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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.

What is knowledge?

I’ve heard two different definitions of the spiritual gift of knowledge from Paul’s letter to Corinth (1 Cor 12.8), and one of them just doesn’t make sense. I saw it again yesterday in a post from Mark Driscoll. Read the rest of this entry »

Honey

My buddy Derek sent me this email: Read the rest of this entry »

The Fight of Our Lives

At my company, we are launching a major initiative to compete against a significant market threat. The rhetoric for this initiative is pretty dramatic: one executive said it was “the fight of our lives!”

I immediately thought of a friend who lost his sister to cancer recently. The challenges for her children and family could well be described as the fight of their lives.

Perhaps my company’s executive meant, “the fight of our corporate lives”, or something like that. I have a hard time thinking that my company’s competitive pressure compares with the dramatic life struggles going on all around us.

A twenty year date

Brenda took me to see A Christmas Carol this holiday season. The production at the Missouri Rep was absolutely wonderful. The story was as fresh as when I first saw it there as a child.

As we watched Ebenezer Scrooge undergo his transformation from selfish miser to generous patron, I was asking God to give me the same heart — hopefully without the ghostly visions.

This wasn’t the first time Brenda and I saw this production. Christmas of 1998 we had our first official date at the same theater, seeing the same play. She bought tickets to this year’s performance to celebrate the twenty years we’ve been together.

So, here’s to a great twenty years, and twenty more to come, and twenty more after that….