I've been actively involved in church and other Christian ministries, doing what I believe God has wanted me to do for well over twenty years. The jail and prison ministries as well as managing the contemporary Christian band and the Sunday services in the hospital where I worked were of my own design. Being able to put these meetings together outside of the jurisdiction of a church was truly rewarding. With the Lords help, I was able to do what I thought would achieve the most amount of good...
Institutional churches all have a regulatory body that oversees the activities and procedures of everything that takes place within the church. Some church governments maintain stricter control than others. Pastors, assistant pastors, and youth pastors as well as other workers, depending upon how large the church is, receive an income for their position. Just like any other profession, the majority of pastors get a ministerial degree from college and usually expect to pastor a church that has a retirement program in order to retire comfortably with an income. To insure that those running a church will receive an income on a regular basis, a very old Jewish tax law is relied upon. It's called tithing, and if you want to be a member, you must pay your tithes, (ten percent of your gross income) on a regular basis...
When I first started attending church, my desire to be around other Christians was stronger than my need to challenge the tithing issue. With a nod from the pastor, I was allowed to be a part of practically everything the church was doing without agreeing to pay ten percent of my income. However, my refusal to comply with the Old Testament law of tithing clearly prevented me from becoming a member and receiving total acceptance into the church.
I've always been concerned about the affect money has on those running a church, or the effect it has on anyone else, for that matter. How much influence does it have on the way a church is being run? What is the driving force behind everything the church does? Is it spiritual, or is it self serving in nature? Having to depend on bringing in a set sum of money every month to pay for a multitude of church expenses clearly gives church a dual purpose of giving Christians a place where they can worship God together, while providing a means of income for church leaders at the same time. In addition to being a place of worship, having a good retirement plan with health benefits and a regular income for most churches, means more than just bringing in a little money here and there..
With the need to keep enough money coming in to cover expenses such as heat bills, building maintenance, church staff payrolls etc., pastors have the ongoing burden of trying to sustain an adequate level of church membership. If they can't keep church membership up, which means less money for the church, they face being transferred to pastor another church within the church district, several miles away. Being transferred of course, means moving the whole family to another living situation, changing schools for the children and so on. With this threat hanging over the heads of pastors, they unfortunately resort to running various programs in their church that are designed to attract new members and create a stimulus for existing members to want to stay. Far from presenting the simplicity of the Gospel, comedy, drama, live contemporary Christian hard rock concerts, and many other ingenious ways to entertain and hold the interests of their congregation are used to remedy the situation. As a result, stretching the spirituality of a church, razor thin, for the sake of bringing in new members along with more money, the original purpose of the church gets put on the back burner somewhere... God tends to gets left out, and so do the ones going to the church service who want to feel close to God...
Requiring members to tithe, and running various programs to keep a church going, changes the original purpose of Christians meeting together. Instead of having the primary duty of focusing on spiritual things, it has become much like any other secular institution that focuses it's attention on bringing in enough money to satisfy those running it. Even though the bible teaches us to live by faith and not by law, the institutional church, since around 500AD, has brought in and misconstrued the old Jewish law of tithing in order for churches and their leaders to have a secured income from its congregation. Obviously, this is not living by faith as the bible teaches. Originally, the tithing law was an Old Covenant ordinance given exclusively to the nation of Israel for the purpose of taking care of the tribe of Levi, back in Old Testament times. In order for the tribe of Levi to fulfill its Mosaic blessing of being the spiritual leaders of the Jewish theocracy, they were expected to remain poor and were not allowed to have land of their own to farm and produce their own food. The tithes they received was in the form of food, or crops. Strangely, the original system of the food tithe has been conveniently misconstrued into becoming a money tithe and has been adopted as an acceptable form of income for those running the institutional church of today. Meanwhile, Christians are in no way connected to the Jewish tribe of Levi and never have been. The church is certainly not a country, or even a state for that matter, that is in a position to require taxation from anyone, especially in the form of money...
The ironic thing is that the Jewish law which has nothing to do with Christianity, along with all the rest of the Mosaic laws and ordinances, have been "nailed to the cross" ever since Christ died at Calvary (Col. 2:14). Christians, therefore, are not to live as the Jews live, under Jewish law. The Old Testament which is the foundation of Hebrew and Jewish religion, (the Torah) is where the unfulfilled Jews, or non-born again Jews beliefs remain. Many Christian principles are brought forth from the Old Testament to the New Testament, but the life that Christians are supposed to live is to be based on Jesus teachings, not Jewish laws. He fulfilled all of the old Jewish laws by making the ultimate sacrifice, the shedding of His blood on the cross...
Christians are living in the new dispensation of Grace where giving is a personal matter between the individual and the Lord, as Paul states in 2 Cor. 9:7. Grace means unmerited favor. In other words, you don't have to do anything, or give anything in order to go to Heaven. All God requires is that you believe that Jesus is Lord and Savior of your life. We don't have to give any amount of money. Christians are supposed to live by faith, not by the law. If we live by the law, then we are saying that Christ died in vain. In the epistle to the Galatians 2:21, Paul states that, "..if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!" Tithing has been obsolete for a long time. The priesthood which was supported by tithes was abolished in AD 70. God's priesthood is now within every believer per 1Pet 2:9-10. Jesus fulfilled the Mosaic laws and ordinances by dying on the cross! Salvation is not about money. I think it's sad that mainstream institutional churches teach that you can't be a member of Gods Kingdom, or a member of a particular church unless you pay your Jewish tithes?? Having to pay ten percent of your gross income to a church isn't much different than paying regular dues to any other secular club or organization in order to maintain your membership. When you read Mathew 6;24, it's impossible to miss the point, that no one can serve two masters. In Jesus' words, "Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money..."
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