Honoring the Offering

And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. – Hebrews 13:16

Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.  2 Cor. 9:7

Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. – 1 Timothy 6:18

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Jesus, in Matthew 6:19-21

Many years ago my wife worked in a church leading worship where one of the members of the church’s “Program Team” objected to her sometimes having the congregation sing another worship song concurrent with the offering being received. She was okay with an instrumental song, but felt that combining the congregational singing with the placing of cash and envelopes in the basket being passed failed to “honor the offering.”

I have no idea where she got that concept.

Today we have quite a different situation. There is no offering received in many of our churches. During the pandemic, places of worship were told by local health authorities to avoid the surface contact generated by passing an offering plate or a tray of communion elements.

Long before the outbreak, some churches had switched to a box at the back of the auditorium. (I loved it when Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids would announce the “Joy boxes” and the congregation would cheer!)

Moreover, many of us give online these days. We use neither cash nor envelopes, and our electronic giving replaces checks. (That’s cheques for my Canadian/Aussie/UK readers.)

But giving is an act of worship, right?

If so, it follows that act of worship should be part of a worship service, right?

So how we incorporate “taking up the offering” when we’re not actually taking up the offering.

In once church I visited, people take a small card (business card size) that said, “I use automatic bank withdrawal giving,” as they walk in and then as the plate or basket is passed, they drop the card in. (Hopefully they’re being honest, or there’s a whole set of Ananias and Sapphira admonitions we could mention here.)

But one church we watched online did something different. It was an offering liturgy prayer that the entire church spoke, a declaration of a giving spirit (or perhaps the intention to do so as soon as the service ended.)  It’s worded this way:

Holy Father, there is nothing I have that You have not given me. All I have and am belong to You, bought with the blood of Jesus. To spend everything on myself, and to give without sacrifice, is the way of the world that you cannot abide. But generosity is the way of those who call Christ their Lord; who love Him with free hearts and serve Him with renewed minds; who withstand the delusion of riches that chokes the word; whose hearts are in your kingdom and not in the systems of the world. I am determined to increase in generosity until it can be said that there is no needy person among us. I am determined to be trustworthy with such a little thing as money that you may trust me with true riches. Above all, I am determined to be generous because You, Father, are generous. It is the delight of Your daughters and sons to share Your traits and to show what You are like to all the world.

This statement of what it means to be generous toward the world and toward God, both corporately and individually, replaces the offering for this church.

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Source of Giving Liturgy: Westside AJC (a Jesus Church), this is the congregation founded by Phil and Diane Comer and taught for years by John Mark Comer. Click image to see full size or visit: https://westsideajc.org/about#giving-section

Scriptures used in the preparation of the Giving Liturgy (click the above link to see the version where these footnotes correspond.

(1) Psalm 24 v1, Psalm 31 v19, Ephesians 1 v7, James 1 v17, 1 Timothy 6 v17
(2) Proverbs 11 v25, 1 John 3 v17
(3) 1 Timothy 6 v17-19, Romans 12 v2, 2 Timothy 3:2-5, 2 Corinthians 9 v6-8
(4) Acts 4 v32-35
(5) Luke 16 v10-11
(6) Psalm 81 v10, Matthew 7 v7-11, John 16 v23-24, Romans 8 v32, Ephesians 1v3, Ephesians 1 v7-8

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For our Canadian readers: Coincidentally (honestly!) this ran Sunday on our ministry Facebook page, but U.S. readers can give to this as well, though you won’t get a tax receipt.

It’s Sunday, and there are people reading this for whom it’s been a long time since you were in a place where an offering plate was passed. Searchlight’s recommended Christian charity of choice continues to be the Welcome Home Children’s Centre in Haiti. Your donation today can provide shelter, food, clothing, supervision, school fees, school uniforms, transportation, and more for 14 children, at the orphanage located two hours north of Port-au-Prince. Click on their page at Canada Helps to donate, or donate by credit card or Paypal using Welcome Home’s own donation page at this link.

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Reprinted with the kind permission of the very nice people at Christianity 201.

Prosperity Church Offering Envelope

The front side of the envelope was fairly typical…

…it was the back side that got our attention…

There is a sense in the opening statement that all that we have comes from God and that he has promised to provide for our basic needs. By being able to give, it states that we’ve already received.

Or am I exegeting their offering envelope wrong? The second sentence doesn’t match the first. The language of Exodus — taking back the promised land — implies that something is yet to come. That we have not received all that God is about to or able to provide. 

