Answering the Giving Questions Christians Are Afraid to Ask

Can I give to my church if I'm in debt? What if I can't afford to give at all? And what if I don't trust my pastors with my money? These are the questions many Christians carry quietly, and they deserve honest, biblical answers.

In this episode, I walk through the most common questions I've received about Christian giving: where to prioritize your giving, what to do when finances are tight, how to think about giving while paying off debt, how churches should care for members who don't give, and how to evaluate parachurch ministries before supporting them. Underneath it all is the heart of the matter: we give because God first gave to us.

If you missed Part 1, "Are Christians Required to Tithe?", be sure to check it out.

Resource mentioned: Why Should I Give to My Church? by Jamie Dunlop

The Recovering Pharisee exists to equip pastors, church leaders, and church members in sound doctrine and practical theology. Subscribe for new episodes on the local church, biblical counseling, and Christian living.

Transcript

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Are Christians required to tithe 10% of their income? That is a question we answered in the last episode. If you didn't listen to that, I encourage you to click on the link at the end of this video or at the top of the screen in the corner there, if you want to check that out. But in light of that episode, I wanted to record this episode to just answer a few of the most common questions I've had personally since I became a Christian, and some of the most common questions I've heard from others on this topic of, okay, well, if I'm not required to tithe 10% of my income, and I'm supposed to give, you know, what I see in the New Testament, so regularly, deliberately, cheerfully, and proportionately to what the Lord has entrusted to me, okay, how do I think about some of these other topics when it comes to giving and how should I move forward in obedience to the Lord? And so here's a few questions. Hopefully these are going to be helpful. In the last episode, I answered the question: are we required to tie 10% of our income specifically to our local church? And I answered with a clear, no, I don't believe the Old or New Testament has any commandment or example of New Covenant Christians being required to tie 10% of their income to their local church. But what we did look at is from specifically 2 Corinthians chapter 9 and 1 Corinthians 16, there is a New Testament pattern in which Christians give regularly, deliberately, cheerfully, and proportionately to what the Lord has entrusted to them. Now, I want to in this episode just answer a few common questions some people have, or even address some topics as well that connect to this understanding of New Covenant giving. And hopefully this will be of help to you. I plugged a resource in the last episode that I will plug in this one as well. If you just want a great place to get started in this conversation, if you've never really dived into the scriptures to understand what the New Testament teaches about giving, an excellent resource is Why Should I Give to My Church by Jamie Dunlop. This is a small resource you can read in the course of a day. And this would be a great, great resource to get started in that conversation. But with that being said, let's walk through a list of questions and thoughts I have here with number one being, okay, Cam, if I'm convinced, if I'm persuaded by your argument that I am to give, you know, cheerfully, regularly, deliberately, and proportionately to my local church, well, where should I prioritize my giving? Should it be a church? Should it be a parachurch organization? Like, where, where should I prioritize? And I would just give a clear prioritize your local church. Here's why. Number one, it's the local church that Christ purchased with his own blood. The local church is God's plan A to take the gospel to the nations. It's the local church where pastors are mandated to shepherd souls and to instruct people regularly in God's word. It's the church that people are baptized into when they are saved. It's the church that will help them persevere and finish well as they live their Christian life. So, all that to say the local church has God's blessing in various ways, in ways that parachurch organizations and other organizations simply do not. That does not mean they are bad. I will get into parachurch ministries in a second, but there's nothing in scripture in which God ordained parachurch ministries. They are certainly a blessing and we all benefit from some of them, but they are not God's plan A of spreading the gospel across the nations. And so if you really want to be rich towards God, if you really want to store up treasures in heaven, give to the one thing that God has prescribed in Scripture to reach souls and to present everyone mature in Christ. And so we all should prioritize giving to our local churches, which means if you're currently not a member of a local church, and there could be various reasons for that, I would encourage you to prayerfully seek help to find a healthy gospel preaching church where you'd be happy to join and to begin cheerfully giving to support the gospel ministry at that local church. Now, another question is what if I don't trust my church and its pastors with my money? There could be various reasons for someone believing this or feeling this way, as I looked at in our last episode. We have to just be honest about, and the Bible's very honest about the fact that there are false teachers, there are people who peddle the gospel and God's word to deceive people for financial gain. But that's not always the normative pattern. Sometimes there are some Christians who are just more American in their thinking about money and stewardship than they are Christian. And so they just have a default posture of, well, I don't trust my church or my