This is MY Church–Give

The longer I am a pastor, the more and more I get comfortable with talking about giving. Most pastors have nervousness about talking about money, mostly because people don’t like hearing about it. Also, we want to avoid being perceived as “one of those people” who seem to only talk about money.

However, I am becoming more convinced of how important talking about giving. It’s important because people are struggling with their finances.  People spend more than they make, and they rack up incredible debt.  It’s important because people struggle with honoring God with their money.  People want to do what is right, but they feel they can’t.  We spend our lives pursuing the American Dream and we don’t realize that God has a dream for our lives and our finances greater than any dream we have.

This dream begins with us being givers, generous givers.  Here are three reasons why that is important.

We GIVE because it is right–We cannot and should not ignore this. From the time of Cain and Abel (the second generation on Earth), it is clear that God wants us to take the first and best portion of what he has given us and give it back to Him. It predates the Old Testament law and extends beyond it to the teachings of Jesus and Paul. God requires this of us. We should treat this as a regular command. However, we have made a collective decision to put the command to tithe (10%) as a super command. We believe that do not lie is for everyone, but tithing is only for super spiritual people. Both of these should be considered standard, entry-level discipleship.

Many people get hung up on “what counts” as your tithe.  Does giving to any cause “count”? Does it have to be an overtly Christian cause? Does it have to be a local church?  I have friends that are pastors that make the case that the tithe goes to your church. I have friends that work for missions groups that would make the opposite claim. I honestly am less concerned about that. My conviction has been to tithe to our church and give above and beyond that to other groups.  We consider the tithe the floor not the ceiling and believe that it is important to support the church you are a part of.  That is just what we do. “Well, what should we do?”  The simple answer is ask God, “God what do you want me to give? Where do you want me to give?”

We GIVE because God blesses generosity–Things can tend to get squirrelly (The number of attempts that it took me to spell squirrelly correctly was alarming. I almost switched it to fishy.) when you talk about God blessing generosity. We all know the people who make the promises about if you give, God will give you more in return. Cue guy sitting on odd golden throne: “If you will send us $500, we will send you this prayer blanket and God will give you at least 10 times that in return.” False.

The problem with that is that it is just exchanging one form of greed for another. I heard this first from Robert Morris, pastor of Gateway Church in Dallas. The spirit of greed that makes us want more and more is what Jesus preached against. Giving just to get is no better than living your life and working just to get more.  God wants us to have generous hearts. In II Corinthians 9 and Proverbs 3, God makes it clear that he blesses us when we give generously.  Sometimes that’s financially, sometimes it is not.  However, just because we cannot tangibly describe it, let us not discount the power of living a life that is blessed by God.

We GIVE because God uses it to change the world–People are always looking for good investments.  ROI (return on investment) is what people want.  If I invest this $1000, I want the most return on that investment.  I believe that the ROI in giving back to God is high.  When you give back, he does not simply bless you, he blesses the world through you.  The money that you give to The Grove Church allows the church to reach people in NWA who do not know Christ.  It allows us to love and minister to our kids.  Ultimately some of every dollar that is given goes all around the world. I’m staring at a map right now that has pins in 24 countries around the world where people from the Grove are or have been in the last year.  I just saw an email from a girl who is in Japan talking about how she is already had the opportunity to share her faith with multiple people and how God is using her.

This is only the beginning.  We are just getting started.  We started together in this journey 2 years ago, and in two years we have seen God move mightily.  What the next 2 years and the next 22 years have in store seems limitless.  It begins with us making a commitment to taking what God has given us, give it back to him and watch him multiply it around the world.