
Money
& Ministry
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
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
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.
Text Copyright © 2001-2010 PraiseNet Electronic
Media. All Rights Reserved.
TOP OF PAGE
ABOUT CHRIST
PRAYER
CONTACT US
WEBLOG
CLOSE THIS WINDOW
