The Gift of Giving (and the Excuse it SEEMS to Provide)

Sometimes I read through the weekly report of giving at our church, and it makes me smile.  When we constantly rise above the needs of the church (maintenance, staff payroll, regular ministry costs, etc), it indicates to me that a large number of people who are members or regular attenders are heeding God's plea with them to honor Him with their financial resources.  It says to me that (for that week at least), CrossRidge Church members are putting God's Will before their own fleshly desires.

And then there are other weeks, like the most recent week, when I look at the weekly report of giving, and my heart sinks.  Last week, our giving was off by more than 40%.  In fact, for the entire year, we are something like $60,000 behind cumulatively, and this is only the end of May.  With the most expensive months of the year coming up (summer electric bills, Vacation Bible School, multiple foreign mission trips, camps, etc), there are some pretty serious issues if we do not figure out how to pick up the slack.


Well, really, there's nothing to figure out.  It's pretty clear.  While I know that there are many families in the church who are faithfully answering God's call to responsible stewardship, with nearly 400 households in the church that represent the core of the regular members and regular attenders, it is clear that many of these households are completely missing the mark when it comes to giving God's way.


Let me throw a couple of pieces of info at you:

• According to 2009 statistics, the top 25% of wage-earners in the US paid a total of 87% of the total taxes paid for the year.
• In any organization, it is often said that 20% of the people take care of 80% of the workload and the other 80% fill in the other 20%.  In other words, there are those who do MORE than their fair share of the work, and then there are others who skate along and expend little effort, knowing that the hard workers in the organization will fill in the gaps.

Is this what the church has become?  Have we gotten to the point where many rely on the few to take care of the church in a financial sense?  Do 20% of the givers in the church take care of 80% of the financial burden of supporting God's ministries?  Do the other 80% just "chuck in" a few bucks here and there?

Is this model God-honoring?  Absolutely not.

Let's look at Romans 12:3-8 for a second.

For by the grace given to me, I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he should think.  Instead, think sensibly, as God has distributed a measure of faith to each one.  Now as we have many parts in one body, and all the parts do not have the same function, in the same way, we who are many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another.  According to the grace given to us, we have different gifts:

If prophecy,
use it according to the standard of one's faith;
If service, in service;
if teaching, in teaching;
if exhorting, in exhortation;
giving, with generosity;
leading, with diligence;
showing mercy, with cheerfulness. (HCSB)

Wait, did you see that?  Is Paul saying that only those who have the gift of "giving" should be the only people giving?  Is he saying that if we don't have the spiritual gift of "giving" that we are "off the hook" for giving to the Lord, so to speak?


If this is the way you are thinking, then this is a grotesque perversion of Paul's intent in this passage of Romans 12.


Think about your own body for a moment.  Have you ever picked up something off the floor with your toes when your hands were otherwise engaged?  Have you ever been plunged into darkness, rendering your eyes useless, only to find that your hands and ears served to help you find your way?  You see, every part of the human body has specific tasks for which it is designed.  In addition, because God made our bodies to be very versatile, there are also hundreds of other things where our body parts can play supporting roles.


So, just because generous giving is a spiritual gift doesn't mean that only those who have the gift of generosity should be supporting the church financially.  Everyone who professes Jesus as Lord should be giving sacrificially to the further God's Kingdom.  True, there are those who have a special gift for giving way above and beyond what any reasonable financial analysis would determine to be sensible.  But giving God's way is for every single believer of every stripe in every type of financial situation.


Don't be deceived!  It's time to stop relying on others to do our part.  It's time to step up and declare that we are putting God FIRST in our finances.  Stop trying to figure out how you can afford to give to God after you allocate your paycheck to all the other things in your life, and start trying to figure out how you can afford all the other stuff in your life after you give faithfully to God.  It's time to stop "thumping the collection plate" when it passes.


Your tithes and offerings are going somewhere, aren't they?  Where are they going?  McDonald's?  Satellite/Cable TV?  Starbucks?  Video games?  Keeping the house 2 degrees cooler in the summer time?  So what is McDonald's, Starbucks, AT&T U-Verse, DirecTV or EA Games doing with your money?  Are people coming to Christ and getting their needs met through these organizations?


