Follow the Money: Giving and Gospel Expansion
A Scripture-only audio journey through money in the early church — from Pentecost to Paul's collection. The first ethnē Labs experiment, free in the ethnē app.
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What is ethnē Labs? The Western church tends to read Scripture alone, silently, analytically. It wasn't always this way — and it isn't how people encounter the Word in the Last Mile. ethnē Labs draws from ancient practices and the ways Last Mile communities engage Scripture, and brings these practices into the ethnē app so you can experience them and share early feedback.
Follow the Money
A free preview of ethnē Labs: our first experiment
The first church had no dedicated buildings and no budget — yet everywhere the Gospel went, money moved with it.
What is the role of money in missions? And how would that answer change giving in the West and in the Last Mile of the Great Commission?
Scripture doesn't hide the role of money in the expansion of the Gospel. The thread runs from Pentecost to Paul's final journey. But traditional Bible study methods make it hard to find. The story spreads across Acts and the Epistles, and word searches fall short because Scripture never uses just one word for it. It's a gift, a collection, a partnership — giving woven into the story rather than labeled.
Setting up the experiment
This experiment has one rule: use the Bible only. Put down the commentary and study notes (or YouTube videos) for this task. Scripture does the rest on its own. It introduces its own characters, answers its own questions, and drops clues in one book that pay off in another.
Our hypothesis
Scripture alone can teach a topic as tangled as money as long as we center individual verses in the whole story. That means facing the generosity Scripture calls us to, the scandal that money all too often is, the faithful stewardship it requires, and other hard questions we often want to pass over.
Encountering each verse in the context of the metanarrative of Scripture is the heart of the Story View approach in the ethnē app. And that story context is how oral and visual learners — most of the world — learn best. It's not about isolating a verse or drafting the next big three-point teaching, but about experiencing the drama and the characters and the full narrative that any good story has.
This study worked on us first and shaped our economic model and our Champions strategy.
To our ethnē Champions: this study goes to you first, and that's fitting. You already live it. Every month your generosity launches Scripture into new languages for people you may never meet. You are the Macedonians of this story, giving out of joy and asking for the privilege (2 Corinthians 8:4).
This is an experiment, and you're the other half of it. We have three questions we can't answer without you:
- Can you follow the theme?
- Does it teach you anything new?
- Will it change how you give?
So listen, and then tell us what happened.
The story you'll hear
It begins with wind and fire in Jerusalem, and a brand-new community doing something shocking with their possessions. It moves through the first financial scandal in the church, the first organized distribution program, and the first international relief effort. Then it follows Paul — working with his hands, writing to churches about money with a candor that might make you blush — as he organizes a great collection across four provinces and carries it, at the risk of his life, back to where the story began.
Things to listen for
Find the money. Starting at Acts 2:40-47, every passage involves money, but not every passage names it. Treat it like a game: discover where money appears and what the passage says about it.
Who gets held accountable? Listen closely. It may not be who you'd guess. Watch for the values and practices the early church put in place, and who they applied to.
Who should receive, and who shouldn't? The early church didn't give indiscriminately, and it didn't gatekeep coldly. Listen for the difference between crisis relief and long-term support. And listen for the workers who had a right to receive support but laid it down.
How to do the experiment
This study is live in the ethnē app. Just tap the link below from your phone and it will open.
Don't have the app yet? Download it here.
Tap play and listen to all 16 passages while you drive or work out. Try to listen to it in one session. Then go back and reread the passages that stood out to you.
Afterward, tell us what happened. Start with the three questions, then add anything we didn't think to ask: where the story grabbed you, where you lost it, what we should try next. Use any of the contact methods below. We'd love to hear from you.
Share this post with anyone you'd love to take this journey with: a friend, your small group, a WhatsApp group. Follow the Money is our first ethnē Labs experiment and a free preview of what's to come.
Future Labs experiments go to ethnē Champions, who each month partner with us to launch Scripture into new languages in the ethnē app.
