Is There a Downside to a Spontaneous One Weekend $5.6 Million Church Offering for the Homeless? Er, Yes.

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Pastor Foley

On March 12 and 13 of this year, First Baptist Church in Orlando, Florida had Bruce Wilkinson come in and speak, and he challenged the church to respond to the “new homelessness” afflicting Central Florida due to the economic downturn, rising foreclosure rate, job loss, etc.

And the church, which has a history of responding in big ways to disaster appeals, responded in a big way to Wilkinson’s challenge, giving and pledging a total of $5.6 million.

Wilkinson, in his messages, laid out the dire need of the people of Central Florida and urged the congregation to contribute whatever they could. The results were individual contributions ranging from one dollar to thousands of dollars and one as a high as $1 million.

“We’ve got to help Orlando and let them know there is help,” Uth said. “We have to say to them, ‘God placed us here for you.’ This church started in 1871 and we believe God started this church here for a reason. I believe He knew this day was coming and He positioned us so we could make a difference.”

Where will the money go?

First Baptist Orlando has had a long partnership with numerous Central Florida Christian organizations, just about all of which will receive funds from the weekend offering.

“These ministries are equipped to help with the issue of homelessness,” de Armas said. “Some of those organizations include the Coalition for the Homeless, Orlando Rescue Mission and Christian Service Center. All of them are really trying to help people who are facing the problems the 60 Minutes story highlighted.”

And it’s the first line of that previous paragraph that has me wondering: Is there a downside to a spontaneous one weekend $5.6 million church offering for the homeless?

Er, yes.

Agencies are “equipped to help with the issue of homelessness.” But what about the church members themselves? Are they equipped?

Besides distributing the money to those who can best get it to those in need, de Armas [the church’s senior associate pastor] also wants to see members of the congregation getting involved.

“We’re looking to deploy our people,” he said. “We have an army of them who want to serve and we’re going to give them a way to do it.”

Good, good. But rather than deploying our people, what about calling upon our people to deploy their homes, and training them to do so even before we ask for their financial commitment?

After all, Christ in Matthew 25:31-46–the parable of the sheep and the goats–points not toward our giving to agencies equipped to help those in need but toward our personal involvement, in our own homes:

…I was a stranger and you invited me in…

So raising $5.6 million for the homeless in one weekend?

Good.

But better yet, how about a regular program of training our congregation members how to open their homes to care for the “new homeless” (and maybe a few of the old homeless, too) prior to the financial offering?

From The Whole Life Offering book:

In addressing his parishioners’ claims that the church was able to provide hospitality through special apartments, hospitals, and hospices, Chrysostom argued that it also remained a personal, individual responsibility. Even if the stranger could be fed from common funds, he asked, “can that benefit you? If another man prays, does it follow that you are not bound to pray?”

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A Modest Counterproposal to The New Tithe

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Pastor Foley

You perhaps have seen by now the winner of the 2011 Project Reason video contest, a piece entitled The New Tithe:

Mega-churches have used religion as fund-raising tool for too long. They shower their followers in sanctimonious platitudes, then clamor for their cash. This video encourages a new definition of tithing by giving to causes with accountability.

A few thoughts, and then a modest counterproposal:

  1. I admit it. I like the video. I think much of it is absolutely true. (Up to about the 2:08 mark, anyway.) As Generous Church notes, 97% of the money donated to churches is spent on those who give it. That’s not good, and we Christians should be publicly spanked for that. The New Tithe video is a well-done spanking. (Well, up to 2:08, anyway.)
  2. At the 2:08 mark, the video begins to tumble unceremoniously off a cliff with its assertion, “You don’t need church to give.” Instead, the video suggests, give to “causes with accountability.” As those of us who have worked with “causes” for many years try to stifle our amusement at the idea of nonprofits being regarded as bastions of programmatic and financial accountability, the video proceeds to list of representative causes. One of these is “Yoga”. Yoga?
  3. Questions of religion aside, what the video overlooks is that causes have historically made very poor accountability agents (see “fox guarding henhouse”). This is why giving circles continue to soar in popularity. And churches have the potential to become the best giving circles–and accountability agents–of all. Well, once we stop spending 97% of our money on ourselves.

