Strategic Generosity 2: How much should I give?

Episode 279- Strategic Generosity 2: How much should I give?, hosted by Mark Vance.

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Transcript

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This is the Equip podcast from Cornerstone Church of Ames, a podcast designed to help you live a gospel-fueled and faithful life wherever Jesus has called you. Well, welcome again to the Equip podcast from Cornerstone Church. My name is Mark Vance. I am so glad that you are listening to the Equip podcast today. And today is part of a three-part series. We started last week talking about strategic generosity and how it is that God has given us wealth and income in this world to make an impact on not just this world, but on his kingdom. And so we're kind of going through three parts here. Last week, part one, we said in strategic generosity we wanna understand the gospel motivations behind strategic generosity. And so what we did was looked at Luke chapters nine to 19, this journey of Jesus toward Jerusalem. And we saw multiple kind of key principles in that journey with Jesus about how a gospel mentality should shape our strategic generosity. We saw that God's kingdom mission is funded through earthly generosity, that there's a temporary nature of worldly wealth. You can't take it with you, But because of the eternal reward of giving, you can send it ahead. You can store up treasure in the life to come. You need to be careful though, because money, while it's a great blessing, can be a great danger. You can't serve God and money. But once we have understood the radical grace of God, it fuels radical generosity with our money, of which all of that, we will give an account to the master where it's really not our money, it's his anyways. So that was all kind of foundational gospel generosity perspective. But today, Today, I want to go a little bit past that. From the foundations of gospel generosity, I want to begin to get in the next two podcasts here really, really practical. First, I want to talk kind of today about this basics of what I'm going to call strategic generosity and how much I should give. Like how much of the money that God entrusts to me does he mean for me to invest in kingdom purposes? And I want to be very, very practical and try to consider based on the income God's given you, the sort of generosity that God is expecting of you. But then part three, next week, I want to think about where I should give and how I should give to have the greatest kingdom impact. And throughout all of this, if there's a big idea of this, what I'm trying to say is let's as Christians, not just spend our time and our energy figuring out how to multiply Let's as Christians put the best energy we have, the best thinking we have toward how we can steward what God has given to us so that we can advance the kingdom of God in the fullest possible way. We should give strategic thought to this. So in giving strategic thought today, I want to talk about some strategic thought about how much you should be giving. And for that, I'm going to open us from 1 Timothy 6, three verses that are really critical here. I've spoken on these in the past at Cornerstone in our stewardship series, and they're just so foundationally important. I want to go back to them. 1 Timothy 6, verse 17 to 19 says that we're to instruct those who are rich in this age. That's a key phrase. I'm going to come back to that. Rich in this age, not to be arrogant or to set their hope on the uncertainty of wealth, but on God who richly provides us with all things to enjoy. Instruct those who are rich to do what is good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and willing to share, to store up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the age to come so that they may take hold of what is truly life. So, One of the key questions that we need to ask when we consider how much we are to give is to ask this question first. Who is rich in this present age? Timothy uses that phrase, and he uses the word rich often in 1 Timothy 6. At one level, I've heard somebody say, basically, if you live in America and have a job by any global standard, you're pretty much rich. And while I think that is probably true, it doesn't feel that way because the definition of rich has like a cultural contextual meaning. So I don't know if that's the best way to define it. I'm going to give you a biblical definition, I think, of what riches are. 2 Corinthians 8, 14, Paul's talking to this church at Corinth and he says to them, at the present time, your surplus is available for their need. And I think that word surplus helps to give some definition to what it means to be rich. I think when we think of being rich in this world, what we are saying is we have a significant amount of surplus in either income or assets that goes well beyond the meeting of our basic needs. So in a town like Ames, Iowa, a surplus of income would say, okay, if the average household income is $75,000 in Ames, well, if I'm making double that, then I, by definition, have an income surplus. That is a surplus of available income to meet and exceed the basic needs that I would have. You might not have a surplus of income, but some people are very rich in a surplus of assets. You own things, a home or a business or a property or an investment. You're part of a family that has generational wealth. In that case, you have a surplus of what you need. In either case, those who have a surplus are easily able to meet the basic needs that they have. They're not fighting paycheck to paycheck. They have excess. Okay, now I'm going to pause here and say this. In America, we have to be clear here. What's happening with many Christians is that the excess that God has entrusted to us, we are eating up by consuming all that money to keep up with the Joneses who live next door. If you are buying new cars every year, constantly going to the store to shop, if you are filling your Amazon cart every day, if you are spending money like everybody else next to you, you won't give money. In other words, many people that God has given a surplus of income to so they could invest in the kingdom have wasted that surplus, spending it on themselves. Now, Paul is clear here, and this is actually a really key point. In 1 Corinthians 6, it says, God richly provides us with all things to enjoy. There's nothing wrong with driving a nice car or having nice clothes. The problem is, is if we are actually going beyond our means, we're eating up all of what we could be generous with, with consumption. You need to ask this question. Is my limited amount