Should Christians tithe?

Our church is raising funds to repair some chairs, which are badly in need of it. The different responses to the need got me thinking, so I wrote about it in our church newsletter and thought I’d re-post it here along with the video I did about tithing a while ago.

I was encouraged and challenged when I heard in yesterday’s executive meeting that our Nepalese congregation had raised enough money to restore 43 chairs at Lenah Valley. Last I heard, the Aussie congregations had raised enough for 19.

I was pondering the different levels of response. Part of it can be attributed to the fact that our Nepalese congregation most deeply needs the new chairs, as they simply don’t have enough to accommodate all who come to church at the moment.

Part of the difference, though, is in the different ways our Nepalese congregation talks about and manages their personal finances.  

In our Australian culture, money is a delicate subject mostly avoided in polite company. As a pastor, I know that discussing finances is one of the areas most likely to cause offence.  In Australian culture, our financial choices are deeply personal and one of the clearest indications of our actual values.

If anyone suggests that you could spend your money differently from how you currently are, they effectively say that you should have values different from what you currently have.

Money in the Nepalese culture is also a reflection of values, but it is less of a private question because our Nepalese brothers and sisters are much more connected to each other than we are and their choices about money are more transparent to one another. This means that they are more able to challenge one another about how they spend their money than we in the Australian culture are.

That doesn’t mean that Nepalese culture is more Godly than Australian culture. All cultures have strengths and weaknesses. The benefit of having the two distinctly different cultures in our church, however, is that cultural blind spots are continually being challenged. And perhaps our Australian attitudes toward money need to be challenged.

Money is certainly one of the subjects Jesus talked about most often, much more than we do. He doesn’t seem to mind offending people and believes much is at stake in our daily financial decisions.

Jesus says to his followers, “You can make your decisions based on money, or you can make them based on God. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24, Matt Garvin version).

Dan Evenhuis and I were chatting yesterday about how often Jesus spoke about money and I think I glimpsed why he spoke about it so often.

Money represents your ability to make decisions. It represents the things over which you have some control. Jesus’ primary focus was the things over which God has control (God’s kingdom), and money is probably the clearest indicator you will have in your life as to whether God or you, is in control of your life.

At Citywide, we encourage the practice of tithing, not as a legalistic requirement but as a spiritual discipline. Tithing is a way of reminding ourselves that we are not just to give God 10% of our finances but submit all our finances and our time to him.

I realise that the idea of tithing is controversial. A number of people declare that the whole thing was done away with in the New Testament, and so it isn’t something Christians should worry about. I have a guess that the people who are most strongly opposed to tithing are not really opposed on theological grounds but rather don’t like the idea of losing control. I might be wrong.

I recorded a video a year ago (below) that spells out both the biblical basis of tithing and how the early church practised it.

At one level, the people who say the requirement of tithing is different in the New Testament are right. It is. The difference in the New Testament is, though, that God wants 100% and not 10%. (see the video for more about this).

As your pastor, my challenge to you is not so much about tithing but whether you have submitted your finances to Jesus and asked him for his specific guidance, which is the whole point of tithing anyway.This is also a challenge for our church family as we seek to submit our church finances to Jesus. This will come into sharp focus in the coming months as we prepare our budget for the coming year. 

Yesterday, I met with our mission support team. I was both encouraged and challenged by the number of opportunities that God is opening for us and the ongoing tension between our needs as a church and those opportunities. Like you, we need to work out how much of our income we spend on ourselves and how much we will give for God’s purposes beyond ourselves. Also like you, we need to ask God for his opinion about our finances and seek to be obedient to his direction, even if it’s scary.

While it is easy to say all this, it is not a light or easy thing to do either as a church or personally. Some of you might even be annoyed that I have raised the question.

As I wrestle with the future of our church, I think the three big areas that God wants to challenge us in are:

1. How we manage our finances, personally and as a church
2. How much time we spend in prayer personally and as a church
3. How real we are with each other and how we respond to people we find difficult.

Each of these things is an indicator of our faith journey. 

I love our church and the journey we are on, but I know that Jesus is calling us forward and not to allow ourselves to remain comfortable in our little Kingdoms.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I don’t often write as much as this in our church newsletter, but it seemed to be important to raise these questions.

I’d be interested to know how you respond.