Every organization, agency and institution requires money to carry on its operations. It requires money to build and renovate facilities and extend missions and ministries. That money must come from somewhere. It comes either from taxes, endowments or current fundraising activities.

No church-related missions that I am familiar with receive tax funds for support. Some few have nice endowments that theoretically provide annual revenues, except when the stock market is experiencing the conditions of today's economy. That leaves fundraising, an assignment every nonprofit agency must undertake at one time or another.

Not many people like to raise money. They will do anything at all to help a cause other than ask other people for money. They will fold letters, stuff envelopes, drive voters to precincts and carry food door to door, but just don't ask them to raise money, even though they may be enthusiastic supporters of the cause.

John Wesley did not like to raise money either. Oh, from time to time he would preach a stewardship sermon, the purpose of which was to receive money for some special purpose. He then would take that money to those in need and give it to them gladly. He said on more than one occasion that it is better to take money to the needy than to send it. This was the only way he thought people could identify fully with the plight and needs of the poor. Wesley was known to have given away much of the income that came to him. He just had little interest in money.

However, he seemed to have an absolute loathing for asking other people for money. Indeed, Wesley had little patience with the Methodists who wanted to lay up treasures on earth. "These money-lovers are the pests of every Christian society," he once wrote. Later he would write: "What is money to me? Dung and dross. I love it as I do the mire in the streets."

John Wesley's position on fundraising was not hard to determine. He detested the act of fundraising, but recognized it as a necessity at certain times when the needs of people or causes required it.