I don’t know why i have never done this before, but i finally started a new blog category listed on the right that will list many of the questions i receive through email or elsewhere about stewardship and tithing.
Here’s the first question for this category.
Q: We need to get caught up on our debts and pay them off. My husband insists that we still pay tithes and offerings instead of paying them off. Is he right?
A: Absolutely not.
How can you serve both the master of debt, and also serve God with gifts? You can’t serve God while you are a slave to debt. There is no guarantee of a reward of money to pay off your debt just because you paid the tithe and offering first.
My parents paid tithing for 20 years, and i can tell you that in the end they were still in $30,000 in credit card debt. Their tithe over those years was equivalent to about $100,000. I believe a wise steward would pay 70,000 in tithes and offerings and used the other 30,000 to stay out of debt.
God doesn’t look at the amount. He looks at your heart, which will fall in line with a sacrificial giving attitude. But he’s not happy with poor stewardship regardless of your worthy giving habits. Remember, it was the servant in Matthew 25:14-30 who gave 100% back to his master that was considered a wicked servant and a bad steward.
Living in debt, outside of investment purchases such as schooling, mortgages, transportation, and business purchases, is poor stewardship. I’m not trying to get you to be divisive with your husband, by all means, come to an agreement together; but please be persuasive that tithing does not exempt you from the curse of poor stewardship.
In the end. Remember that you can’t properly serve both masters.
I’m just throwing this question out there cause i’m not sure what to conclude about it myself. When church doors close because of financial hardship is it good or bad? I know some of you are thinking immediately that its bad. But think about it. That’s one less mortgage bill that has to be paid and that’s more money towards the poor, and other needs.
Let’s face it, giving statistics state that 85% of what a church brings in is spent on the internal operation of the church. Let’s put this in perspective. If Paul was called to minister to the gentiles but he spent 85% of his time with the jews, how effective would Paul’s ministry be? Let’s put this another way, if God calls us to go and teach all nations, and seek and save the lost, but we spend 85% of our resources on ourselves, how effective can we be? The truth of the matter is that giving statistics state that the church only spends 3% on directly ministering to the unsaved.
Let’s ask the question again, if only 3% of a church’s resources are going towards ministering to the unsaved is it good or bad that a church closing its doors frees up the other 97%?
This is more in-depth video on ESPN’s inquire into Athletes and Evangelists yesterday. I don’t think i could write another commentary on this vomit again after my blog post yesterday. I need some time to cool off my blood pressure.
One thing i want to point out about Randy White response about the prosperity gospel. When the interviewer asked him, “you can look those folks in the eye, and say, ‘your money, if you donate it to this church is not being misused’”. This question comes about 3/4 of the way through the video. Watch Randy’s eyes as he looks up and away to the left (his right). I am not a psychologist, or an expert on telling if someone is lying, but the general rule is, that if someone looks up and away to his right, then they are more than likely trying to visually fabricating the truth in their head.
On ESPN, John Barr did a special on rich athletes who give large sums of the tithe to their churches. The videos of the excerpt and a link to the ESPN article are posted below. First i will get into the dissection of ESPN’s article, and then at the bottom, i want to share a personal testimony about how this topic kind of hits close to home for me.
On ESPN, Randy White, one of the Evangelist vipers, gave an interview and said,
“I still teach biblical principles. I don’t care who you are, I’m gonna teach that you have to be a tither. Once you start becoming a member of this church, you must be a tither”]
So, let’s just say i can get past the point that people believe tithing is a principle. What i can’t get past is the point that you must be a tither in order to join God’s Church; and how you would even consider that a principle let alone biblical? Is the Church a country club, that has membership fees? Did Jesus tell the 12, “If you want to be a part of my little group, then donate a tenth of your fish to me”?
“Several former Without Walls members and staffers, some of them professional athletes, have spoken out against White’s prosperity message, calling it the “gospel of greed” and questioning whether their flamboyant former pastor targeted athletes . . .
A lot of guys are brainwashed,” a former NFL player, who once attended Without Walls, told ESPN on the condition of anonymity. “They’ve been told to honor God, you’ve got to give.”
Dear Mr former NFL player,
You have more friends than you know of if you just come out of the closet and openly warn others about these vipers. Hundred’s of thousands have your back.
Dear Former Without Walls staffers,
We need you to stand up. Where are you? Where is your voice?