of generosity due to my excessive amount of spending? I think that's a question everybody's got to ask. But now, if we've said those who are rich in the world have a surplus, the question is, what does Paul tell those who have these surplus incomes? What does he say to do with them? Well, he gives you four commands. He says, to do what is good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and willing to share. Rich in good works, not just rich in this world. Doing what is good, generous in your heart, willing to share. But when we see that phrase, generous, that's what I want to unpack the rest of the time. What does it mean to be generous? What is generous giving? Okay, I think again here, a bit of biblical context might help us to frame that out. So in the Bible, one of the ways that the Old Testament talks about giving is underneath the concept of a tithe. I'm not going to get into that fully. If you scroll through the past episodes of the Equip podcast, I have one all about what tithing is. I don't want to use this particularly to say every Christian has to tithe. I'm not going to go there. But what I'm going to do is I want to use it as an illustration. Because in the Old Testament, there's a principle of tithing. And the word tithe, it just means a 10th part. So if you made $2,000, a tithe would be 10%, a tenth of that $2,000. $200 is a tithe. So in other words, tithe or tithing is not a substitute word for giving. It is a very specific way of giving, of giving of 10%. And in the Old Testament economy, the tithe was not considered generosity. The tithe was considered a basic requirement. So here's the point that I'm making. generosity would be beyond basic level. So should Christians tithe today? Is that required? There's so much Bible debate there. I'm not going to try to land that. It's hard for me to decide. But here's the point that I do make. I think there's a wise pattern established of that tithe or sort of 10% target of giving that's a really helpful way to train us when we think about what it means to be strategically generous with what God has entrusted to us. So what I would say is maybe something like this, a tithe or a 10% gift dominantly oriented toward your local church where you find your spiritual guidance, your roots in life. That is like the training wheels. It's the basic kind of general idea of giving. It's the sort of thing that you should use to train your kids if you're a parent. If you wanna train your kids to give, when they make their first $200, train them to give a 10th of that to the church. That's just the basic training wheels. Establishing that pattern early will help to guard them against spending in excess. So use the training wheels, but if we're gonna consider for those who are rich in this world, who have surplus, Paul is gonna say, I think pretty clearly, generosity has to go beyond the training wheels, basics. If you have a surplus, you need to be thinking, how do I invest that beyond the basics? So giving the basic question we're asking today, how much money should I be giving away? That's actually deeply related in the Bible to how much money you are making already. Okay, so I'm going to use two tools that we've used at Cornerstone here, a giving ladder and a wealth pyramid. For the giving ladder, simply imagine a ladder with rungs. At the bottom rung, where honestly the majority of people in America are, would be the rung of a non-giver. Most people don't give anything to anybody. They spend all their money and more on themselves. Maybe the next layer up is people, this is probably the majority of givers across North America, Christian or otherwise, they are what we would call a occasional giver. You go from non-giver to occasional giver. They give by impulse. I saw the need on the TV. Somebody asked me. So I impulsively, yep, I'm willing to do it. They have a generous heart, but they don't have generous patterns. They're impulsive. The next step then is what we would call a regular giver. That means they have set aside an intentional dollar or intentional percentage of their overall income that they want to begin to give. And this is the start of what I would call intentional giving. Now, The tithe is one step beyond that. So here again, imagine the latter. Non-giver to occasional to regular to a tithing giver. Tithing, I think, is a target. A target. And I just want to say this. I've said this before at Cornerstone. It's so crazy for me to think about this. It's estimated that if Western Christians, Christians in America and Europe, simply practice tithing, we would easily be able to fund tithing. all the dollars we need for the entirety of the task of world evangelism and feeding the hungry. I mean, I just want you to think about that. You could basically eliminate world poverty if Christians just tithed. That's a fantastic thing. So I want to say this. That is a powerful way to give. That 10% target is a powerful target. Okay, so non-giver, occasional, regular, stepping up the ladder to tithing. Now, the next level is generous giver. That's a tithe plus way of giving. It's saying, because I have a surplus of income, I need to build on the basics. Above a generous giver, maybe at the top of the ladder, is a sacrificial giver. Here's what a sacrificial giver is. My style and mode of living has been significantly changed. by my manner of giving. I have so fully embraced that it is more blessed to give than to receive that I am absolutely and sacrificially committed to giving. All right, so let's go the ladder again. Non-giver, occasional giver, regular giver, tithing giver, generous giver, sacrificial giver. Here's what I want you to do with the ladder. Simply ask yourself the question, where are you at today and are you satisfied with that? Where are you at in your giving today? Maybe you'd say, Mark, I'm kind of impulsive. I don't really have a regular pattern. I want to be generous, but I just, I don't have that established as a pattern in my life. Well, here's the admonition I'd have for you. Take the next step on the ladder, okay? Just go one step higher. I'm not asking you to go from occasional to sacrificial. I'm saying go from occasional to regular. Maybe you're regular. You're currently giving a percentage, but as you look back at it at the end of year with taxes, you go, I actually only gave like 4%. Well, okay, let's step the percentage forward. Let's go from four to six. Or you know what? Why don't you just take the leap? Go from four to 10. You're like, man, that'd be crazy. Well, yeah, it would be. It'd be great. It'd be a great sort of crazy. There's good crazy stuff, you know? So my point with