Furthermore, Mrs. W., when she reads this, feels it’s saying that we have already received something very significant, but perhaps we have yet to claim it.

Next paragraph.

Although the word tithe is not used, the first sentence of the second paragraph begins with a statement of offering being giving the Lord our first fruits. The notion that Jesus receives this gift and then presents it as worship to the Father is new to me.

Seriously, before we skip past this too quickly, have others of you heard this teaching? The idea that we give to Jesus who then gives our gifts to God the Father?

The next sentence introduces the all-too-familiar prosperity teaching notion of giving as planting a seed. It says, I receive a great harvest, not I will receive, which implies that the process is already operative.

But in that same sentence that idea is paired with the idea of the devourer, which I believe we can read as the enemy, being rebuked. Is that was rebuked at some point in the past, is rebuked in the giving of the offering, or is constantly being rebuked at times past, present and future? I suppose a spiritual warfare element (which I do believe in) was inevitable.

Many times those of outside of prophetic churches have great difficulty following the language used. In this case, I know the words, but the verb tenses confuse.

The third sentence is fine. We are indeed blessed, both individually and as the corporate body of Christ, to bless others.

So if this is the motivation, the fourth sentence would make sense; that God has given us the means to accumulate wealth to build the Kingdom, which the language I would have used, not establish your covenant. Isn’t God’s covenant already established?

The fifth sentence is great. God is our source and supplier of all our needs.

The last sentence seems a strange place to end. A declaration that all my bills are paid, would seem to imply that I am only giving this offering if I have no other debt; or, because the envelope uses a credit card option, that I am not going into debt with my giving, which would be wise advice for parishioners, and good counsel by the church in not wanting people to worsen their financial position by giving to the church.

But it could also mean, that all my bills are paid as they arise, which, with the general exception of a mortgage or car loan, would also be a responsible framework from which to give to the church — a church that presumably would honor the other half of the financial picture and be helping out families which are in financial difficulty along with the Biblical widows and orphans equivalents — but again, the verb tense is ambiguous.

If I felt my bills weren’t getting paid and all my needs were not being met, I would see this declaration as a caution not to give to the church at this time.

But in a prosperity church context, it might mean that by faith all my bills are paid, that it is stating a position which may not have been practically realized to date. But not everyone entering this church for the first time would speak their faith dialect and detect this nuance…

…On the other hand, they could have just left the back of the envelope blank.

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As I was preparing this, I discovered this item in our files, which I had used in July, 2017 as a random Wednesday Link List image. Reading this one, I at least understand the words used.

When the Ministry You Supported Crashes and Burns

I had something else planned for this space today, but then as we were discussing giving to God’s work yesterday, this comment stopped me in my tracks:

I want so much for our giving to be to organizations that are truly and totally sold out to Jesus and living sacrificially as they seek and spread His kingdom. We gave to Gospel for Asia for years, until they were exposed for being a different organization than we’d believed when we read Revolution in World Missions etc. We have given to Walk in the Word… and now…I would be interested in hearing about ministries like 20 Schemes who are reaching the poorest neighbourhoods with little fanfare…or people who reached out to our brothers and sisters in Nigeria last week after the massacre.

In 2009, we wrote a fictitious story and made up the name of the church — you’ll see the irony here — that went like this:

Joel had a major disagreement with the pastor of Covenant Harvest Church following a sermon that was preached in January to launch the new calendar year of ministry.    There were some follow up attempts by both parties to find common ground, but an unofficial visit from one of the elders ended up burning the bridges it was supposed to mend.

Now, eight weeks later, the church has received a registered letter from Joel.   He regrets greatly the amounts of money — over $3,500 — he gave to the church in the four months prior to his departure and wants a “refund” on his offering. In the letter, he says nicely, “I want my money back.”

Though the names and circumstances are altered, what do you think of the principle at issue here? Were the story entirely real as presented, should the church give Joel his $3,500 back?

I know there are people who feel that way. They’d like a refund.

A lifetime ago I gave money to an organization which crashed spectacularly. I won’t name them, but the ministry was front page news for several weeks back in the day.

I’ve often tried to go back in time and ask myself if I knew how things were going to end, would I give the money? There is a sense in which the answer is, ‘yes.’ The reason is that in those early days, while I’m sure there was the beginning of financial corruption, there was also money which was going to the projects being promoted; or at least I want to believe that.

Furthermore, if our giving is to God; then we in effect lay our gift on the altar and invite God to do whatever he wants with it, including burn it up if that’s his will.

