How can CIM Afford to Race a Ferrari?

The simple answer is, of course, that:      We can’t! 

The CIM Ferrari is owned and paid for by a Christian Businessman who owns the Ferrari engineering firm ‘Road & Track’.  He has sponsored CIM outreach events, subsidised our tickets prices for the general public, and allowed CIM to use the car as a tool for taking the good news of Jesus Christ to the motor-racing community.  It is also used as a means of running cutting-edge evangelistic days for the use of churches across the UK. 

Thanks to the generosity of this individual, CIM is able to maintain a strong presence in British motor-sport as it seeks to:

• Provide a pastoral and chaplaincy service to those involved in Motorsport
• Reach out to the motorsport industry with the message of Jesus Christ
• Be a resource and tool for Christian Churches across the UK to connect with the ‘hard to reach’

No monies donated to CIM are spent paying for motor racing

-Neither our members nor any other persons receive money from CIM.  CIM does not own or pay to run the Ferrari or any other racing car, and –in fact –operates on a subsistence basis financially! 

However, some may still protest that to run such a car, or for that matter any racing car, is an unacceptable use of money when they would identify many more needy causes. 

The CIM response to this:

First and foremost, the Christian individuals who pay to race do so in accordance with their own conscience and before God.  As fellow Christians we owe it to them to be generous in our assessment of their maturity and Godliness and should conclude that the decision they have come to is one they have reached prayerfully and with due consideration. 

Secondly, the world of motor racing is as valid a field of mission work as any other in the UK or abroad.  Very few would discount football as an acceptable outreach tool, and yet would be quick to condemn motorsport due to its cost.  However, to do so is unfair and without warrant in scripture.  Simply because an activity involves spending money, does not mean it should be discounted from playing it’s part in the work of building up the Kingdom of God. 

In the parable of the talents, to some Jesus entrusted large amounts of money, and to some little.  Each one was judged by the use of their money or talents in the building of the Kingdom -no attention was paid by Jesus to what area of Kingdom-building the money was invested in.  It appears that he was interested only in those servants ultimately seeing the money as given them in trust to be used for the work of God, whether this be a lot or a little, and with no attention paid to exactly what it was put into. 

The generous benefactor of the Ferrari is indeed using his talents in keeping with Christ’s command to build the kingdom. Indeed in such cases, on which the Bible gives no figures as to what it is acceptable to spend and what is not, we should be careful to not let our own relative and subjective value judgments impose upon the freedom of others. 

A point that St Paul makes very plain in Romans 14:  We believe that as Paul says:

“one man believes he may eat anything; another man, without this strong conviction, is a vegetarian.  The meat eater should not despise the vegetarian, nor should the vegetarian condemn the meat eater”

This may also be applied to the issue of what amount of money constitutes acceptable expenditure.  One man may think it acceptable to spend only £500 on a car, another £10,000, and another £150,000 – Which one of these is permitted to judge the others?  None it seems according to the apostle Paul:  “after all, who are you to criticise the servant of somebody else, especially when that someone else is God?  It is to his own master that he gives, or fails to give, satisfactory service”   And again in Romans 14:10 “why then criticise your brothers actions, why try to make him look small?  We shall be all be judged one day, not by one another’s standards or even our own, but by the judgment of God.”