pastors with my money. I only trust me with my money. I'm not going to give to my church unless they only do exactly what I want them to do with it and things like that. I understand some of that, but at the same time, that could be a discipleship issue, right? That could be a heart issue. That could be a maturity issue, which is fine because, hey, we all can grow. We all have, you know, areas where we need to continue growing in. We are always reforming, so to speak, as disciples of Christ. However, I would say if you're a member of a local church and you have this posture, you know, it is a bit confusing because if you're a member of a church, that means you're saying, I'm I'm willing to have these pastors shepherd my soul. I'm going to entrust my soul to them, but I'm not going to entrust my bank account. And I would just encourage you, well, if you don't trust your pastors with your bank account, why would you trust them with your soul? And if that's the case, find a church where you would trust the pastors and your fellow church members and join it and give cheerfully there and support the work and the ministry that the Lord is providentially doing in that local church. Another common question is what about those who are members of a local church, but they do not give regularly, deliberately, cheerfully, and proportionately? So they're members of a church and they simply do not contribute financially. They do not give. Maybe they still serve and do other things, but they do not financially contribute to the local church. How should we do that? Now, every church is different, but the church I have the privilege of serving at, we have a church covenant, which is just a document in which we just take what we see in the New Testament about how Christians are to live in community with one another as a local church family. And we put it on a piece of paper with all the Bible verses that support each line. And we ask every new member to sign that covenant and to affirm it and defend it. And in doing so, they're simply saying, I agree that this is what the New Testament teaches about how I and we as a church body are to live in community with each other. And we just hold each other accountable to that commitment. And in our church covenant, we have a line that says this we will contribute joyfully and regularly to the support of the ministry, the expenses of the church, and the spread of the gospel to all nations. And so churches who teach this or have a covenant like what I just read, and our covenant has multiple lines, that's just one line of many. But if you have a commitment like that, then my encouragement would be to that Christian, brother or sister, keep your word. If you joined a local church and you made an affirmation saying, I will contribute to the ministry of this church and the expenses of the church and the spread of the gospel, well, as Christians, we serve a God of truth. And so let's make sure we keep our word. Let's do what we said we would do and not say, you know, coming into a church, like, yes, I will join and I I commit to do these things, but then end up not doing what we said we would do. And I would also encourage people in this scenario, guard your heart from a consumer Christianity. What I mean by that is it is very easy, especially living here in Western culture, to view our churches as something that exists to entertain us, to make us feel known and loved. And, you know, we view our church as something we just primarily benefit from rather than seeing it as it's a family I'm covenanting with, and I'm gonna use the gifts that the Holy Spirit has entrusted to me to edify this local flock. We can tend to treat our churches like a gym membership, where we, you know, pick a gym membership based on, well, you know, it's pretty close to my house. So the commute is good. I like the monthly price range, I like the programs and classes they offer. And so, yeah, I'm gonna try it out. But the second, you know, you no longer like what that gym offers, you just easily cancel your membership and then hop over to another gym. We shouldn't view church that way. Church is a family you are covenanting with. It is a group of Christians you're saying, brothers and sisters, help me follow Jesus as you follow Jesus, and I will help you follow Jesus as I follow Jesus. We don't join a church based on primarily what it has to offer us. So, for example, you know, imagine someone who is a part of a local church for several years and they've had pastoral help through life, you know, struggles. They've had plenty of hours of pastoral counseling and teaching and other members ministering to them through thick and thin highs and lows, and they've been a member for years and yet they never serve, they never give a dime financially. I would say, man, that that's a discipleship issue. There's something going on there. There could be reasons for that. Uh, disciples, a product of their disciplers, maybe they haven't been taught. But if they do understand the concept of giving in the New Testament and they simply are just not being obedient to give cheerfully and proportionately and regularly and deliberately, well, then there's something going on there to where you're being a consumer rather than a producer. And so I would encourage that person, like, hey, you don't want to stay there, right? Another question: what if I don't have enough money to give to my local church? That is a fair question. There are saints who are just struggling financially, but their heart is in the right place. Their heart would agree with everything in 2 Corinthians 9. They want to give regularly, regularly, they want to give cheerfully, they want to give deliberately and proportionately, but they're just struggling with. I am financially struggling. What do I do? Well, let me let me give three angles to look at in this type of case study, so to speak. Number one being we we first want to be able to