There was something positive happening at the time and I wanted to come alongside and stand with the people on the frontlines and be able to say, ‘I am a part of making that happen; even if only in a small way.’

…Or am I just rationalizing a poor decision?

I know there are people who gave money to James MacDonald’s ministry, and Bill Hybels’ ministry, and Perry Noble’s Ministry and Tullian Tchividjian’s ministry and Mark Driscoll’s ministry and… Oh wait! Do you see the problem right there? Do we give to a great work that God is doing, or do we give to a celebrity with a captivating personality? If I’m being totally honest…

Back to the comment I received. I think we need to be intentional about making our giving less corporate, even to the point of handing $100 (or £75 if you prefer) to a young couple with a baby and a lot of financial stress.

I also think we should look for new organizations and new works which God is raising up and support those in their early (more sincere?) days of operation.

Finally — and our comment writer already addressed this — I think we need to give in a way that gets our money out of North America and Western Europe and puts it in the hands of people in the poorest parts of the world.

 

 

Boasting About Your Giving … Sort Of

We’ve all been taught that giving is supposed to be done in secret, right? You’re not even expected to know yourself when being charitable; that’s the essence of ‘not letting your left hand know what your right hand is doing.’

For that reason many people are protective of information concerning their philanthropy. It may be that there isn’t any, or it may be that, like some health conditions, they feel this sort of thing shouldn’t be shared.

I want to propose an alternative: Talk about it.

Why?

Without mentioning amounts, or percentage-relative-to-income, I think that by simply saying something like, ‘We directly support a farming community in ___________ through the work of __________;’ you are actually providing a model for your friends and family. You’re saying that this is something that you do each month, as naturally as you eat breakfast each day.

I’m assuming here that you support your local church, if you have one.

Many don’t have a local church right now — about 20% of the Christian people I am in contact with each week — and never got into the habit of giving to parachurch organizations, or foreign missions. So they do nothing. In a world where giving can happen at the click of a computer, there’s really no excuse.

But if people who are currently giving would simply talk about the thing which they are passionate enough about to give up part of their income each month, then I believe that giving would be contagious.

Don’t keep it a secret. Tell them about the orphanage in __________, or Bible distribution in __________, or the village hospital in __________. Talk about the people who came to Christ after the movie was shown in __________, or the church plant taking place in __________, or the underprivileged kids who get to attend a Christian summer camp in __________.

Don’t say how much. Don’t reference a dollar amount. Don’t do anything where you are getting your reward now (instead of later.) Just share your passion and excitement for the work you see God doing in __________, and wait for them to say, ‘How can I get in contact with that organization?’

Turning Up The Spiritual Volume

An updated post from something originally appearing in March, 2009…

 

Lately, I’ve had a lot of time to think about what it means to expect God’s presence in all that we do “at church.” I’ve heard people talk about being at a fairly typical church meeting thing, and “then God showed up.” This may assume that he wasn’t “showing up” at previous meetings, or it may mean that he was there all along but an awareness of his presence finally broke in on the assembly.

When leading worship, I have often — though not every time — begun by following the traditional concept of invocation; inviting God’s presence into our time together. Or at least, sort of. I take it as a given that God is already among us, especially on Sunday morning. He never misses our church service, right?

So I’ll begin with something like,

“Lord, we don’t presume to invite your presence because after all, you said you would never leave us nor forsake us. Furthermore, we sometimes say that this building is your house, a place set apart for your worship, so we know if you’re omnipresent, you’re everywhere, then certainly of all places you are here. No, instead, we ask you to help us have an awareness of your presence, an awareness of a presence that already exists, but we’re too distracted to realize. Open our hearts. Meet with us today in a special way. Amen.”

The fact of the matter is however, that some things the church — as opposed to The Church — does are purely perfunctory. And I think a church business meeting, or a church clean-up day are good examples of that. Unless of course, you are committed from the beginning that this business meeting is open to the possibility of God breaking in and doing something greater.

Basically, the question I want to ask is, “What if we spiritualized church?” Yeah, seriously. What if we decided there were no task-only, business-only events, but lived out each time we gathered together as moments full of eternal possibilities? What if…

• What if every item run through the church photocopier had to have a ministry value, even if it was just a verse tacked on at the end?
• What if every church spring cleaning day was seen as a teachable moment, the way Jesus taught as he walked along the road with his disciples?
• What if every mail-out and every church newspaper advertisement kept its seeker appeal, but still contained the DNA of the gospel?
• What if every church business meeting was more like a town hall forum where old men (and women) could prophesy and young men (and women) dream dreams?
• What if every time there were announcements, they were viewed not as commercials, but as opportunities for greater fellowship, greater teaching, greater service?
• What if every time there was a collection or offering, it was truly viewed as an act of worship?
• What if your tax receipt for those donations was accompanied by a note of thanksgiving, or a teaching on how God delights and will reward our cheerful giving?  (Update: Saw this done recently, and it was awesome!)
  
