When I first started pastoring – wait, I suppose I should mention that this post isn’t about panhandling. This is specifically about teaching on giving at church, which tends to be perceived as asking people for money. When I first started pastoring, I studiously avoided the topic of giving, even though our church was at a relatively low ebb in its history. My poor treasurer was trying to pay the bills and she would update me regularly on our paucity of funds with prodding eyes. Sometimes she would give a testimony in church about how she and her husband had tithed for forty years and God always blessed them. God bless her, I’m surprised she didn’t shoot me.
At a personal level, I have never been comfortable asking anyone for money. There’s all sorts of various kinds of pride tied up in that, but at a church level, there is also a very legitimate concern that we should present the gospel without a cost. And, in my view, it was better not to give scoffers a reason to deride the church for greediness by talking about money all the time. Because of the troubles from which our church was emerging, I actually determined NOT to talk about money the entirety of my first year as senior pastor, which I look back on as a good decision for my own particular circumstances and context.
Since then, I have come a long way in my own personal comfort level when it comes to exhorting people to give. At first I taught on giving and stewardship in a very objective kind of way. No begging or pleading with the congregation. I still did not feel like I had a right to tell specific persons that they needed to be giving a specific amount (for example, a tithe). It felt to me as if I were binding someone else’s conscience. Here’s how I got over that.
After a couple of decades of ministry in the same church, I realized that everyone was spending all the money that they had. Despite the “blue collar” nature of our congregation, people were driving cars, living in houses, going on vacations, eating steaks, etc… In other words, no matter how much money people had, they were spending it all. As I considered that, it came to me that if I didn’t encourage people to give their money to something eternal, they would give their money to something earthly. If I didn’t present them with the opportunity to invest in spiritual things, they would invest in carnal things.
This dawning realization has taken me from a place where I can teach on giving and advise people to give without any of the self-consciousness that marked my first years in the pastorate. We continue to be a relatively poor church. We abound with widows and the disabled, but there are some among us with stable white collar jobs. Although the dollar amounts are not particularly high, we have a congregation that graciously gives, even from their lack. Widows and the disabled putting in their $40 here and there as they are able. I wonder if my twenty-four year old self would have felt ambivalent about it. I know that my forty-four year old self simply rejoices in it.
Nathan Writes 