Stop Supporting Your Local Church
Reader Response: Recovering the Spiritual Birth Right of Financial Agency
This post is a reader response to a note asking whether or not tithing is a biblical practice. I messaged the poster to have this conversation with them but they opted for me to write it out. I reasoned that it makes more sense to share it with everyone anyway. Yes, the title is provocative, but I think you’ll find this intriguing.
Stop Supporting Your Local Church
As institutional trust in organised religion fails so too does subscriptive giving to the symbiotic organisations in which we find ourselves. No one wants to find out that their 30 years of faithful tithing went to support the pet unrepentant sin of their favourite theologians; the mistress, pool boy, or the church secretary . But herein lies the conundrum of giving drives and calls for increases in giving to organisations who are doing good work; it is impossible to support an organisation without supporting someone’s sinful lifestyle—it’s unavoidable and all attempts to organisationally evade sin result in Spiritual Abuse on top of financing a life in the flesh. I have written extensively about this in, The A Word1, and Deconstruction2 as well as in Auspice3.
But, as Mark Rogers wrote in his article Passing the Plate published in Christianity Today in 2009, “If the people don't give, then the pastor goes unpaid, the building never gets built, and the missionaries stay home.”4 So what is to be done? Traditionally speaking we respond to this conundrum with pros and cons. Does the organisation do more good than harm? What is the vetting process through which we decide that this person is allowed to be a part of our mission, and so on and so forth. What no one ever really asks is, what if the way in which we organise is the problem? Isn’t it a problem that barring subscription fees the pastor isn’t provided for? Isn’t it a problem that people stay home from the Mission field if there is no money? Isn’t it? Tithing is the backbone of a mission done by someone else.
In another article called The Ancient Rise and Recent Fall of Tithing in Christianity Today published in 2008, Collin Hansen gives a succinct rundown of the history of modern tithing as a result of a dip recorded by Barna Research Group saying,
“Barna's data shows that only 3 percent of adults contributed 10 percent of their 2002 income to churches, which marks a 62 percent decrease from 2001 when 8 percent of American adults tithed. Among born-again Christians, the decline was similarly steep, from 14 percent in 2001 to 6 percent in 2002. Barna attributes the sudden drop to a variety of factors, including the soft economy and ongoing terrorism threat. But he also pegs shifting church demographics—younger adults don't share their parents' and grandparents' convictions about tithing.”5
Hansen goes on to say that the younger adults are just ignorant of who set the amount at 10%6. The author does a decent job detailing where the idea of giving a tenth to clergy comes from, interestingly touching on the perveance of the practice even among ancient pagans. I highly recommend this article as an overview of why the practice has been continued to the present day, but what the article does not answer is if the practice itself is altogether Biblical.
We know why we tithe7 and what to tithe8 and even how to tithe as ministers are never done preaching about Paul’s command to give hilariously9. What we don’t know is whether or not tithing as we know it is a Biblically faithful practice.
As I’ve raised already, it should be a massive red flag that the work we are supposed to be about doesn’t get done because of a lack of finance; the Pastor isn’t supported and moves on to somewhere else, missionaries come home, the gospel doesn’t go out, disciples are not made. When we started Ammi Ruhama Community we had and still have no giving structure. The work we have been able to accomplish so far is purely from the faithful work of a few who have done the work, prayed, and listened to the Holy Spirit when impressed to give a portion of their earnings to the work or one another. I don’t have to tell you that those gifts dry up fast. We cannot rely on monetary compensation to start or sustain the work of obedience to which we are called.
What is money, after all, but the world’s attribution of value to something. If the source of value for our obedience is the compensation we receive then we are servants of money and not of God. If we decide not to preach a sermon laid on our hearts because we fear losing our jobs—not to publish a post or book which will edify and encourage the people of God because it isn’t projected to sell enough at launch then we do not serve God in these things but the value it will bring to us.
But we know this. What I am writing to you is not new, but our response historically has been yeah, but what do we do? We have to live in the real world and money makes the world go round. We are cowed by a system of buying and selling Christianity in the temple marketplace and have so organised our faith around that marketplace that it is no wonder we have become servants of money. If we wouldn’t do what we are doing for nothing and if we would stop obeying if the money stopped then we no longer serve Jesus if we ever did to begin with.
At Ammi Ruhama we wrote it into a foundational document that details the rights of the people of God who have received mercy that mandatory giving to any organisation is a direct violation of our biblical rights as the people of God who have received mercy.
8. Eighth, no tradition shall be taught or practiced which demands of the believer by community agreement, code of conduct, or any other secondary document, compulsory monetary giving to any organization including the fellowship.
(See: Acts 5:1-11)
The Christian’s Bill of Rights10
You’ll notice that our source for this right comes from the record of Ananias and Saphira who are struck down for lying to the Holy Spirit concerning the gift that they said they were giving, but kept back for themselves and lied about it to gain spiritual capital among the Apostles. Paul would write to the church of Corinth later to avoid repeating this same mistake in the wake of the persecution of the Church in Jerusalem which they pledged to support.
Many go to this passage as a means of claiming biblical precedence for the continuation of the practice of tithing, but in doing so miss the glairing reason why this passage communicates the exact opposite.
“But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? 4 While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God.”
Acts 5:3-4 ESV
Peter is adamant. You didn’t have to sell your land, and furthermore, you didn’t have to give anything to us. You could have done whatever you wanted with your money and yet you decided to give part of the money as if you were giving all of it to gain some kind of spiritual status among us. You wanted to appear to be the least among us to be seen as one of the greatest. We all know how that ended—a New Testament mirror passage of Nadab and Abihu losing their lives for offering strange fire before the Lord.11
Paul’s exhortation to the Church at Corinth12 is not that they ought to give towards the persecuted church in Jerusalem but that they ought to honour their pledge for which he had already sung their praises profusely throughout all of Macedonia causing other groups of believers to give as well because of the generosity with which they pledged. The classic so-called tithing passages that follow are specifically about honouring the pledge they made to support their spiritual siblings in Jerusalem in their time of need. There is no basis to claim that this is about mandatory subscriptive giving or that it can be faithfully applied as such to supporting the everyday running costs of a symbiotic organisation.
This ought to make us step back and realise how a bad reading of 2 Corinthians 9 supports the whole infrastructure that we have built and that to remove it is to effectively remove the feasibility of that structure. Any Symbiotic Organisation without money collapses overnight. These organisations are built on the shifting sands of bad readings of Scripture—2 Corinthians 9 being only one of them.
Suggested Applications
In the full knowledge that it is your spiritual right to steward what God has given you to the best of your ability—stop supporting your local symbiotic organisation through regular tithing. It’s just not Biblical. Call on God to reveal the needs among your neighbours and the people of God and give directly to those needs as the Spirit moves you. Yes this means we have to start listening very carefully to the Spirit of God. It means that we take back this one spiritual birth right of financial agency.
Call on your spiritual leadership to declare a year of Jubilee and free everyone from any membership responsibilities towards mandatory giving to the symbiotic organisation, as well as recognising the other spiritual rights of the people of God.
Study your rights as a part of the people of God who have received mercy and in doing so, study who you are in Christ and the heart we are to have towards the world and towards one another in love, faith and hope in the gospel.
Tithe; from the Old English: Teogotheon—to give a tenth part.
It supports all of our church programs.
+- 10% of our annual income.
Out of 2 Corinthians 9:1-15 where “cheerful,” is translated as “hilarious”.
See Leviticus chapter 10.
Again, See 2 Corinthians 9
What are the spiritual rights you speak of? (With Scripture references, please)
How then would you recommend keeping local churches financially functioning? Only bi-vocational pastors?