• What if every pot-luck lunch was actually more like the upper-room meal Jesus shared with his disciples?
• What if every salesman, tradesman, public sector worker, etc., who came in the front door of your church was told, “It’s no accident that you came in just now…” and then heard a piece of the particular good news that he/she needed that day?
• What are the “What ifs” that your heart longs for?

That’s what I mean by “spiritualizing Church.” Yes, God is there with us all along, but we need to leave him a place to break into our program.

Quick example. Before we got married, I was a performing Christian solo artist in southern Ontario. I worked alone. One time, a friend of mine who was a professional, recording-studio quality jazz bass player offered to do a concert engagement with me for free at a local church. To maximize his talents and contribution, we rehearsed the songs with some instrumental ‘bridges’ in them so he could do a few improvised bass solos.

But when we actually got out before the audience, I got distracted and started playing the songs the way I normally do, moving quickly from verse to chorus to verse. At the end of the first set, I realized this and told him, and his reply was, “I was trying to find an opening, but I couldn’t find a place to jump in.”

I think that’s how the Holy Spirit would say it to us today. I was there, but you didn’t leave me any room in the program. (See this post, Blocking Peoples’ View from exactly three years ago, for another way of describing this.)

Nobody is saying that God isn’t with us. But we need to see the spiritual possibilities each time we get together, even if it’s just to rake the leaves on the church lawn or clean the church kitchen. And just think, if we were really focused on doing this, we could actually invite our neighbors to “help out” in our church clean-up day, and they might actually see Christ in the most seeker friendly of all possible environments.

It would also revolutionize the way we do things outside of church. We would be spiritualizing or God-focusing our entire lives. Nah. That’s way too radical.

…After committing to write this piece a few days ago, I came across this today from Kaybee, a regular visitor here, on her blog Important to Me. She looks at the way we approach our local church as a sign of what our expectations are. Do we expect that God is really waiting to meet with us?

Reblogging: The Lost Art of Giving

One of the downsides of regular tithing to ones local church is that we can sometimes feel that we’ve ended our obligation to do anything else in a financial sense. Don’t get me wrong, the local church where you receive teaching, fellowship and spiritual nurture should be the first priority, when you look at where your money is going. But once done, your heart should still be open to the possibility of responding to other needs you hear about or see around you.

I’ll get back to that in a minute. First I want to consider another set of possibilities.

There are many people — especially in the blogosphere — who have gotten burned out on the whole church thing. Entire shelves in Christian bookstores are devoted to this theme. Those people are not current attending anywhere, which means many are not currently making financial contributions to the work of building the Kingdom of God. If you’re one of them, it’s possible that as the income tax deadline approaches (less than two weeks in the U.S. and four weeks in Canada) you’re realizing you don’t have the charitable deductions you may have had in the past.

For the people in either of the first or third paragraphs above, I want to suggest some guidelines that I have found helpful in choosing projects to support. I came up with some of this at a time we had no money at all, but am no trying to apply these things to some situations I have been aware of and trying to become more generous in my* giving.

*”My” in this case really meaning “our;” because I don’t do this alone but in consultation with my wife.

1. How great is the need? Is this a project that one or two people can help with, or is going to take a lot of people pulling together to make this happen? Sometimes we tend to bail out if the need is huge, thinking our contribution won’t make a difference. Other times, if the need is small, we think someone else will take care of it.
2. How urgent is the need? If the organization or project needs finances now, it means people need to respond now.
   
3. How visible is the project or need? Item (1) notwithstanding, there is an organization I know of that is so very visible that I sometimes find myself looking at projects I think may be off the radar of other people.
4. How able is the constituency to support itself? Some people think that the people who most benefit from a ministry or organization should be the people who are supporting it. But that’s not the case with ministry to the poor, or to youth, or to seekers and new believers who haven’t yet learned the principle of giving.
5. How much of my gift will go directly to meeting the need? As with anything financial, we need to be shrewd; we need to be good stewards. Make sure the need is real and that someone’s plight is being exploited to maintain the organization itself. Giving in this sense may take the form of giving directly to an individual or family, bypassing the tax receipt.