discern is this person struggling due to poor decisions, due to poor stewardship. So we want to help everyone on a case-by-case basis. What I mean by that is we want to we want to meet people where they're at. We want to know, well, what is your story? Why uh can't you give? Because sometimes you might find out, okay, you're not able to give. You are hurting financially, but it's self-inflicted suffering. You're making very unwise choices. You're spending money you don't have, you're living off of credit cards, you're spending more than what you actually make. And you're still taking on more debt or making more unwise decisions. You're getting a car you can't afford, you're getting a house that you can't afford. And so if that's the case, then I would say, okay, this is self-inflicted suffering. But now we now we can properly diagnose, you know, the root issue. Let's come alongside that person and disciple them towards a more faithful and biblical understanding of stewardship so that they wisely handle God's money and glorify him as a result and help them make better decisions so then we can disciple them towards a trajectory where they can get to a point of making better decisions and being able to contribute to the local church. And so there's no shame there. We don't want to discourage that person. We just want to disciple them and we want to be honest and say, okay, brother, we understand, you know, your situation, but we also want to help you understand this is self-inflicted, but we desire to help you through this. But there's also the scenario in which someone might be struggling, but, or rather, let's say there's the member who simply is withholding, right? They're just withholding from giving to the local church. Well, again, that's a hard issue that the gospel addresses. This is not a budget problem. It's more of a worship disorder, you know? And again, we want to meet people where they're at. You never know people's circumstances. Maybe they grew up, you know, struggling financially in their household. And so now that they're an adult and they have, you know, their own career, by default, maybe they're just more naturally, you know, hoarding their money because they've never really had a lot of money, right? And so again, a stingy Christian is an oxymoron, right? Generosity shouldn't be dragged out of us because gospel people are a generous people. We cannot profess the name of Christ and then be stingy. And I'm not just talking about money. I'm talking about our time, our resources, our possessions, material possessions, you name it. Christians aren't a stingy people. We are a generous people because we've been adopted by a generous God. Imagine how many churches will look so much differently if we all, with God's help, were just thoroughly committed to living out Philippians 2, 3 through 4, where Paul says, do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look not to his own interest, but rather to the interests of others. Imagine if all of us just fought to have Philippians 2, 4 at the forefront of our hearts and minds. Everyone should look not to his own interest, but rather to the interests of others. My goodness, would our churches be radically flipped upside down if we did that? Okay, but third scenario of the struggling saint financially would be well, they're truly struggling to the point of, you know, they're at the edge. They really cannot give. I would say, brother or sister, the church does not need your money. Like, we need you to be a healthy disciple. The God will take care of his church. If you truly are at a point where you agree with the scriptures and you want to glorify the Lord and contribute to your local church financially, but you just you are just at a place financially where you know you cannot do that, man. How can we help you? Like, what can we do? How can we no shame, no, no discouragement? Like, how can we come alongside this brother or sister and lift them up and support them? Is there benevolence that's needed? Can we as a church give to them? Can we help support them in any kind of way? And so we want to bring comfort, not shame, not guilt, but we do want to encourage them. But even if they're, I think about, you know, again, Jesus and the poor widow. Even if there was a way that you could proportionately give in in accordance with what you do have, just know that that even that small gift in your eyes puts a smile on God's face. Because if you're able to do so cheerfully, you know, that pleases the Lord. That think about that. That our giving has the capacity to put a smile on God's face because the word of God says God loves a cheerful giver. And so, yeah, the person who is struggling, you know, listen, we we shouldn't try to strong arm these saints into giving to the church just so that they're checking a box and we can make sure that, you know, everyone's giving kind of a thing. We should care about people holistically and try to ask questions such as, is there anything we can do to come alongside you and help you? Can we help you find another job? Do we need to help you move into a better living situation? Or is there something going on that we can help somehow carry some burdens that will bless you financially? But until then, brother or sister, like keep your money unless you are able to give proportionately, even a small amount that would put a smile on God's face. All right, another question is should I give if I have debt? Now, this could be a rabbit trail, but you know, I know in the world of finance, a financial advisor would tell us that there is a such thing as good debt, such as, you know, owning a house or a student loan so you can get education to pursue a career. I I would push back on that from a biblical perspective and say, I don't know, I won't I won't draw a hard line, but I don't know if I'm willing to say there is a such thing as good debt. I'm not saying we shouldn't get mortgages and things like