So we offer a modest counterproposal to The New Tithe–one we practice in the .W church plant we started in January in Colorado Springs and Seoul. We wrote about our own “New Tithe” earlier this year in a post entitled Don’t Wait for the Government to Repeal the Charitable Tax Deduction; Instead, Repeal it Personally:

Rather than taking an offering each Sunday, we as a congregation prepare to make our offering once a month, on the last Sunday of each month. A month’s preparation has a way of keeping the offering from being a tip for services rendered (literally).

But what I’m most excited about with regard to our offering is that each member commits to offering a tithe, of which 30 percent is given to the church (with a third going to the church, a third going to our denomination’s regional conference, and a third going to the denomination) and 70 percent is consecrated at the altar…and then immediately received back again by each member, to be disbursed personally by that member as the church’s minister within his or her own sphere of influence.

70 percent of the tithe, in other words, is not tax deductible because it doesn’t go through the church. It’s consecrated at the altar and then given directly by the church member to those to whom the members learn to personally minister. (Training in giving embedded in service is a key part of what the church program is all about, even for the congregation’s children. Giving and serving should be done by the family jointly, after all.)

Forget giving to causes with accountability. Instead, distribute your philanthropy directly and personally, and meet monthly to be held accountable by others doing the same thing, in order to ensure that your giving really is making a difference.

For Christian and non, that is truly The New Tithe.

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Barna’s New Book is the Perfect Research Companion to My New Whole Life Offering Book. Better Get Both.

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Pastor Foley

I was pleasantly surprised to see the announcement of George Barna’s new book, Maximum Faith: Live Like Jesus, on the Barna Group website. I say pleasantly surprised not because I expect George to call me every time before he publishes a book (an advance copy and a box of chocolates is certainly sufficient), but rather because the topic of George’s book and the topic of my new book, The Whole Life Offering: Christianity as Philanthropy overlap so delightfully:

Six years after beginning what he assumed would be a relatively typical research process that sought to better understand how God transforms people’s lives, researcher George Barna discovered that he had tackled a deeply challenging and amazingly revealing journey. The product of his effort was the ability to identify some of the developmental processes, experiences, and obstacles that are common across the lives of Americans of all backgrounds. He contends that while the details of people’s developmental story differ, everyone is on a spiritual journey and there is sufficient similarity in those journeys that we can describe a normative life path – a map that can help people make greater progress if their goal is to become more Christ-like.

There are even some similarities to my first book, Coach Your Champions, that are worth noting–like the “normative life path” part. In Coach Your Champions we lay out the idea of a “champion map,” laying out a trajectory enabling the champion to grow to fullness in Christ in the cause, by the power of the Holy Spirit. (And check out these two previous blog posts from our site here and here, since they nicely cinch up this topic.)

In the “I couldn’t agree with you more, George” Department, I like this quote in particular from the book announcement on the Barna site:

Every person is on a spiritual journey of some sort. The value of the new research, according to Barna, is that most people who consider themselves to be Christian, regardless of their level of spiritual maturity, are entangled in more of a circular journey than a consistently progressive route. While the journey orchestrated by God is not always strictly linear, it has discernible destination points along the way, and a clearly identifiable end point that followers of Christ may partner with the Holy Spirit to reach before they die.

The “more of a circular journey” reminds me of my April 2009 post entitled Who Needs a Map, where I wrote:

I’m reminded of a line of questioning I receive frequently from ministries:

Do I really need to use a coaching plan form when I meet with a champion? Isn’t it less mechanistic if I just wing it and rely on the Holy Spirit’s direction?

My reply:

Only use a coaching plan form with champions you actually want to see grow. For champions you don’t mind seeing go around and around in circles beeping their horns and chasing their taillights like Shriners in a parade, no coaching plan is necessary.

It appears from the info on the book on Barna’s site (I didn’t yet receive my advance copy with the box of chocolates, sadly, so I’ve had to plunk down the $15.20 plus shipping from all the way over here in Korea) that George and I prescribe quite different–though I suspect hardly incompatible–paths forward for folks responding to the call to fullness in Christ.

So I think we all just better order both books, here and here. (Isn’t it sporting and very mature in a Christian way that I listed George’s first?)

And toss in a copy of Coach Your Champions, too, just to be safe. (Oops. So much for mature.)

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