How Andrei’s life changed drastically through finance’s course
Getting your finances in order can keep time. Photo EPA, Tatyana Zenkovich
Christian Life
Andrei Ptashnikov and his wife were generous and sowed their money out. But they came short. “We had to learn to trust God and sow it wisely.”
Andrei is an assistant pastor in Minsk, Belarus. He belongs to the Full Gospel Union, a chain of 56 local churches in 32 towns and cities.
Above this, he is a Compass minister who teaches financial discipleship. There have been times when he would not have dreamt of becoming a financial coach for others since he was in trouble himself. But a course from Compass International helped him. “It actually changed my life”, he says now.
Pastor Ptashnikov (37) lives in Belarus, part of the former Soviet Union. “That simply means that we have not learned how to manage money. Most people have financial problems, including Christians.”
In the first years, he earned his own income but needed help balancing his finances. “In short, the money came in and went out. I did not earn much. We just had enough for food, clothes, and to live. But we were too generous in our gifts.”
It took until 2013 that he saw this. “I was offered to follow a course on financial stewardship. The Bible often speaks about money, but I did not know it was so practical. When I started to apply those Biblical principles, my life changed.”
The Bible says that giving is a blessing. How can you say you were too generous?
“Giving is a blessing – amen! But the Bible also teaches that well-doing must be connected to knowledge, wisdom and self-control. Read 2nd Peter 1 verses 5 and 6.
This taught me that you have to think where you give. You don’t put the seeds on the ground. You do not have enough money to spread it everywhere.
The first step was to spend less money on charities. But now, I think we give more. God saw our faithfulness and started to trust us.
One Sunday morning in 2015, I was driving when a question came to my mind: Why do many Christians have little money? At first, I did not know. But then I saw that they could not manage faithfully what God gave them. He could not trust them.
That day, I promised God I would teach them how to manage finances. I had already seen the fruits in my life. So I became the first Compass minister.”
What course were you offered?
“My pastor started to run those trainings in 2010 or so. The course is based on a few principles.
The first is that we have our responsibility. God does His part as a loving Father, but we have our own part, too, and we have to be faithful in that. For me, that is the starting point.
If you trust God and take your responsibility, you don’t have to panic if your car breaks. Our part is that we only have to be a faithful steward: honest and generous. We have to make our financial decisions from an eternity perspective. And we have to teach this to our kids, too.
Those two parts –God’s giving and our responsibility– are closely connected. If we follow this, we have a close relationship with God. And He will open His treasuries from heaven for us.”
Had you started to save money too?
“No. I had not enough for that. But there was another thing I changed. I started to use my time differently. Time is our primary resource. Although I was in a full-time ministry, I had enough time to do something else.
That was the reason I started a business. With my wife, we have a webshop where we sell products for home care; we breed cats and have invested in a barber shop.
All this means that I can spend less time in the ministry. But I learned how to do more work in less time. By being more focused, I became more effective. That is a form of stewardship, too, I think.”
What is your task as a Compass minister?
“There are two tasks. First, to teach people. Second, I want to grow leaders and prepare them.
We organise conferences, help local leaders to be more fruitful, and work on a Compass EurAsia. Everywhere we come in the former Soviet Union, we hear they need the Biblical truths in the financial sphere.”
How is it going?
“We see some fruits. My life has changed, and that of hundreds of others. We translated some books from English to Russian. And we started groups in about 25 churches. At our conferences, we met around 150 people.”
You work in the post-Soviet world. Is that different from the Western world?
“Yes. The lessons and principles are not different, but perhaps the priorities are. In our region, people stare at the little they have now. They don’t realise that they have enough. The only thing they have to do is spend it faithfully and trustfully.
The problem is not so much on the money but in our minds. When we start with God’s Word, He will transform us.”
What is Compass Europe?
Financial discipleship. That’s the keyword for Compass.
The aim is to raise awareness of what the Bible teaches about money and possessions. The goal is that people do not trust in their own savings and borrowings but give their money in the Lord’s hands. For this, there are courses.
The organisation shares that the Bible has 2350 verses about money and greed, but ‘only’ 500 about prayer. From this, the organisation thinks that material possessions deserve more attention.
Compass Europe has three pillars:
- To learn what the Bible teaches
- To apply this in your life
- To multiply this by teaching it to others.
The organisation is active in twenty European countries and tries to set up local teams. Compass Europe is part of a worldwide network active in eighty countries.
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