Wants and needs

I'm not sure I've talked about this before on the blog...the idea of wants and needs. People tend to use the two words interchangeably and they are generally not. A need is, in my mind, required to continue to function. Air is a need, food is a need, water is a need and so on. A want is what we desire. While a person needs food, having pizza for that food is a want. A lot of time folk don't understand this. They come to the church looking to have their needs met when in reality they have wants to be met and they get frustrated when that is pointed out to them. For example, the person who comes to the church saying they need food, but when something was offered to them, they insisted they needed Golden Corral. That is incorrect, they want to go to Golden Corral, but they really just need food. One that has happened a few times is people coming to the church in a time of financial crisis. Now I am not unsympathetic but it has taken years and years generally for these people to get into this position of financial crisis and a lot of time the first time I have met this person is when they show up looking for somebody to pay their bills. What is needed is some help with handling finances which we have people trained and qualified to do. What they want is somebody to pay their bills for them for this month...which doesn't help them out next month. I don't think people always realize that the church has bills to pay as well and the money the church uses for those bills doesn't drop out of the sky but rather is given in donations from those who attend. Additionally, those in leadership have an obligation to be stewards of what they are put in charge of. Sometimes that means meals are purchased or cars are fixed or bills are paid. But sometimes it means the answer is no. That's the hardest answer to give to somebody who is in a crisis, but sometimes people need to be allowed to fall down on their own. They can know we're available if they want to talk or learn about budgeting, but we just don't always have the funds available to meet their want or we don't think it's a wise choice. That's a good question to ask the next time something comes up...is this a need or is it a want. We want to help the truly needy and sometimes that means the wanty are going to suffer.