Christians: Are We As Generous As We Think We Are?
- Posted by: Todd
- Posted on: Wed, November 16, 2005
- Viewed 98
- (35) comments so far
Here?s a passage from Ron Sider?s The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience:
John and Sylvia Ronsvalle have been carefully analyzing the giving patterns of American Christians for well over a decade. Their annual The State of Christian Giving is the most accurate report for learning how much Christians in the richest nation in human history actually give. In their most recent edition, they provide detailed information about per-member giving patterns of U.S. church members from 1968 to 2001. Over those thirty-plus years, of course, the average income of U.S. Christians has increased enormously. But that did not carry over into their giving. The report showed that the richer we become, the less we give in proportion to our incomes.
In 1968, the average church member gave 3.1 percent of their income ? less than a third of a tithe. That figure dropped every year through 1990 and then recovered slightly to 2.66 percent ? about one quarter of a tithe.
Evangelical giving, consistently higher than that of mainline denominations, has fallen from 6.15 percent in 1968 to 4.27 percent in 2001. Sider again:
As we got richer and richer, evangelicals chose to spend more and more on themselves and give a smaller and smaller percentage to the church. Today, on average, evangelicals in the United States give about two-fifths of a tithe.
In 2002, Barna discovered that only 6 percent of born-again adults tithed ? a 50-percent decline from 2000 when 12 percent did. And in 2002, just 9 percent of Barna?s narrow class of evangelicals tithed.
These figures are staggering. Churchgoers in the US are falling far short of the bare minimum amount of giving that their Scriptures ask.
Poverty is an enormous problem. The Bible is very clear about how important it is for Christians to meet this enormous need. While we?re certainly giving a lot of money to these efforts, we could be giving more. We should be giving more.
Look, I?m certainly open to arguments that we should rely less on government aid to relieve and reduce the extreme poverty around the world. But you have to prove to me that something else will fill the void. You think that something else should be the Church? Great. So do I.
Let?s talk about how to make that happen.
This comes from the "From the Salmon" blog… on the subject of giving trends…
Comments
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Peter Hamm on Tue, November 29, 2005
Jim,
Even BETTER eomments!
Actually, you may NOT have to revise your original post as much as you think you do… You say “In a church where volunteers are scarce, my ideal church would not be practical” but think whether that is actually the whole problem. See Ephesians 4:11-13. I always remind people in my church that I’m actually not a minister… THEY are. If church leaders would simply see themselves as the ADministers who equip God’s people, then your ideal church, or at least something close to it, would be more possible in more places.
I highly recommend Sue Mallory’s book, “The Equipping Church” on this particular point.
Peter
Wendi on Tue, November 29, 2005
Peter & Jim,
As a (paid - FT) Director of Equipping, I had to weigh in on this one (plus it does relate to the original post – as Christians are called to be generous with all we’ve been given; time, talent, brain power and physical energy).
I agree that sometimes highly resourced churches have succumbed to the temptation of “hiring-out” too much ministry by paying staff unnecessarily. Generally however, this is not the main reason too many people sit on the pews and let staff and 20% of the congregation get the ministry done. Here are a few:
• There is still a clergy / lay view about ministry in the church, pastors resistant to release real spiritual authority while lay people think that the spiritual stuff is the job of one trained in seminary.
• Americans are consumers, it’s in our blood. We come to church shopping for religious goods and services. It’s not people’s fault they live in this culture, and we aren’t helping by being mad at them for shopping – we just have to help them develop a new paradigm. This doesn’t happen over night.
• Guilt based (rather than gift based) recruiting – “if I don’t have 10 more Sunday School teachers we’ll have to close down and some children will probably spend eternity in hell.” Can you see Jesus wandering around saying “I’ve got three more open disciple slots to fill in order to launch this kingdom of God stuff.” BAD THEOLOGY – the God of the universe does not need us to accomplish His work. And besides, who wants to jump onto a sinking ship?
• No equipping – Eph. 4 does not say “ . . . recruit God’s people for the works of service,” but based on the investment we make in people AFTER they begin serving one would surmise that our job is done once the slot is filled. We offer studies and classes and mentoring for spiritual formation and then ask people to ADD serving to their already full plates. What if discipleship and service happened as part of the same commitment? Maybe people could spend less time in church activities and more time hanging with their neighbors.
I could go on . . . as you know if you’ve read many of my posts. I also recommend Sue’s companion book, The Equipping Church Guidebook. She’s been a great mentor to many of us navigating this new role as Equipping Directors / Pastors and also to Sr. Pastors. Another good read on the topic is Greg Ogden – Unfinished Business. Thesis is, while the reformation succeeded in giving the scriptures back to the people, it fell short of releasing back to them the ministry of the church.
Hey Todd – how bout a post sometime about what practical things churches are doing to live out the priesthood of ALL believers? There are some great articles out there to get us talking.
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