind that in all of this we also had an attorney fighting for us in court. The judge denied the first foreclosure request from the mortgage company due to our attorney catching them on some lies. Even though he didn’t want to, the judge had to grant the second filing because my husband didn’t have income to sustain the mortgage anyway. He would have rescinded the mortgage all together and we could have gotten a brand new mortgage, but that would not have been responsible when we still didn’t know what our income would be like.

My husband is called to ministry and has been serving in ministry for free for a very long time. He decided to go back to school and pursue full-time ministry as a career which was his original career goal anyway. We believe that God allowed everything to happen for a reason and we are one of the most caring families when it comes to other families in need.

Now let me tell you about our church. We stayed fairly quiet on our situation with the church. We sort of got the vibe from the church that the have’s really do not hang out with the have nots. Well, when we knew we were definitely going to have to give the house back to the bank, we carefully just let the church know as a prayer request. Basically asking them to pray with us as we transition (we had pretty much prayed already and knew God was wanting us to move out of state and to a hopefully better job market anyway and closer to family during time of transition). Well, that is the biggest mistake we ever made. We should never have told the church anything.

My husband was confronted by two individuals (a deacon and a staff member) and told that he was not being the “man” of the household. It was not an encouraging conversation at all. They told him he was letting his family down by losing his home. They could care less that we knew God was calling us to move somewhere else. They even had the audacity to tell someone called to ministry, that he should just take as many jobs as he could and work seven days a week and forget about serving at church. Needless to say, we were both deeply hurt from this, and will probably never
voice a prayer request again.

If this is how churches are going to treat honest Christians who are responsible with their money and perhaps God is letting things happen for a reason, then it is just downright sad. We serve a great God and despite two people of status in our church treating us poorly, there are others who do care and do pray for and help us out as they can.

I just would like to caution those at churches to be careful and not jump to hasty conclusions and pass unjustified judgments on those losing their homes to foreclosure. It hurts to be torn down by other Christians when you know that you are following God’s will for your life. We are not supposed to set our sights on earthly things. Our focus should be on God and Heaven. A house doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

The loan agent told us that was a mistake & she wanted to get a new appraisal that would show it was valued as high as the selling price.
I stalled, I hesitated, I balked. I didn’t want to do this. But everyone was pushing & pushing. We finally signed. There was no feeling of joy that we had our house. I only felt scared. What have I done?

The first year was okay. We paid the house payment. It was a struggle for me to do on my own. Then I had trouble at my job around the same time as my mom died. After trying to live with some blatant age discrimination for 6 months, I quit. Surely, I thought, I can get a local job. But no one was hiring. At least no one was hiring a 55 year old lady. I went to the school district while I was on unemployment, & took the training for school bus driving. Finally I had a job. I made more on unemployment than I earned as a school bus driver. I emptied my 401K and my savings to keep up the house payment. I checked into selling the house, but it was worth about $50,000 less than we bought it for. I was getting behind on payments. Even with help from my daughter, we couldn’t get caught up fast enough to satisfy the lender.
Then I applied fo a job in my old industry, thinking that we could at last get caught up again. Soon after I started my new job, the lender, Chase, reset the ARM we had on the loan. Now, instead of the $1468 payment, they wanted $1896. It was a 3% jump in interest! Why?? I asked. When the Federal interest rate is going down, why is this going up? They started talking about “indexed rates” and stuff I had no idea what they meant.
My daughter & I pleaded with them. They said if we make 3 payments at this rate, we could get the loan modified. The last time we made a payment, they demanded not one, but TWO payments ! We talked them into accepting one, but not without the Chase associate on the other end of the phone trying to trick my daughter into committing to another payment besides the one I had given him. We didn’t HAVE enough for 2 payments. But this guy would have hit our bank account for an additional $1896! And also not before assuring us that NEXT payment WILL be a double payment.
All I wanted was a home. A sanctuary where my family & I could be safe. I’ve lost one home already. If everyone would have let me be, I’d still be there. I wouldn’t be in this situation. I could afford the mobile home payment. This is wearing me out. And I’m too old to be working this hard. I’m tired. Mostly I’m tired of being ripped off every time I make a little progress. I don’t know if I have, at almost 57 now, that I have the time or the energy to start over again.

Others make the point that lax lending requirements have contributed to the problem.

Yet, this is the story we find ourselves in.

In my last church (I am not actively pastoring at the moment), we had an active food pantry that gave away food to members/non-members alike. Members could receive more than 1x a month, in conjunction with pastoral counseling on finances.

Non-members were limited to only 1x a month, unless they wanted to start attending the church and getting into some form of financial education.

Pastors had discretion over mercy minsitry funds to help out members who were struggling with their homes.

Sometimes, if the foreclosure was a result of a member’s poor stewardship, the church didn’t step in. Foreclosure was the natural consequence of their foolishness. Instead, the church would focus on helping the member rebuild their life around wise stewardship of funds (and that doesn’t mean giving a televangelist a seed offering to get 100 fold from God).

Other times, if the member has had a history of wise stewardship and their current crises was a consequence of a blip (divorce, job loss, illness, family death, etc, failed business), the church compassionately helped with housing and other bills for a season.

But this was member care. It wasn’t social welfare for the community.

Nick said:

The church has also been such a huge influence on culture and charity that many people in foreclosure already look to their churches for guidance through a very tough situation. Banks, while they may contribute more directly to economic growth, tend to destroy that culture by focusing on financial rewards and consumption.

I think that is precisely my point as well. While it is tempting to be cynical and pessimistic about the plight of others who, as mentioned, are more than likely deserving the consequences of their mismanagement of their finances, there is within me a desire to see these times of crisis as an opportunity not to point the finger and say, “See, that’s what you get for being played the fool,” but rather to show the kindness of our Lord whose invitation is “Come unto me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” This, of course, is not to gloss over the seriousness of the situation or ignore the problem of poor financial stewardship and/or fiscal discipline. Like Michelle said, I think churches can be proactive rather than reactive by training their congregation (and even offering it to the broader public) in biblical stewardship and financial responsibility. One has to wonder, of the 70% of foreclosures which are self-inflicting, how many of them are believers? Should not Christians have a worldview which considers money and material things (such as a house) differently than the world around us? But how many Christians think this way?

So going back to the title of this post: mercy in the midst of the foreclosure. What about speaking truth in order to prevent foreclosure? Teaching biblical stewardship and training God’s people to have a worldview that encompasses the value of treasuring things above and the virtue of handling our financial responsibilities as those who will not only give an account to a bank or lender but to him who judges the living and the dead.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion. Feel free to continue on. I just thought I’d chime in once more.

I have debated this for a long time, with my walk with God, what should be done. I’ve also asked where do you help and where do you draw the line. The thought I have is that for the 70% of the people that are not utilizing their money properly, there needs to be Christ centered financial counseling. Those are the people who need the help the most. Those are the people who will continue to make the same mistakes if someone does not point them in the right direction. I believe as a church we should help our congregation and neighbors in making the right financial choices to begin with. Then they hopefully they would never make it to my desk.

As for the current problem, I’m still unclear of what the Church should do. Helping anyone in the 30% group would be my first choice. Not to say the others do not need the help, but the others have caused their own financial mess. I guess that’s harsh, but the other people did not expect death, illness, or loss of job, these were things out of the persons control.