Finances Pt 2: The Freedom To Give

But is giving to others our first priority? Where do we start? What is most important? I want to provide a useful framework for thinking about finances. I want to give you options about how to plan your finances. I want to give you tools that will put your finances right where they ought to be…in the background. Relationships are what is really important not money. However, can we really give our best to relationships if we have underlying concerns about a secure financial future?

Where do we start? How about with the first ten percent? “Hey,” you say, “I’m in debt up to my eyeballs. Is giving ten percent to a church really the smartest thing I should do.” My answer is…well I don’t know, but it’s a place to start. If you are under the pretense that your faith is the most important thing in your life starting with the 10% only makes sense. I believe I heard it from talk show host Dave Ramsey that “if you can’t live on 90% then you can’t live on 100%!” If you aren’t being responsible enough to kick out 10% of your spending you are doing something wrong (or maybe you don’t have any income at all—in which case 10% of nothing is well…nothing).

Let me share with you something about giving that ten percent that most pastors won’t like and a lot of people won’t agree with. The 10% goes to the church right? Does it have to be the local church? The church isn’t just the building down the road where your name is on the role. The Church is the worldwide family of God. Now I do think we need to support the local church, but can’t we support other things we feel strongly about as well?

I’ve got a friend who is a Catholic priest and he encourages the members of his congregation to give 10%. 5% to his local parish and the other 5% to charity (I think he mainly means Catholic Charities, but I’m stretching his advice to cover a lot of other things here). Let me give you an example. My wife is from Romania.

On a trip back to visit her family we went to the small village that her father was from. On our way to her grandmother’s house and the local church, which was just next door, we passed people on foot, horse drawn buggies, and a few really, really old Romanian cars. The church was literally falling apart. It was made at least in part with mud bricks…which were disintegrating. The floor was horribly uneven. The back part of the church which wasn’t used anymore had a hole in the roof you could throw a basketball through.

Luckily, the congregation was well on the way to building a new facility. They had been working on it for several years and the walls and roof were in place. The inside of the structure still had a lot of work to be done. There’s one note of explanation I should give you here. Europeans quite often don’t finance homes or buildings. They build with what money they have and then wait till they have more. It can take a decade to build a home. The upside is that when it is built, they are not straddled with mortgage payments for the next 20 years.

So this church was being built and one of the local Baptist Association officials had come over to America several times to raise funds. Several churches had made pledges…and never delivered! Don’t ya want to just find the people who go to a church like that and smack ‘em?! Telling these Romanians from a little village where a lot of them don’t have cars, paved roads, or even plumbing that they will help them build a church…and then not sending the dough!!

Soooo…my wife and I took our 5% and sent them the money for about a year. We had some money saved up when we were there on our first trip. We gave it to this aforementioned Baptist official (who happens to be Marta’s uncle) and he just about stroked out. Over the course of the year they were pretty much able to finish the church and when they did they sent us a picture of the inside of the church with a packed house.

Sometimes, giving to your local church doesn’t inspire a person like giving to something else. Paying for the lights and new carpet and the pastor’s salary isn’t sexy. Giving that five percent to the church in Romania actually kind of kept us on track for giving the other five percent to our local church. I really think it’s important to support your local church. Any organization we can be part of has dues. A bicycle club, Civitan, Optimist Club, Toastmasters; they all have dues to be paid. A church is pretty much the only thing going that you can be a part of week after week and never fork over a dime. Unfortunately, the reality is most people don’t.

At most churches the bulk of the giving is done by the older members. Why? Their houses are paid for, their kids are out of school, and their retirement fund is full so now they are supporting your cheap ass. Why don’t you start giving so those old folks can go on a vacation or something?

(The front of the old church is the only part remaining at this point. The rear of the church was torn down as a house was being built behind it. The new church will stand many years of the harsh Romanian winters while keeping the members warm!)