that. But at the end of the day, the Bible's very clear. Whenever you are, you know, on the receiving end of a loan, uh, there's two things that are true. Number one, you are a slave to the lender. And number two, as Christians, we pay our debts. So I'm sorry, I know you know many in America are have been hoping the government would just wipe away student loans, for example. But let's just be honest, nobody put a gun to our heads if you do have student debt. Like no one put a gun to your head and required you to take out a loan. As Christians, if we take out loans, we are to be people of integrity and we keep our words and we pay back our debts. And so if you are in debt, you should pay your debts. So now whether you should give to your church while you have debt, listen, that's gonna, that's gonna be a case-by-case basis, right? Because we got to look at what kind of debt do you have, how much debt do you have? But again, we can all give proportionately to what we have. So all of us have something, again, that proportionate category. We all have something that we can contribute to our local church and do so cheerfully and generously, not begrudgingly, right? The Lord wants us to be cheerful givers. However, we should tackle our debt. We should, and you might need help. You know, listen, many of us, if you grew up in the public school system, maybe even if you were homeschooled, sometimes you've never received teaching on financial literacy, let alone financial literacy from a biblical perspective. And so that might be a great place to start. Find someone in your local church, talk with your pastors. What would you recommend that I read or listen to or watch or a curriculum that's out there, or maybe your church offers something to help you grow in financial literacy so that you have a proper understanding of the Bible's teaching on stewardship, debt, savings, retirement, and so on and so forth, so that you can make good decisions. Another question would be how do I, how should I think about outside giving? So as a pastor, I get emails all the time from, you know, various missionaries from, you know, not from my church, but just out and about who I have zero connection to. I'll get emails from, you know, just random ministries of, hey, we're a band that travels around and we play music and we want to come to your church. Would you support us financially? And, you know, I'll get an email from an individual like, hey, I desire to be a missionary to this country. Would you give to me? How should we think about these opportunities? Well, number one, as I said earlier, the only ministry that was ordained by God is the ministry of the local church. The local church is God's plan A of redemption. Okay, so we got to get that right. So all of our giving, I would suggest, should primarily begin with our local churches, but we should delightfully support great ministries that are advancing the gospel across the globe. And so I would suggest that that giving, though, should be over and above what you have committed to set aside to give to your local church. So I don't think it's wise to split your giving, so to speak, and say, well, I have set aside, I'm gonna give annually X amount of dollars, but I'm gonna split that between my church and this parachurch ministry I really love. I think you should decide what do I desire to give proportionately, cheerfully, and deliberately and regularly to my local church as my plan A. And then outside of that, I'm gonna decide a number that I'm gonna give to this parachurch ministry that I'm very affectionate about. And so I wholeheartedly support uh, you know, members of churches giving to parachurch ministries. There's great organizations out there. I've benefited from many. I'm certified as a biblical counselor through one. I've gone to seminary, which is a parachurch ministry, and I've earned degrees there. And so I've gotten a theological education because of people giving to uh these entities, allowing them to exist, to hire staff and to exist and run and so on and so forth. And so, however, I do think as Christians, we should be wise and discerning about which ministries we do support. So, for example, I would be very cautious about supporting a missionary that is not attached to a local church. I get emails sometimes from missionaries who are not members of any church. They weren't sent by a local church. They just on their own declared themselves to be missionaries and went through a parishurch organization. And that concerns me a little bit because number one, I think the Great Commission is fulfilled through the authority in the ministry of the local church. I think local churches should assess, train, send, and support missionaries. And so I would want to make sure is that missionary accountable to a healthy gospel preaching local church whose elders have oversight over their ministry to make sure that they're not straying from the gospel and that they're seeking to actually, Lord willing, see a plant, uh a church planted one day. And so, uh, so here's some helpful tips. If you're thinking about supporting a para-church ministry, start with number one, do they have a statement of faith? If a para-church ministry does not have a statement of faith, I'm not gonna say that's a red flag, but that's definitely a yellow flag. I mean, if you're not clear on what you believe, that I just have some questions about that. But number two, I would I would want to know in that statement of faith, do they get the gospel clear? Or are they intentionally vague and very general about what they believe? That could be a sign of caution as well. But if they have a robust statement of faith, if everything lines up, you know, praise God. A great place to start is how does their statement of faith align with your local church's statement of faith? If you see a lot of similarities, that's probably a really good sign. But secondly, I would want to know does