Sincerely,
Mr. Ticked off
“I think people feel like you get up to preach for gain,” White said, referring to his wealthy lifestyle. “If I were in the ministry for gain I could make a lot more money outside of the ministry.”
You are a self righteous, pompous, egocentric, narrow-minded, pretentious, conceited, prideful son of satan. How dare you loathe in your millions, and shrug your shoulders as if you could swindle millions more outside of your pathetic organization. If you were swindling money anywhere else besides a church, you would be put in a holding cell right next to the other “Bernard Madoff’s”. So no, you wouldn’t make more anywhere else.
“White entered the church’s VIP waiting room, which is covered with pictures of celebrities, including past and present professional athletes. There’s also a photo of Kid Rock and Pamela Anderson.
“I married them,” White said. “I don’t care how high-profile they may be, how much money they make, at the end of the day, people are people.”"
White, you make me vomit! You don’t care about high profile people, and yet your VIP waiting room is stained with the ink from their photos on the wall. Please read on. You have to read this next quote from White, and then read between the lines and see how i explain how conniving this viper is.
“I felt I exploited them,” he said. “Looking back, I know that I did.”
In the early to mid-1990s, White said, he frequently placed the professional athletes in his church on a pedestal, parading them for the benefit of starstruck members. Athletes were given the option of preferential parking, preferred front-row seating and private time with the Whites, something that became increasingly rare for regular church members as the Whites’ collective star rose in the world of Christian televangelism.
“I found out later that they get so much exposure anyway in the community and normal society that when they come to church they certainly don’t want to be highlighted,” White said.
For a minute there you think White is admitting fault and some mistakes and feels guilty about exploiting the athletes, but then you realize what his motivation is. White realizes that he is losing athletes because of his parading practices. He finds out that athletes get all the stardom they want outside of the Church, and that athletes are attracted to the solace not the stardom. Read the next part below to see how Randy White flat out lies about money.
White: “To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever asked an athlete for money,” White said of his relationship with the athletes who attended his church.
When told of White’s comment, the former employee with knowledge of athletes’ donations called White “a liar.”
“Whenever he was talking about money or even with the tithes and offering, they targeted the athletes, because they were sitting right up front,” the former employee said.”
I want to end with this last quote from the article here followed by a personal testimony with a similar mood.
Today, however, most of the big-name athletes are absent from the reserved front-row seats they once occupied as VIP members, and in recent years the church itself has undergone significant upheaval. The Whites divorced in 2007 after 18 years of marriage. Without Walls, according to several former staffers, is mired in debt and bleeding membership. The church recently staved off foreclosure proceedings, and has been the subject of a Senate investigation into its finances. Church leaders have had to contend with the resulting media scrutiny.
With that note, here is a personal testimony of mine. About 2 years ago, I had attended a large church in which 3 NFL stars were active members of. I know that each one tithed. At the time, the church was racking in some pretty nice dough. Originally, the church was renting a small facility, that had low overhead, and small operating costs, then of course the light bulbs turned on and they started dreaming about owning larger and more beautiful facility that they were able to afford at the time. To make a long story short, the church moved into a 15 million dollar facility that made the monthly payments around $70,000. As soon as the church moved in to the new facility, one athlete retired, another one was traded away to another team, and then the other one left.
Talk about having anxiety about your mortgage payments after this all happens in about 6 months time from moving in.
For every service that i attended for the next 6 months, 10 minutes was the average time that was spent talking about tithing or giving. This is not an exaggeration! Sometimes it would be half the service, sometimes most of the service. Other weeks it was tossed out of the lips one or two times like it was a joke, but with that much debt and anxiety, it was no joke. I can not remember a single service where tithing was not mentioned outside of the prayer for an offering.
To make matters worse, 6 out of the 8 church leaders left within a year. I am positive that all the leaders left because they felt this material vision was not from God. In the end, the tone of the “senior pastor” bestowed feelings of betrayal and abandonment.
Since then, the pastor has hired on his 2 sons who were barely out of college to run a large majority of the church. Which, in the long run puts the church in even more jeopardy, because of the lack influence and accountability outside of the family boundary. I guess, after feeling abandoned by the other pastors, the “senior pastor” decided to build a security wall for himself and put his children under his authority, which in turn would not stand up to disagree with him.
I could go on about this and dig more into the ramifications, but i just wanted to share a personal example of the dangers we fall into when we happen to put our security in things or people other than God.