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If you live in Canada and are looking for some practical suggestions on giving, e-mail me (see the contact-us button) and depending on the response you’ll get either a personal reply or a copy of some suggestions.

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April 20, 2010 update:  Sorry for the reblog today.  Things just got busy.   Link list for tomorrow is ready to go.

The Top 100 Issues That Divide Us

When the blogger at Free In Christ started his blog in July of 2008, he noted his indebtedness to a book by Cecil Hook also called Free in Christ.   Not being a regular follower of that blog, and so not having read everything in between then and now, it does appear that 21 months later, he hasn’t stopped blogging his admiration for the book.

Recently, he cited Cecil Hook’s list of 100 things people disagree on in the churches of Christ.    Rather than simply link to it — many of you never click anyway, and even fewer leave comments — I wanted to have this list recorded here.    I’m not sure about the order in which these are listed, but here it is:

1. taking of oaths

2. serving in the military

3. inflicting capital punishment

4. using force to defend oneself or others

5. voting for political candidates

6. serving as a government official

7. engaging in political activism

8. Christmas or Easter programs

9. letting a non-member lead prayer

10. lifting hands while singing

11. joining a ministerial alliance

12. indwelling of the Holy Spirit

13. work of the Holy Spirit

14. baptism of the Holy Spirit

15. prayer for healing

16. the Trinity

17. special providence

18. how God answers prayer

19. fasting

20. translations of the Bible

21. use of Thee and Thou in prayer

22. authority of elders

23. who selects and appoints elders

24. qualifications of elders

25. tenure of elders

26. elders presiding at the Lord’s Table

27. qualifications of deacons

28. deaconesses

29. enrolling widows

30. addressing disciples as Major or Doctor

31. long hair on men

32. midweek contributions

33. dimming the lights during prayer

34. singing as the emblems are passed

35. use of church buildings for secular activities

36. use of pictures of Jesus

37. use of symbols such as the cross

38. use of steeples and stained glass windows

39. use of the term Sunday School

40. passing of the collection baskets

41. eating in the church building

42. grounds for disfellowshipping

43. support of colleges from the church treasury

44. divorce for any cause

45. remarriage of a divorced person

46. preacher officiating at a wedding of a divorced person

47. disciples marrying non-members

48. preacher officiating for a mixed marriage

49. use of an instrument in “church” weddings

50. method and type of inspiration of the Bible

51. re-baptism of Baptists and Christian Church members

52. the “five items of worship”

53. use of choirs, choruses, quartets, solos, etc.

54. serving the Lord’s Supper on Sunday evening

55. serving the Lord’s Supper other than in assemblies

56. integration of races

57. smoking

58. total abstinence from alcoholic beverages

59. membership in fraternal orders

60. contributing to public charities

61. use of Bible class literature

62. youth directors, youth rallies, youth camps

63. the six days of creation being literal days

64. the extent of evolution

65. the operation of Christian hospitals

66. awards and prizes for church activities

67. debating religious issues

68. ministers of education, ministers of music, etc.

69. benevolence to fellow-disciples only

70. the baptismal “formula”

71. formal confession before baptism

72. going to law against disciples

73. dedicating babies

74. signing contribution pledge cards

75. children’s homes under eldership or a board

76. dancing

77. women wearing shorts and slacks

78. women wearing slacks to church services

79. girls leading prayer in family devotionals

80. girls leading prayer in youth devotionals

81. clapping hands during singing

82. buying VBS refreshments from the treasury

83. the present day activity of demons

84. applauding in the assembly

85. use of God’s name as a by-word

86. use of euphemisms of God’s name in by-words

87. use of contraceptives

88. abortion

89. adopting out an illegitimate child

90. women working outside the home

91. Children’s Bible Hour

92. busing children to services

93. “What is to be will be.”

94. bodily resurrection

95. if we shall know each other in heaven

96. degrees of reward and punishment

97. whether heaven and hell are literal places

98. dress code for men serving the Lord’s Supper

99. whether Christ came in AD 70

100. a name for the church

The unnamed blogger follows the list with a brief discussion here, but I’m wondering if you think there’s anything there that shouldn’t be or anything that got left out?

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And now, for today’s bonus item:

This is the “disagreement hierarchy.”  Anyone know the origin of this?   Here’s an article (without the chart) which would seem to attribute this to Paul Graham.