Tithing and You

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5 responses to “Tithing and You”

1. 

   Ben

   November 29, 2006

   I mean, yeah, if you’ve got a church leader that is mak­ing mon­ey from all those avenues then I’d say some­thing needs to be done in terms of how and why he receives mon­ey from a tithe. But then, the vast major­i­ty of min­is­ters out there only work for the church.

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2. 

   Rick Beckman

   November 29, 2006

   And those who do ded­i­cat­ed their lives sole­ly to the Gospel and God’s Church, I ful­ly believe they ought to be sup­port­ed by those they min­is­ter to.

   How­ev­er, I don’t believe the tithe is prop­er for this; rather than giv­ing a tenth of grain, cat­tle, etc., we lay aside mon­e­tary offer­ings in pro­por­tion to our own pros­per­i­ty. The care of the min­is­ter is no longer a man­dat­ed 10%, but is giv­en of love just as we would oth­er­wise give alms.

   Giv­ing lib­er­al­ly, how­ev­er, seems to laugh in the face of a mere 10%, if you ask me.

   Actu­al­ly, giv­ing is a gift list­ed in Romans 12:6, along­side oth­er gifts such as proph­esy­ing, exhort­ing, teach­ing, lead­ing, and min­is­ter­ing. Not all are prophets, nor are all teach­ers; and so I won­der what is spe­cial about the giv­ing of those gift­ed to do so. It isn’t of neces­si­ty more lib­er­al, for here Paul admon­ish­es those who are gift­ed to give to do so lib­er­al­ly — if the gift was lib­er­al giv­ing, it seems to me that no such exhor­ta­tion would be needed.

   But I’m ram­bling (and hun­gry), so I’m just gonna stop there, press Sub­mit, and await the deli­cious piz­za­’s arrival. Mmm­mm, piz­za. *Homer-esque drooling*

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3. 

   Ben

   November 29, 2006

   You do have a good point that tithing isn’t an accu­rate way to give, Alms is more accurate.

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4. 

   David

   January 7, 2007

   Hey! This is actu­al­ly Mrs. David here. I just read this today (Jan. 7) so par­don me for com­ing late to the par­ty. There seems to be some­thing miss­ing from this dis­cus­sion — the fact that you are giv­ing to God, not just the pas­tor. The act of giv­ing by Chris­tians should be a reflec­tion of the heart atti­tude that it is all God’s any­way, not ours. We are mere­ly “stew­ard­ing” what is His.
   When we give, it should not be a mat­ter of how much do I want to give, but how much does God want me to give? This puts the focus on Him. When we give, we are exer­cis­ing faith — but only when you give to God first, not just the remains after we’ve tak­en “our share.”
   You know, when you think about it, God does­n’t need our mon­ey — it’s all His any­way, whether we admit it or not. Giv­ing is to glo­ri­fy and wor­ship God, as well as to change our hearts from think­ing every­thing is “MINE” to hold­ing every­thing out to God as His.
   As far as the gift of giv­ing, this is one gift that we should all try to exercise.

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5. 

   Rick Beckman

   January 8, 2007

   Oh I ful­ly agree, Mrs. D. The focus ought to be whol­ly upon Christ for ulti­mate­ly every­thing is for and about Him anyway!

   I like the clos­ing few vers­es of 2 Corinthi­ans 9. I like the phrase “lib­er­al dis­tri­b­u­tion” in verse 13, and I real­ly like verse 7. There Paul tells us that in our giv­ing, we deter­mine what to give not because of any feel­ing of oblig­a­tion or neces­si­ty, not to save face with the church or appear god­ly, or any­thing of that mat­ter. We’re to give “for (or, because) God loves a cheer­ful giver.”

   If God loves it, then when we do such, we are glo­ri­fy­ing Him.

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