this parachurch ministry support the local church? Like, what is their view of the local church? What I mean by that is there are some parachurch ministries that are doing good work pragmatically. However, they maybe indirectly usurp the local church. So for example, my theology of parachurch ministries is that they all should have as their main mission to work themselves out of a job because they recognize we exist to fill a void that the local church is currently not meeting. But we believe that the Lord primarily places in the laps of local churches, but we exist to come alongside the local church to help equip them to do what we believe they're called to do. So for example, I do not believe seminaries exist, seminaries and Bible colleges exist to replace the local church when it comes to training up the next generation of leaders. I believe that is primarily the local church's role. Local churches have the primary responsibility to train up pastors and deacons and missionaries. But a faithful seminary will say we're coming alongside the local church to provide a level of education that many churches just aren't equipped to do, but we're not equipped to create a pastor. We're not equipped to show someone how to counsel someone in the middle of a broken marriage or someone struggling with depression. We can't give people reps on becoming a faithful shepherd and preacher of God's word. And so all that to say if a parachurch ministry does not have a healthy understanding of a local church, I personally would not be very comfortable supporting that ministry financially. So for example, there are certain ministries that train people and appoint them as ministry leaders who go out and they teach the Bible and they lead groups. Sometimes some college ministries can can fall into this trap where people are starting to view that that parachurch ministry as their church as opposed to actually joining a local church. Some of these parachurch ministries will even baptize people, but they don't baptize them into a church. They just baptize them and they just keep coming to the parachurch ministries Bible study. And so and I'm grateful that you know they're teaching God's word, but we want to support I would suggest supporting ministries that have a healthy understanding of the local church. And so consider supporting ministries that do well what churches may not be equipped to do. So for example maybe you might consider looking at a a pregnancy network in your town that has Christian nurses on staff and other staff who are making it their their full-time job to minister to primarily lost women who are pregnant and are possibly considering an abortion. And they try to give these women the gospel and give them free ultrasounds and other medical care to persuasively convince them number one to come to faith in Jesus Christ but number two to choose life to let their baby live and to raise that child and to connect these women to and and their their significant others to local churches. And so these are all different ways we can think about supporting parachurch ministries. Now those are just a few common questions I can go on and on with many more I just want to encourage everybody with this our giving should be motivated by the gospel of Jesus Christ. The grace of God in our salvation is what underlines all of our understanding of giving this is not about box checking this is not about just making sure we're keeping the rules so to speak so that God stays you know favorable towards us that's not what this is about. We give because God first gave to us grace is underneath all of this. Listen to this for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich for your sake he became poor so that by his poverty you might become rich. We give generously cheerfully and proportionately and deliberately because God the Father gave out of his riches to us spiritual poor beggars who were rebels to his will and yet he transformed us by his grace made us a new creation in Christ united us to his son and gave us eternal life that is why we give because Jesus Christ is our treasure if we went to heaven if we were on the new heaven and the new earth streets of gold all the beauty no more sin and death and all these things brothers and sisters if Jesus was not there that is no heaven that is a hell because Jesus Christ is the preeminent treasure and he is ours. We possess Christ. We are united to Christ and that is what motivates our giving and so with that being said let's make let's make this clear the aim in our giving is never the gift itself the aim in our giving is never the gift itself it's God's glory. We give because we should want to see the Father glorified. And we understand as we see in 2 Corinthians 9 6 through 14 as we give those financial resources are redeployed for all sorts of things. It can be as pragmatic as paying the utilities at your church paying the salary and and of your staff pastors and other ministry staff but also to you know fund other things all that stuff leads to God being glorified through baptisms, through conversions, through testimonies of people walking faithfully with the Lord and persevering through trials and tribulations and we can go on and on churches being planted missionaries being supported and sensed members of churches being better equipped to handle God's word and to disciple one another all of this happens through means and God is sovereign but he has determined in his sovereignty to work through ordinary means and one of those means is his children regularly deliberately cheerfully and proportionately giving to their local churches and other gospel causes for the advancement of his kingdom and the exaltation of his glory. I pray this was helpful to you if it was please subscribe to the channel that would help me out a whole lot and you can share this with anyone you think might be encouraged by it and stay tuned for the next episode. God bless