Tithe Stewardship & Church Tithing

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.

Probably the number one question this time of year, is do i tithe on my taxes? What they mean is, am i suppose to tithe on the money i get back on my tax return? That’s a good question. So, here’s a question back. If you owe taxes this year, does the Church refund you tithe back? Probably not. Your gift that you gave this past year is long gone, and rightfully so. I wouldn’t expect the Church to give you any money back.

BUT . . . why are we so concerned with asking questions about these minute details on giving? Who really has the answer to tithing on taxes? The bible doesn’t have the answers on how you should exactly give within our complicated economic structure. The Bible was clear to Israel on how they should give their tithe, but the bible is not clear on how much the Church should give. It was simple for Israel - give a tenth of all your increase in crops and cattle(Leviticus 27:30). At harvest, they counted their crop and cattle and set aside the tenth one(Leviticus 27:32). They didn’t have pensions, 401k’s, and interest on grain or cattle.

Probably the number one thing that made it easy for Israel to calculate the tithe was the fact that they couldn’t give money, gold, or goods; they could only tithe on the cattle and agricultural increase. Tithing on taxes today, has become complicated at best. I’ve found that when people ask the “experts” on how they should tithe, most of the time the answer they give is a guess. The answers are never solid, and are never based on direct scripture. Most of the “experts” provide answers to these complicated tithing questions based on their opinion or interpretation of principles that they can find in the bible. Some of the answers are not even based on principles. Some of the “experts” give answers on how you should tithe, based on how they think the Old testament tithing system fits into our economic and New Testament structure now.

If you read in Matthew 23, you see that the Pharisees were perfect tithers. They knew every tithe question and scenario down to the smallest detail. Although there was nothing wrong with them doing that, and Jesus never said they were wrong in doing that. As a matter of fact Jesus told his disciples in that passage to obey the pharisees. Of course Jesus highlighted with a strong rebuke the actions of the Pharisees that the disciples shouldn’t follow. The difference between the Pharisees narrowing down every scenario of tithing and the New Testament Church narrowing it down is the difference between the law, and grace.

Most of these answers you receive on giving the tithing on taxes is an educated guess. The tithe cannot be followed directly through the avenues of the law, so most people just give an opinion on how tithing should be obeyed under grace. The sad thing is the “experts” do not inform you that their answers come from opinion. They give you these guesstimates as if the answers they have come from a direct phone line to God’s tax accountant.

So, tithing on taxes? I’d say pray, ask for advice, and consult the Spirit of God to direct you. Because the “experts” can’t give you direct biblical commands, more than likely the answer you get from your tithing on taxes questions will come from the Spirit of God anyways. The law cannot give answers the one who is governed by grace.

So what do we do? We ask for the Spirit of God to rise up a Pastor. We ask the Spirit of God to equip Sunday school teachers. We ask the Spirit of God to call more missionaries. We ask the Spirit of God to train our children. We ask the Spirit of God to start a new Church. We ask the Spirit of God to help us with our words. We ask the Spirit of God to lead us when we witness. We ask the Spirit of God to heal, intercede, interpret, and perform miracles. We ask the Spirit of God to guide everything, except our pocket books. So What do we do? we just play that safe and leave that up to tithing.

I’m not the type of person to just spit out a bunch of verses and say, “these verses are so clear about what God says”. I like hearing things myself that just kind of thump you on the head. Like the one statement above, “we’ll just play that safe and leave that up to tithing.” What it does is sum up the folly of the tithing mentality into a sarcastic thought. It’s not going to prove anything but it just shows how the tithing logic is so off. Sometimes i get so sick of trying to prove the role of Spirit-led giving. I can write chapters and chapters about that, but who wants to read all that stuff. There’s plenty of authors and theologians out there that repeat the same points as me.

I love the times in life when you say something and it sounds so profound. It’s like, where did that come from? then you feel happy about yourself and you start repeating it over and over in your head so you don’t forget it. I guess that’s kind of what i’m doing now. Are there times when you say something or hear something so profound that no one else seems to be on board with? Hopefully i won’t get any comments like that. If you do want something that is a little more definitive about the tithing argument you can read my tithing rebuttal with supporting verses. That has some of that boring stuff i talked about earlier.