The Beginning

It Started Before I Had a Choice

I grew up in the welfare system. Foster homes. Financial instability wasn’t a phase — it was the environment I was formed in. By the time I reached adulthood, my relationship with money had already been shaped by forces I couldn’t name and hadn’t chosen.

At 29 I made it official. I took a literal vow of poverty to serve in ministry. I believed — genuinely, sincerely, without reservation — that staying poor was staying faithful to God. That wanting more was worldly. That ambition was pride dressed up in nice clothes.

So I stayed broke. For decades. And called it faithfulness.

The Cost

What Decades of Poverty Theology Actually Produces

I watched opportunity after opportunity pass by. Not because I lacked intelligence or diligence. Because every time a financial opportunity appeared, something deep in my psychology flinched. Wanting it felt wrong. Pursuing it felt worldly. Succeeding at it felt like a spiritual compromise.

That wasn’t weakness. That was a thermostat running. A belief system operating on autopilot, producing poverty outcomes while calling itself virtue.

The cumulative cost showed up in a government pension statement. One number. A lifetime of financial decisions, distilled into a single figure that told me everything I needed to know about the theology I had lived by.

That was the moment the belief system cracked open.

Not my faith. My poverty theology. Those are not the same thing.