From Billionaire to Bust

I read a fascinating series of articles on Bill Gates and his transition into "retirement" at Microsoft. Growing up I never had the most favorable opinion. As someone who grew up initially not using an IBM compatible machine, the rise of Microsoft and its seemingly cutthroat practices left we wary of their leader. However I have been impressed in recent years with the passion and zeal that Gates has approached his charitable work with. Reading these articles my respect for him increased. According to Fortune.com, Gates is planning on giving away all about 1% of his money, I assume the bulk of that going to the Gates Foundation. While this was an impressive figure in and of itself, what even more impressed me was that one of the goals of the Gates foundation, was for it to be out of money by the end of the century. Given that they currently have about 100 billion dollars, this is an impressive goal. What attracts me most to this is that the foundation is more concerned with results rather than a legacy. Even minute return rates the foundation could be living off the interest every year. Instead they want to spend the money in calculated ways to solve problems that are facing the world right now, like AIDS and malaria in Africa, or poverty. What I think the Gates understand is that the foundation does not exist to exist, but it exists to create positive change in the world. I think we need to think more like that in church. I know that a number of churches have healthy endowments and I know those endowments can do a great many wonderful things, but I think at times they can instead facilitate one thing and one thing only, the continuation of the church, rather or not it is actually functioning in the world. So the irony as I finish this thought is that this post seems to be about pushing forward at a deliberately unsustainable pace while my last post was about finding a healthy pace to go at. Guess this is why I never claim to have answers for things ...