I don't think so, and if you do, you probably need your head examined for some blunt force trauma.


Let's start putting our money where our hearts are.  And if our hearts aren't in it, then let's take a step back and start by examining our devotion to God's Will.  Stop pretending that you are putting God's Will first in your life and fall on your knees and ask Him to empower you to evaluate your motives with the money that you continue to think is yours (it's not, by the way).  Ask for the strength to sacrifice luxuries, comfort and non-necessities in order to support God's work in your community, state, nation and world through your local church.

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Learning to Give in a Getting World, by Marc Farnell and Jesse Greever, is available as both a paperback and eBook at the following locations:

CreateSpace (paperback, $9.99)

Amazon.com (paperback, $9.99; eBook, $2.99)  MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND SPECIAL:  the eBook version is only $1.79 until Tuesday, May 29.

It is also available to Amazon Prime members as a free eBook download as a part of the Kindle Lending Library.  Pastors and church administrators can contact me directly at jesse@accidental-author.com to find out about discounts available for churches that wish to use this for teaching and small group curriculum.

You can also become a fan of the book at www.facebook.com/LearningToGive.

Follow me on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/#!/JesseSGreever

The Dreaded "E" Word?

I recently had an email conversation about a particularly divisive issue among Christians with someone whom I respect quite a lot.  As we expressed our viewpoints, I asked a great deal of questions, which is part of my nature as a highly inquisitive human being.  Some of my hypothetical questions were pretty philosophical in nature, and as I am a very direct person, it was felt by the other participant that I was somehow transformed into Torquemada of the Spanish Inquisition.  (In all fairness, I was awfully blunt, but the only way I've ever learned is through questioning, so it is the main tool in my arsenal of learning and understanding.)


Anyway, I digress.  At a certain point during the email volleys, I was dubbed an "Evangelical" Christian.  At the time, I didn't really dwell on it too much.  But, as time has passed, and as I've thought about how that word is spat out of people's mouths as an epithet, I began to wonder:  When did "evangelical" become a swear word?


I started digging around a bit to discover the roots of the word "evangelism".  I'll spare you all the boring details, but the Koine Greek word "evangelion" is derived from "ev" (good) and "angelion" (I bring a message). Put those together and you have something akin to "a bringer of good news".


Obviously, Christians who read that "good news" in the context of Christianity refers to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  So, put the etymology together with the context, and evangelism is the telling of the good news of Jesus Christ.  


Okay, now that the word study is over, you can re-engage your brain (for those of you who slept through the last two paragraphs).  The greatest single New Testament reference to evangelism (and there are many) is Matthew 28:18-20, and they are the words of Jesus Himself.

And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (ESV)

Here, we see Jesus commanding His followers to go out and spread the message of His death, burial and resurrection, and the subsequent gift of salvation to all mankind ("all nations").  It would appear that "evangelism" would be very descriptive of this command.


So, let's put the pieces together, shall we?  Jesus commanded His followers to spread the good news, or evangelize.  Believers in Jesus Christ should take the commands that are issued from Jesus's mouth pretty seriously, I would say.  So, in essence, anyone who proclaims that they are a Christian would necessarily have to be an "evangelical Christian" (or at least should be).


So, I guess my question is this?  What is a "non-evangelical" Christian?  It seems the two terms are incompatible, doesn't it?


As I write this, I'm thinking that perhaps the word has become perverted because people don't really know what it means.  In fact, I'm relatively certain that most who spit it at others like some sort of venom are actually meaning to call that person a "fundamentalist".


A fundamentalist Christian, I am not.


An evangelical Christian?  I wear that badge proudly.

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Learning to Give in a Getting World, by Marc Farnell and Jesse Greever, is available as both a paperback and eBook at the following locations:

CreateSpace (paperback, $13.99)

Amazon.com (paperback, $13.99; eBook, $8.99)

It is also available to Amazon Prime members as a free eBook download as a part of the Kindle Lending Library.  Pastors and church administrators can contact me directly at jesse@accidental-author.com to find out about discounts available for churches that wish to use this for teaching and small group curriculum.

You can also become a fan of the book at www.facebook.com/LearningToGive.

Follow me on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/#!/JesseSGreever