Once again there is an article on bpnews.net promoting the tithe while regurgitating the same old vomit. You can see the article written by Howard Dayton here. Yes, Yes, i know, Howard Dayton does a great deal of good for Crown Financial. I’ve read his books, and listened to him and enjoy and support his financial advice. But i’m sick of him throwing tithing up on a pedastool while at the same time admitting it has no place on the pedastool. Here’s some quotes to show you what i mean:
The tithe is not a law, but tithing is one of the first standards of giving found in the Bible.
“The tithe is not a law, but . . .” Excuse me? If tithing is not a law . . but NOTHING! The law is dead, “it is finished”, it has no BUT’s.
the tithe is an indicator of obedience to God’s laws, so Christian giving should come from the heart.
Ok, so here we go: the tithe is not a “law”, but somehow it is an indicator of obedience to God’s “laws”. How in the world do you wrap your mind around that one? And even though were were just talking about obedience and laws, let’s just throw in the cliche phrase – “giving should come from the heart”.
The book of Malachi seems to confirm that truth when the prophet confronted the Jews with the sins of disobedience and he used their lack of tithing as an example.
“Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! You ask: ‘How do we rob You?’ By not making the payments of 10 percent and the contributions. You are suffering under a curse, yet you — the whole nation — are still robbing Me” (Malachi 3:8-9).
Since tithing isn’t a law, let’s just throw in the key words – “sin”, “disobedience”, and “curse” to keep people guilty and scared who would try to stop tithing. Somehow tithing is a confirmed “truth”, and yet is not a law, is another anomaly that i can’t seem to get my mind around either.
Since the tithe, meaning “tenth,” is the minimum amount mentioned in God’s Word, it is logical to assume that it’s the minimum amount God wants from a believer.
Hold on! Can we say OXYMORON? Logical – Assume? When are assumptions ever logical? Another thing, the tithe was not smallest gift, nor was it the largest gift that God required from Israel. So, where do we get the idea that the tithe is the minimum? Let’s think logical here. Do you think that a God who owns all of it asks for a minimum back in return?
Old Testament Jews brought about 23 percent of their increase to the Lord’s storehouse. The storehouse keepers, the Levites, then used what was given to care for widows, needy foreigners in the area, orphans and themselves.
Did you just say 10% was the minimum, and then go ahead and say that Old Testament Jews brought 23%?
New Testament believers didn’t bring their tithes and offerings to a physical storehouse; instead they gave of their increase in tithes, offerings and alms to the church body.
Was there really an example in the New Testament of believers giving a tithe, or did you once again assume that’s what they did?
It is important for us to understand that the Bible doesn’t make special provisions that exempt those on fixed incomes or government subsidies.
No, he didn’t just say that! Are you kidding me? This guy is contradicting himself all over the place. If the poor receive the tithe as mentioned in Leviticus 27, why would they pay a tithe? If Dayton actually read the scripture, he would see that only a small portion of the Israelites actually paid a tithe. If you did not farm any crops or raise more than 10 animals, then you were exempt from tithing. That means, carpenters, lawyers, bankers, tax collectors, blacksmiths, and laborers did not tithe.
So, as Christians, when it comes to tithing, we need to look for ways to give rather than trying to find loopholes that might allow us not to give.
Let’s ignore the loopholes then. It doesn’t matter. Who needs to verify anybody’s false teaching?
If we truly believe strongly in honoring God from the increase He provides for us, we need to seriously consider tithing on all of the “first produce of all of your entire harvest,”
Um, another problem here: ‘the “first” produce of “all your entire”‘. So, which is it? A tithe of the first, or a tithe of all? What if i don’t grow any produce?
Remember that God’s desire is for our benefit and good, and He is more interested in our hearts than in any actual amount that we give.
After blasting us with the last 10 paragraphs on the importance of tithing, please throw out this general, utterly meaningless, one-sentence disclaimer.
I just finished the book, “Beyond Tithes & Offerings” by Mitchell T. & Michael L. Webb. Truthfully, i don’t know where to begin in my review of this book because i gained a lot from it. I guess i will point out the topics of tithing that i believe they explained well.
Tithing and usage of money
Beyond Tithes & Offerings did a good job defining the tithe and explaining the usage of money.
Tithes and offerings were never based on finances. The currency of the world changes, but animals will be animals, and crops will be crops. People become poorer or richer, but a ram is still a ram, and a dove is still a dove.
