blogwoods

Good-bye again, Mrs. Pugh

Mrs. Pugh was the mother of a boy in my grade school. The boy was a year older, but my sister and Mrs. Pugh’s daughter were the same age, and were in girl scouts together. We all went to the same church, and that’s where I remember her most. Read the rest of this entry »

Neighbors

Brenda just got back from court today. She had been there to help a young woman obtain legal residency status, and it was exhausting. Read the rest of this entry »

Heroes

I heard a couple of “testimonies” in the past week. The idea behind a testimony, as I understand it, is to tell of what God has done in your life. Some people do it better than others. Read the rest of this entry »

Aliens

This week I received an email from a friend, asking me to sign an email petition. The petition went like this: Read the rest of this entry »

Giving

I’ve read a few articles today about how much or little Christians give…mostly little. It’s depressing. However, there are some assumptions I’ve seen that I don’t entirely buy into.

Here’s a typical line:

Had giving been at an average of 10 percent in 2005 rather than 2.58 percent, there would have been at least an additional $168 billion available for the overseas and domestic mission work of churches.

The assumption is, of course, that if churches only had more money, they could do more mission work. But what I’ve seen is the opposite. When churches get a lot of money, they don’t ship it out the doors. Instead, they tend to build huge, multi-million-dollar campuses. The stated purpose is to reach the neighboring community, and sure, that’s a good idea. However, millions of dollars to build a place just so people can have meetings….

So if suddenly everyone started tithing and churches had all the money they could ever use, would we see an increase in giving money away? Sure, the total dollars would go up, but I doubt the percentage would increase. Use yourself as an example: when you got your last raise, did you increase the percentage you gave away, or just the total amount — or maybe neither?

Churches are the same as people. We (American churches) only give 3% of our money to non-Christians; the majority stays in the building. I doubt it will change just because we have more.

The articles are here, here, and here.