Tithe Stewardship & Church Tithing

How many of you have been out to see the documentary on intelligent design by Ben Stein? I went to see it last week. It was very practical and i enjoyed it. Anyways, that’s not the point of the post here. The point i want to bring here is how the Church amid their tithing rants, and obligatory giving has expelled grace giving. They allow no opportunity for the children of God to use any discernment or spiritual intelligence when it’s time to give. Instead, many pastors preach on Sunday morning, that 10% of your overall income belongs to this organization. No discernment allowed. No Spirit guidance. No and’s, if’s, or but’s about it.

The children of God who are reborn in his Spirit are not allowed to exercise the gift of giving. Churches say that we are allowed to practice Spirit-led giving with offerings, but first we must meet the tithing obligation. Is there any spiritual gift like the gift of giving where we have a minimum requirement before the Spiritual gift takes effect?

Many pastors think that if we were left up to grace giving without a standard to uphold, then everyone would would stop giving. This is not just a judgment on human kind, it is also a judgment on the Spirit of God. Isn’t the Spirit capable of calling and equipping people to perform ministry? There is no command to feed a certain amount of poor people. Also there is no command to witness to a certain amount of unsaved. Neither of these endeavors have ceased just because there is no minimum requirement that we had to meet.

From a science and evolution/creation standpoint it takes an insurmountable amount of faith for scientists to take their reasoning and allow an intelligent being to initiate creation. In the same light it takes faith on behalf of churches and pastors to allow the Holy Spirit to direct people in giving rather than rely on a law that enables a predictable amount of income each week. With grace giving, the amount is unpredictable, and it shows how tithing has been the security blanket for church budgets and pastoral salaries for ages.

Grace giving has been expelled because it makes pastoral salaries, and church budgets nervous. Pastors, if you truly want your congregation to be led by the Spirit, then let’s begin with your pocket book. Church accountant, . . . same thing.

In my many discussions about debates about Tithing, if the debate lasts long enough eventually this question always pops up, “Since you don’t believe in tithing, how much do you give under grace? Is it more than the law or less?” This question is the most ignorant question i receive in the tithing debate. Typically this means that they’ve run out of arguments, or they are sick of repeating the accusation that i am throwing out the Old Testament. This is why i bring you 10 ways to respond when a tither wants to know how much you give, just because you are against tithing.

1. Grace givers could also ask the question about how many of the tithers are actually giving cheerfully and godly? My assumption would be that the percentage is lower than those that give gracefully.

2. What is the average that believing tithers give? According to statistics on barna.org, it doesn’t seem like tithers are giving what they should either.

3. Greed is not biased to those who practice grace giving. May I remind you that Israel fell to the cloak of greed while under the tithing law anyways.

4. The Mormon cult gives more than any religion or denomination but that doesn’t confirm their theology.

5. The steward in Matthew 25 who gave 100% of his 2 talents back to his master was still considered a bad steward.

6. It was only the Pharisees who were interested in shortcomings of others while expressing how they elegantly obeyed the OT requirements.

7. I’ll let God be the one to tell you what He’s received from me.

8. I give nine-and-a-half percent. (just to throw them off)

9. Most of the time I keep 0% of my income. God seems to find a use for all of it.

10. Is it common for you to base scriptural truth on the performance of mankind?

The Barna Group just released some new statistics on tithing and donations for 2007. - here. Interestingly enough George Barna takes a stand against tithing as a legitimate practice in the New Testament Church. This is all kind of exciting to me, because i’m in the middle of reading the book, “Pagan Christianity” by Frank Viola and George Barna. I am about two-thirds of the way through and i can’t seem to put the book down. I will write a post about that when i’m finished it, but i just mentioned it because i had just finished up the chapter on “tithing”. Ironic. . . i guess.

I just want to highlight some things that were said:

“Whether they believe in the principle of tithing or not, few Americans give away that much money.”

I would like to point out that greed is not biased to non-tithers. I’ve heard many a times that Tithing is an antidote for greed. The reason why tithing does not over come greed is because tithing is not the master of greed. A pure heart, that is undefiled and led by the Spirit of God is the master of greed. Tithing has no power over sin, but the Spirit does. This is confirmed because although Israel had tithing completely spelled out for them, they still had to overcome their greedy hearts. Also regardless of whether our giving is plainly spelled out for us through tithing or is an unpredictable factor through spirit-led giving, we still have to listen and obey. In other words, just because how much we should give is written in black and white compared to Spirit led giving, which is not; we still have to put down our selfishness and obey one or the other.