The so-called financial situation cannot change the genetic make-up of the herd and flock, the grain from the soil, or the fruit of a tree. The sacrificial items used for offerings, and the materials given for the tithes, remain the same throughout the Bible, whereas the standard for money and its value has changed.
For those of you who are wondering how this quote is pertinent; well it directly relates to the passage in Leviticus 27 that explains how the tithe consisted of food not money. Of course, in today’s society we’ve converted the tithe into currency. The importance of tithing consisting of food is that the substance, size, or type of food doesn’t change. When tithing animals or grains it is simple to just count each one and donate the tenth to God. But with money, it’s not easy to determine how much you should give. How do you factor in your losses, or social security, or gifts, or a slew of other factors that would cause you to re-calculate your tithe over and over and over again if it were money?
When was the last time money was ever referred to as being holy to the Lord (as in Lev. 27:30, 32)
If you remember in Leviticus God States that the increase of the land was holy to the Lord. Can you remember the last time money was referred to as holy to the Lord?
Numbers 18:29
‘You must present as the Lord’s portion the best and holiest part of everything given to you’ . . .
If the tithe did consist of money, then what is the ‘best part’ of money? Spending it? With true tithing, one can identify the best of the produce, but the best part cannot be identified when using money.
Um, oh yeah! Good Question. What is the best part of money?
Probably the number 1 quoted passage is malachi 3 when defending the tithe. Most people quote it, “bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be meat in my house”. Of course they interpret “storehouse” into “church” and “meat” as the “word of God” The authors of Beyond Tithes & Offerings take the interpretation and re-phrase Malachi 3:10 to read exactly how people interpret it.
Malachi 3:10
Bring 10 percent of your money into the church, that there may be the word of God in my house.
It sounds a little ridiculous to pay for the word of God that it may come to church. Does this mean the more that is paid, the more the ‘word of God’ will appear in the local church? Or, does the ‘word of God’ require charging by the hour? If a congregation has no money, do they receive no ‘word of God?’
It’s just plain ludicrous to think that money must be deposited in order to withdraw the word of God.
Giving in the New Testament
Beyond Tithes & Offerings does a good job of taking of not only refuting the tithe but also highlighting the way we should be giving in the New Testament. It does no good to destroy the tithe without emphasizing the true solution for the Church to follow.
The less fortunate must usually wait until some pre-determined day to receive help, such as a holiday. People, including Christians, come out in groves to participate in helping the needy and the homeless, all in the spirit of a particular holiday. Unfortunately, some Christians are programmed to wait until they are moved into action by the holiday spirit. Consequently, they are not moved into action by the Holy Spirit. Christians should allow the Spirit to lead them to give according to their means. Then they will perform the level of holiday giving every day of the year. The world would then finally get a glimpse of true Christian giving and the kingdom of God on earth.
The point is that we are programmed like robots to be generous only when it’s time to be. Why does our giving increase around the holiday season, well, that’s because that’s just when everyone else give more. When is it time to give to the church: when everyone else gives. How much should everyone give: a tenth- the same as everyone else.
This methodical type of giving is completely disgusting. Our way of giving to our God is no different than how the pagans give to their god. Yeah, that’s right! I said it! We give just like pagans give. We give as if our God were dead and could not speak to us. Sure, go ahead, give your offering above the tithe, but i betcha, I BETCHA! most of you are giving 11%, if you are daring, maybe 12%. How would i know? I would know, because that’s how i used to give.
I knew what it was like to calculate my tithe, and then figure 1% or 2% extra. Yeah, yeah, go ahead rant and rave about how at least it’s above and beyond. I look back at that, and can’t believe that i actually gave like that. It’s so pathetic because a two year old has more independant thinking than i did.
Anyways, i could write a lot more about the book. I have personal notes written to myself, but they would not make sense to a majority of you (if i re-read them, they probably won’t make sense to me either). I would definitely recommend Beyond Tithes & Offerings to anyone who is interested in understanding the truth about tithing.
Once again there is an article on bpnews.net promoting the tithe while regurgitating the same old vomit. You can see the article written by Howard Dayton 
I just finished the book, “Beyond Tithes & Offerings” by Mitchell T. & Michael L. Webb. Truthfully, i don’t know where to begin in my review of this book because i gained a lot from it. I guess i will point out the topics of tithing that i believe they explained well.
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