Money And The Church

Being Generous With $$$ Toward God

This post is the first in a series on our responsibility in financially supporting the preaching of the Gospel. It is taken from Appendix 2 of the Book Friends With God, entitled: Giving To God, or Being Taken For A Ride?

Giving To God, or Being Taken For A Ride?

We give gifts to our friends as a token of our love for them, and in the process, we develop bonds of gratitude and love between us. As God is our friend, how do we give a present to him, and how does he give gifts to us?

God has given us physical life, and also the understanding of his way that leads to eternal life, through the gift of the sacrifice of Christ. He expects that we are grateful enough for this, and that we will want to give something back to Him in return.

Yet even when we give to God, he promises to give back to us even more than we have given! Honour the Lord with your substance, and with the first fruits of all your increase: So shall your barns be filled with plenty, and your presses shall burst out with new wine. (Prov 3:9-10) Not a bad deal from the great creator, who owns everything anyway!

This is similar to our relationship with our physical friends. We are told that if we want others to be generous to us, then we should also be generous to them. (Luke 6:38) Simple logic really.

Yet how do we give to God? We can’t send him a bunch of flowers!

How Do We Give To The Church?

We are told that the Christian Church is the Body of Christ. (1Cor 12:25-29) Logically therefore the way we would “give God the first fruits of all our increase” is to send our gifts for God to the church. However, as we have seen in Chapter 3 of Friends With God, many scriptures warn us of false teachers, who will take our money and use it for themselves rather than God’s work. (Matt 24:5-24, Mark 13:22, Luke 21:8, Acts 20:29-30, 2Cor 11:13-15, 2 Peter 2:1-3)

A potential conflict of interest also exists, as it’s the ministry who preach about giving, and it’s the ministry who collect the money and determine how it is used.

Like any business, churches get money in order to spend it on legitimate expenses. Is there anyone checking what they do with that money? Or should we simply trust God to do an assessment of them?

As a member of your Church, you are a major part of its business plan. What sort of business are you in? Do you know what happens to the money you give? Can you be deceived into giving your money to the wrong people, doing work which actually opposes God!?

It’s worth considering what the apostle Peter tells us: But there were false prophets (teachers) among the people (in ancient Israel), as there will be false teachers among you, (us today) who will secretly put forward wrong teachings for your destruction, even turning (you) away from the Lord who gave himself for them; whose destruction will come quickly, and they themselves will be the cause of it. These false teachers will eventually be repaid by God, however they will deceive many to support them first:

And a great number (of Christians) will go with (financially support) them in their evil ways, through whom the way of truth will be evil spoken of. And in their desire for (financial) profit they will come to you with words of deceit, like traders doing business in souls… (2 Peter 2:1-3)

If we are financially supporting such deceptive people’s evil work, rather than God’s good work, we will not only lose our money, but we will also be amongst the great number of people who encourage these false ministers. It’s by such financial support that the true way of life will be spoken of as if it were evil!

These liars will try to make a profit from you, but God will eventually punish and destroy them. In the meantime, we need to be careful of their actions or we will not only lose our money, our friends, our mind but also risk losing our salvation also.

The following various translations of 2Peter 1:3, helps to bring home their true motivations:

• They will be greedy and cheat you with smooth talk. (CEV)

• And by covetousness, with well-turned words, they will use you for gain, (LITV)

• And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. (ESV)

• Thirsting for riches, they will trade on you with their canting talk. (WNT)

• In their greed these false teachers will make a profit out of telling you made-up stories. (GNB)

• In their greed they will use good-sounding arguments to exploit you. (GW)

• And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you. (KJV)

• In their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. (ISV) 

We need wisdom to discern who are the teachers of truth, and who are feathering their own nests- or we may pay for it with our money. And not only that, but those people who follow false teachers, will be so deceived that they will think they are doing God’s will in killing righteous people! (John 16:2-3)

It Will Not Be Easy To Sort Out The False Teachers From The True

Jesus encourages us that we must strive to enter the narrow gate, because false teachers will try to lead us into the wide gate. (Matt 7:13-20)

If you are searching for the truth of God, then God warns that this sort of deception is what you can expect to find on the way.

Even so, it is certainly legitimate for the true ministry to be paid for the work they do “.. the Lord ordained (that) those announcing the gospel (are) to live from the gospel.” (1Cor 9:14-15) Yet in the very next verse Paul says that he was happy, indeed boasted, about not being paid.

The Apostle Paul often seemed to work for his living, and preached the gospel without payment. (Acts 18:3, 20:34, 1Cor 4:12; 1Thes 2:9; 2Thes 3:8-9) So his example tells us that the ministry should be willing to do some other paid work, until such a time as the members see fit to give sufficient funds to finance them to work full time, to provide the spiritual needs of the members.

In the next post in this series we will be looking at what both the Old and New Covenants teach about the specific types of financial support required and expected of members for preaching the good news of the Kingdom of God to this world.