the giving ladder, the image I'm giving you is consider whether you should go the next rung. But now I want to pair that giving ladder up beside what I would call a wealth pyramid, right? Again, 2 Corinthians 8 is helpful. The gift is acceptable according to what a person has. God has given you, 2 Corinthians 8, 14, a surplus for their need. So that means giving in God's economy is based in part on blessing. God does not have the same expectation for what every person gives. In fact, I think I could go so far as to say this. If you are a person with very, very little income, in fact, you have no excess income to give. Simply making the step of being a regular tithing giver is all God would ever be asking. To give beyond that would actually in many ways be unwise. However, there are some who are operating with incredible financial surplus who are only giving as an occasional giver, and I want to say occasionally. why do you think God entrusted you with that wealth? He didn't do it for you, right? So what I wanna say is, let's think of categories of wealth, like a wealth pyramid. At the base here, I'm gonna be honest. For many in America, they're at the basic level of what I would call struggle. The base of this pyramid, for these at the struggle, they are struggling to make their basic needs, their basic food, shelter. They don't have enough money. And for those people, I'd say if you're at a struggle level, your basic financial goal should be to master financial basics. Give first, save second, live on what's left over, don't get into bad debt, to begin to build some sort of emergency savings. And to get there, I think the struggle level, if you're there, one of the most helpful things to get you out is to begin to give regularly. Notice I didn't say tithe. Now, if you are tithing at a struggle level, God bless you. I think that's great. I think you should stay there. But what I want to say is for most people at struggle level, they aren't giving anything. So beginning to give something, even if you don't have a lot of something to give, will release the hold that money and things have on your heart. I take that even just the example of the widow giving that Jesus refers to in the New Testament. It's just regularly saying God's heart is to give. So while I might not have much, I want to do something with what I have. That's giving something. at a regular level for those who might struggle. Okay, one step above the struggle level. Imagine this next step up the pyramid as the solid level, the stable level. We have solid income. We actually have a surplus that's going beyond our extra needs now. Your goals at this level should be things like home ownership, solid savings. Things of that nature would be wise, but you will have to begin at the solid level to resist for the first time the lure to take all of your surplus and radically expand your style of living before you first expand your patterns of giving. This is a really big question if you live at the solid level, is does your level of giving match up to your standard of living? And here should be the target. If you're at a solid income level, you absolutely need to be hitting a tithe or a tithe plus level as Christian. This is what generosity would look like. So get to that target level. And it And just, this is worth it. If you will not reorient how you give, money will have a hold on your heart. It's just going to. Now I want to get to this, that final level. So we said there's a people who struggle and at the struggle financial level, I want your target to be moving toward giving regularly. Once you're at the solid level, I want your target to be moving toward tithing or tithe plus sort of giving as a pattern. But now let's go up to that final level, the surplus level. At this point, there's excessive amounts of income. You have high prosperity. You have far more income and assets than you need to fund any sort of style of living that you would enjoy. And now at this point, we must be incredibly clear that riches are going to be a powerful temptation for you. Riches are not bad, but riches biblically are a bit like dynamite. They can do incredible good or incredible damage depending on how they're handled. And so for those who are rich, that's why Paul says, now you must warn those who are rich. I have to, at this level, when I talk about surplus level giving, I'm giving a warning to say, if you don't give your money, your money is going to end up owning you. It will. And so for those that are surplus, a tithe plus level of generosity. where you are giving well beyond that 10% target of overall income, I think it's a necessary thing for you to guard your heart against the deceitfulness of wealth. In other words, I'm not just talking about this because as a Christian pastor, I want something from you. I'm talking about this because I want something for you so desperately. I want you to know the freedom of living beyond the love of money. And so the only thing I know that can really help your heart here is giving cheerfully above and beyond that 10% tithe level. If you are living with a surplus of income, let's start to step forward intentionally the surplus of giving. Take an honest look and say, how much did I give last year? And you need to be stepping the dollars and percentages forward significantly once you're in that surplus target. How much should I give? Well, What I'm saying today is it's not an immediately simple question. It's not just a standard percentage or standard dollar for everyone. Instead, we give in proportion with the blessing that God has given. So maybe the better question to ask is not how much should I give, but does my style of giving match and exceed my style of living? Does my giving match God's blessing? That's the question as we consider strategic generosity and we think about how much to give. So now next week, we're going to consider really simply the final question, which is if we're thinking about strategic generosity, where should I invest? We're thinking about this like gospel investors. If we're just putting our money into the stock market, you know, there's a difference in the effectiveness of types of investments. And I think the same is true when it comes to the kingdom of God. So next week, we'll dive in a little further on this kind of idea of strategic generosity and ask not just what should I give and how should I give, but where should I give it to make the greatest impact for the sake of the kingdom? I hope you'll join us again for the conclusion of that series. I hope you'll continue to consider how is it that my giving is is lined up with what God has given to me.