In Australia today, financial struggle thrives in the shadows.
Fuelled by shame and the exhausting mental load of carrying it alone, people withdraw, feeling they should manage on their own. Beneath the practical pressures of housing costs, insecure work and rising living expenses lies something deeper: isolation.
This is the cultural moment we face. And the Australian Church has a role to play. But it might not be what we first imagine.
When we don’t talk about money in the life of the Church, we don’t create neutral space. We leave formation in this area entirely up to our culture – to advertising, to the pressure of a rising standard of living, to the quiet lie that if we just had a little more, we’d finally feel secure.
The biblical caution is clear: money is not a neutral tool. Jesus named ‘mammon’ as a rival power (Matt 6:24) – a force that captures our imaginations and reorders our loyalties.
The beliefs we carry about God, ourselves and money begin to show up in our practices: simplicity or consumerism, generosity or scarcity, hospitality or individualism. Over time, those practices bear fruit: contentment or discontentment, trust or fear, love or isolation.
There is a real risk that in trying to “help” others with money, we end up passing on something that looks a lot like Christian materialism – a comfortable version of faith that rarely questions our own lifestyle.
When this happens, money quietly continues to shape our hearts according to the dominant story of our culture, rather than Jesus. Without intending to, people are shaped by the Australian dream by default. This is what Jesus called the ‘log in our own eye’ (Matt 7:3-5). And that matters, because we cannot offer what we have not first received.
Financial struggle isn’t only “out there” in the community, either. It sits in every congregation in two forms that are distinct, but deeply connected.
Some people face a genuine cost of living crisis – not enough to meet everyday expenses or absorb an unexpected shock. Others face something different but equally real: a standard of living crisis – persistent discontent, a sense of never quite having enough, even when objectively, they do. Both are present in our pews.
When church culture mainly talks about money in terms of budgets and giving, those carrying either burden learn to stay silent. We become communities where people struggle in the shadows.
The Church has something genuinely irreplaceable to offer here. Not because it runs the best programs, but because of what it is.
The Church is not primarily a service provider. It is a household – what Paul calls “the household of God” (Eph 2:19). The Greek word for household, oikos, is the root from which we get “economics” – the stewardship of shared life.
In a household, the way every member uses their money and time shapes the whole community. What one person holds loosely, another can receive. One family living simply enough to share becomes a neighbour’s margin in a crisis.
This is the vision Jesus points to. The early Church didn’t run a welfare program – they lived as a household, and the effect was that no one was left without what they needed (Acts 4:34).
Today, the same practices can reshape how money works in community.
It begins with simplicity – the kind of life that creates enough margin to be present to another person.
Simplicity creates the conditions for generosity.
Generosity finds its fullest expression in hospitality: the kind that opens tables, homes and lives to those doing it tough.
When someone is struggling and isolated, and another person steps in to walk alongside them, the story begins to change. Walking side by side is formative for both parties.
If the Church is God’s answer to financial struggle, then we have some thinking and changing to do.
What if our sermons and conversations treated money as a core part of following Jesus – naming both financial hardship and financial discontent, allowing people to bring their fears into the open without shame?
What if we started seeing walking alongside those doing it tough as a normal expression of community – shared meals, listening well, thinking slowly together?
And what if each of us asked honestly: what story does my spending, saving and calendar tell about what I love and who I’m becoming?
As we allow Jesus to reshape our relationship with money, our own financial anxiety often begins to loosen its grip. And the margin we create provides the opportunity for someone else to find hope instead of isolation in their struggles.
The Church – you and I, together – are God’s answer to financial struggle, not in theory, but in the details of our day to day lives.
