Elspeth Kernebone
10 May 2024
A Christian non-profit plans to ask big questions of the church’s balance sheets as it enters a new phase.
Manna Gum hopes to expand its work from an individual level to a church and political level, helping organisations reclaim a biblical understanding of material life and translating this to contemporary Christian practice.
Co-founder Jonathan Cornford said Manna Gum’s next phase would address how churches and Christian ministries thought about and used money.
Dr Cornford said the way the church structured itself financially was vital to its public and moral credibility, to the world and its members – and revealed its true values.
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He said churches needed to ask what effect economic arrangements had on the outside world. He said the church was called to start to become what the world should be, rather than waiting on government.
Dr Cornford said he was also keen to start thinking about how Christians influenced the economic systems in which they lived, such as the politics of economic life.
“How we think about standards of living, and how we embody that work in our economic communities, is really critical to the broader world in terms of the changes. We might need to think about major changes to the modern consumer lifestyle,” Dr Cornford said.
“We can’t call for a world of rapid decarbonisation, if we haven’t been prepared to take hard changes ourselves to adapt our performance.”
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Dr Cornford said Manna Gum saw its role as pushing forward these questions, and analysis, as well as ideas around solutions.
He said Manna Gum hoped to communicate through its written work, its podcast, and through speaking and teaching.
He said Manna Gum was open to being contacted by individual or church leaders who wanted to engage with its resources.
More information is available at: mannagum.org.au
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