“Strangely, tithing is a Jewish practice, not a Christian principle espoused in the New Testament. The idea of a tithe - which literally means one-tenth or the tenth part - originated as the tax that Israelites paid from the produce of the land to support the priestly tribe (the Levites), to fund Jewish religious festivals, and to help the poor. The ministry of Jesus Christ, however, brought an end to adherence to many of the ceremonial codes that were fundamental to the Jewish faith. Tithing was such a casualty. Since the first-century, Christians have believed in generous giving, but have not been under any obligation to contribute a specific percentage of their income.”

Many people are blinded to the point where they view tithing as a “principle” not a “practice”. George Barna said it right, “tithing is a Jewish practice, not a Christian principle”. There are 2 practices that come to mind when thinking about the Church. One, Baptism, and Two, the Lord’s Supper. Tithing is not one of them, nor is it a principle. I’ve said this so many times- tithing is a standard, not a principle. In the old testament we see Abraham as the first person recorded to tithe. But we are not commanded to follow Abraham’s actions, we are commanded to follow his faith.

Barna also mentions the 3 functions of the tithe. Support the Levites, fund Jewish religious festivals, and to help the poor. At this point i see the Church doing a good job of fulfilling one out of three of those tasks. That’s if you want to equate support of the levites with support of those who are ministering. If we were busy trying to build God’s kingdom instead of our own kingdom, i think we would be doing a much better job with fulfilling the other functions of the tithe (not that i want the tithe and all it’s purposes incorporated into the Church). Just hypothetically speaking.

During the first five years of the decade, an average of 84 cents out of every dollar donated by born again adults went to churches. In the past three years, though, the proportion has declined to just 76 cents out of every donated dollar.

I find this statistic very, very interesting indeed. This is saying that for the first five years since 2000 that of all the donations given, 84% of them were given to Church organizations, but since the past three years, only 76% of the total donations had been given to Church organizations. So people have been giving 8% less to their churches and giving it to some other organization. I don’t know, to me, that is a big jump. Think about it this way, imagine if 8 out of 100 people stopped giving the money to their church and instead gave it to the Red Cross. Hmmm, very interesting. Maybe a little wake up call for our greedy Church budgets. You can read more about my thoughts on the house church movement and its effect on Church budgets

“If this transition in the perceptions and giving behavior of born again adults continues to accelerate, the service functions of conventional churches will be redefined within the next eight to ten years, and conventional churches will have to adopt new ways of assisting people in need.”

That was a part of Barna’s interpretation of what the statistics are telling him. And i agree.

What’s your thoughts on the new tithing statistics and trends? Do you think Barna is on target with his analysis? Do you think this blog is on target?

I’m always curious to see what churches have on their tithing envelopes. There are all kinds of tithing envelopes. There are envelopes that you can color. There are ones that have bible trivia on it. There are even ones that share a bible story on it with a full color picture.

Tithing envelopes are created for all different age groups. Here’s a website that makes tithing envelopes from ages pre-k, all the way to adulthood.

There are two main elements to a tithing envelope. The first is the verse. Typically the verse is Proverbs 3:9 or Malachi 3:8-10. Sometimes the envelope has 1 Corinthians 16:2, but many churches don’t put that on there, because that eludes to freewill giving instead of tithing. The second element to tithing envelopes is the informational part. This is usually your name, address, date, and amount of gift. More detailed and complex tithing envelopes have check boxes that you can designate your gift to. Other tithing envelopes have a place where you can fill in your credit card information.

 I had someone send me a sermon by Darrin Patrick. He is the pastor of a multi-site church in St. Louis and vice-president of a church planting association.
In spite of this, he does not teach tithing as applicable for today’s Christian.

BPNews published an article in response to the CBS News broadcast, To Tithe or not To Tithe? The title of the article is, tithing is biblical. Once again the baptists take their stand for tithing with nothing but assumptions and opinions. Here’s the passage in Matthew 23:23 that Baptist Press uses to make their stand for tithing:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.