Money & Ministry

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Money is often the central issue and largest struggle to many of our churches. Money is, likely, Satan’s most effective weapon against the ministry of the cross. The message of the church—of hope and a new life in Jesus Christ—is routinely overshadowed by the anxiety over the collection plate. We know it’s coming. It is, for many churches, the entire point of Sunday worship. One pastor lamented closing his church during a snow storm because they really needed that offering. That offering?! Pastor, the offering is not what church is about. The saddest part of cancelling service isn’t the revenue loss but the souls lost. Too many of us have been in this Baptist-COGIC ministry thing way, way too long, and a pastor who is caught even thinking that way needs to be sat down: he is tired. His spirit needs to be reinvigorated. He needs to find his calling again. I don’t care how dire your situation: this practice of oppressing your members for cash has no biblical model. The church’s mission is to see to the needs of people, to pour out the love of Jesus Christ into their lives. If we took money out of religion we could save the world.

“But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”
—1 Timothy 6:6-12

Stewardship

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The word “steward” means "one who manages for another person." In Biblical times, a steward was one who supervised a farm, a household, or a business for the owner. In today's terminology, a president or CEO of a publicly-traded company does not own his company, he manages it for the stockholders. A Christian steward is like a manager of a local business who carries out the aims of the owner, maximizes profits, while dealing wisely with all the problems.

Spontaneous giving occurs when the Holy Spirit leads one to give beyond the tithe on a regular weekly basis or to a particular person or project. It is sometimes a love offering. It is sometimes a need offering. II Corinthians 8:6-7, “Insomuch that we desired Titus, that as he had begun, so he would also finish in you the same grace also. (8:7) Therefore, as ye abound in every thing, in faith, and utterance, and knowledge, and in all diligence, and in your love to us, see that ye abound in this grace also.”

Spiritual giving is committing to God what you do not have, “beyond your power”. II Corinthians 8:3, “For to their power, I bear record, yea, and beyond their power they were willing of themselves;”

What's important is that we each do our part, as God prospers us, to make sure God's ministry has the resources it needs.

Biblical Tithing & The Misery Index

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Tithing, as most black churches practice it, has a wobbly doctrinal foundation.
Most pastors will never tell you that. Jesus never spoke about tithing. Paul never spoke about tithing, but rather requested of the church in Corinth, “On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made.” [I Cor 16:2]. Tithing ten percent of our income is mandated in Mosaic Law, which we, as Christians, no longer follow (well, except where it suits us). Therefore, many biblical scholars look further back, before the Law, to Abraham, who gave a tribute to Melchizedek [Genesis 14], then connect Melchizedek to Jesus [Hebrews 5] and therefore insist the ten percent rule pre-dates the Law and is, therefore, still in effect. I’m not a biblical scholar, so I’ll leave the debate up to greater minds that mine. But, it seems to me, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a fairly straightforward bit of business that requires no convolutions of logic to connect the dots. My suspicions are usually aroused by complexity, and the logic required to make Abraham’s tribute to Melchizedek our biblical model to require single moms to not feed their kids so the pastor can drive a Lexus is a bit staggering.

The difference between the giving of someone making $25 thousand a year and someone making $125 thousand a year is, though they obey the same biblical minimums, the giving impacts the $25 person much, much more than it does the $125. But the $125 thousand person says to himself, “I’m obeying God, I’m doing what the bible asks and even a bit more,” and is satisfied by that giving. But it doesn’t hurt him. It may inconvenience him at times, but living on 90% of $125 thousand is still fairly easy to do. But taking away a tenth of a $25 thousand earner’s take-home money usually means they’ll be struggling to eat and pay bills. The ten-percent model, therefore, has an inherent inequity that causes divisions as the haves tend to look down their noses at the have-nots and even criticize them for not paying tithes. The pastor tends to lavish the tithe-payers with attention and support while giving minimum attention to the poor who pay tithes rarely if at all.

If the $125 thousand person was giving to the point where it harmed his family as much as the $25 thousand person, he’d be giving closer to sixty, seventy percent. The $125 thousand person would have to give at least half his salary to the church before there’d be any danger at all of his family going hungry or his lights being shut off. To put these two on equal footing, the $125 thousand person would need to sacrifice the same way the $25 thousand person sacrifices. If you asked the $125 thousand person to give seventy percent of is income, he’d leave the church. But that’s the biblical model. It is. I’m not making this stuff up—read Acts 2. If the church today actually functioned the way the early church did, the well-off guy would give until it hurt him, just the way the poor guy gives. And the church would take that money and build a bunch of townhouses and make sure everybody, rich or poor, had a home, had food, had a dog and a cat and a Chevy. Or maybe a fleet of Chevys, parked with the keys in them, that everyone shared. Read it: that’s how the early church conducted themselves. They got rid of the god “Money” in favor of the God “Jesus” and made sure nobody got left behind. Today, we’d call that socialism or communism, the pastor branded a nutty cultist. It would never happen.

The poor, $25 thousand giver is usually stigmatized, receives fewer services, less attention, and has less voice, overall, in what goes on in the church. When he is in need, it is the $125 thousand person who makes the decision whether or not to help him, and that help often comes at the price of the $25 thousand man's dignity (see following). But, this faithful member is giving to the point of pain and suffering for his family in order to support the church. Meanwhile, the $125 thousand giver is respected, lavished with attention, gets in to see the pastor at will, and his voice carries real weight with the ministry. All because, proportionately speaking, he gives the lion’s share of money that keeps the church going.

There should be no small voices in the church. The well-off guy should not have more influence than the poor, struggling guy. But, if you must implement some kind of pecking order, then do it biblically. Stop respecting persons based on how much they give, but respect them for how much they are suffering for the good of the church. If we implemented some kind of misery index, many of our poorest would be held in the highest esteem, as it would become evident that the highest givers are often giving out of their excess and, therefore, suffering the least, while our poor are giving their one-tenth faithfully, giving out of their need, and therefore suffering the most. But, as usual, we’ve got it all backward, ignoring biblical warnings against showing favoritism in God's house [James 2] while ignoring those among us who give everything they have, who allow their families to go without, in order to support the Lord’s work.

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