Just a week prior to the March 25 service, she challenged students to raise $5,000 in support of Fuentes Libre, one of the university’s project partners that assists poor women in Oaxaca, Mexico. The money would go to establishing a bank that gives microloans to these women who use the resources to start their own businesses. Inspired by the challenge, a woman from a local congregation agreed to match the $5,000 raised so that a second bank could be built.
“The poorest among us can be greedy, and the richest can avoid greed.”
The chapel collection far exceeded the goal. Students gave $9,035, not including an additional $1,000 pledge or the $5,000 in matching funds.
North Park professor of business and nonprofit management Michael Avramovich was the speaker that day, addressing the story of the rich young ruler. “Jesus said more about money and stewardship than he said about heaven, hell, and prayer combined,” noted Avramovich, observing that more than half of Christ’s parables are devoted to finances.
He told the North Park student body that they are like modern “rich young rulers” and face the same decision to be loyal to Christ or to their own possessions.
“In today’s world, you and I are a part of the elite of this world just as this young ruler was in his,” Avramovich declared. “In a world where fewer than one percent of the population attends university, let alone graduates, you know that you are wealthy. Even today, many of us will spend more in one day on coffee or clothes, shoes or cosmetics—even on a vegetarian meal—than people spend or earn in a month or more of work.”
Greed is a question of attitude, he added. The poorest among us can be greedy, and the richest can avoid greed.
Peterson was moved by the student response to the chapel message. “If we are willing to be the transportation for the work of God in this world,” she said, “then there is no end to the things that might get delivered.”
