What if Church was free?

What if church was free? What if you did not have to pay to be a part of a church? What if you got together with your church and no one passed an offering bag? What would people think? Would the church end up folding up and closing down?

These are all questions that have been bowling around in my head—and by the end of this you may think that it must have knocked a few pins down for sure. But you may not; you may agree with me.

Lets start with the current situation of church. In the current model there is a central organization that we call “the church” or whatever name happens to be on the building. This organization has some sort of leadership that ranges from an extensive paid staff all the way down to volunteers who give of their time to make sure the church functions smoothly. The leadership of the church may be elected, hired, or appointed by the existing leadership. These leaders make all the decision for the church (or at least oversee the decisions made by others) whether spiritual or business in nature. They also oversee the handling of the monies that the church collects.

 

Now, most churches are considered non-profit organizations. This means that they do not collect funds for the purpose of making a profit. The reason churches are able to receive this 501(c) (3) status is because the IRS recognizes churches as a religious organization. Also churches are considered charitable and they receive the majority of their income through charitable donations.

What do they do with this money? According to a study done by Evangelical Christian Credit Union, they spend most of it on themselves. This study showed that 82% of the money collected is spent on overhead costs (personnel, buildings, and administrative). The highest category that takes up most of this cost is personnel at 58% on average. That means that of the 82% of money a church spends on itself 58% is spent on staff. The remaining 28% was allocated for programs and “other” expenses.

Here is the part that staggers me. On average, the “Evangelism/Outreach Efforts/Events” only used up 3.4% of church budgets. If you think that’s bad look at the “International Benevolence” or giving to overseas missions. That sits at 1.4%. If you separate out “Local/National Benevolence” it is .8%! This translates to only 5.6% of money a church collects goes to benevolence, missions or evangelism. The entire rest of the budget 94.4% is spent on—you guessed it—themselves.

If that were any other non-profit organization, I bet people would stop giving to it. But we cannot suggest that people stop giving to their churches. That would go against dogmas that many Christians hold to strongly. The first of which is the tithe. That means that if you are a Christian and you attend church regularly, then you must give at least ten percent of your earning to the church (the Bible is unclear as to whether or not that 10% is on pre-tax or take-home pay).

According to the Bible, the tithe was laid out in the Levitical Law (Lev. 27:30). Perhaps the most common scripture used for the exacting of tithe is Malachi 3:8-10,

“Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me. “But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’ “In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.”

This verse is used to promote that you will receive a blessing from God if you give money to your local church.

As we know, there have been many changes from the Levitical Law until now. According to Romans 6:15 we are not under the law but under grace. Also, Galatians 5:18 tells us that we are not under the law. Romans 7:6 says we have been released from the Law.

So, what am I saying? I am not saying that asking someone to tithe goes against scripture. I am not saying that you will not receive a blessing from God is you give money to a church. I am saying that a tithe is not required to be a Christian.

I can think of one time Jesus talked about tithing and it was in Matthew 23:23, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices--mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law--justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.”

Jesus says earlier in his ministry that our righteousness ought to exceed that of the Pharisees (Mat. 5:20). If it doesn’t we will “certainly not enter the kingdom of God.” So if a Pharisee tithes so scrutinizingly, how should we give?

We should give freely to anyone who asks and not turn anyone down who wants to borrow from us according to Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. We also are called to give up everything for the sake of following Jesus (Luke 14:33).

According to the Parable of the talents we see that we need to be wise steward of what God has given to us. The point of that parable is often missed. We often think that what it means is that we need to handle our money in such a way as to increase it so that we can receive a blessing from God when He returns. Here is one point that we miss when we think that way. When the master comes back in the story he asks for the talents back from his stewards. Looking at that in today’s light we can see that God has already asked us for our money. Not 10% of it, ALL of it.

Now, that does not mean that we all have to give all of our money to the local church, but that does bring up an interesting point. Is giving money to the church equal to giving it to God? I think it can be in some cases, but mostly, no.

Jesus talks about ways to “do” things for him. In Matthew 25:40 he says, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” So we could be giving to “the least of these” by giving to the church if the church then takes the money we gave to them and uses it on “the least of these.” So, according to the statistics above, when we give to the church we are giving to God with about 5.6% of our ten percent. The other half of our giving to the church is just that—giving to the church.

I had an interesting conversation with the Sr. Pastor at a church where I was serving as the youth minister. He said, “We have a relatively nice service each Sunday and a few classes that we can choose to go to or to skip. We have a nice facility that we can enjoy when we decide to go to church. The toilets are cleaned regularly and the coffee is free. We also have a decent program for our kids so we can get a break from them a couple times a week and feel comfortable not paying the sitter for a change. Yes, we have all this for our 300 regular attenders, all for the low, low price of $500,000 a year.”

Okay, that was not an exact quote, but it was pretty close. And it was true. We spent a lot of money on ourselves. That reminds me of one more thing he told me. He said, “Do you want to know what your priorities are? Open your checkbook and you will find out. Open your calendar and you will find out.” In other words, what you spend most of your time and money on is your priority.

So, what if a church didn’t collect money? Who would it hurt? Mostly, it would only hurt the church. Another friend of mine asked the challenging question, “If your church suddenly closed its doors and ceased to exist, whom would it affect? If it wouldn’t affect anyone outside the church then you are not doing your job as a church.

Then what should we do? How about act like we are a regular non-profit organization. What do you think of when you think non-profit? I think, activist, radical, on the cutting edge. I think Compassion International. I think Red Cross, World vision (16%, 14%, 8% overhead costs respectively).  I think about a group who cares so much about a particular cause that they are willing to not only support it themselves, but shamelessly ask others to support it too. And that money does not go back into its own organization, it actually goes to the cause for which they are so passionately advocating.

Can church do that? Imagine what a church of 300 regular weekly attenders could do in an average community with a few hundred thousand dollars extra each year! But, that would mean they might have to do something more than dropping a check in the plate whilst sipping on their coffee or hot chocolate.

I am not trying to be an idealist, socialist, or any kind of beat-up-the-church-hippy-hipster-trend-setting-cool-christian who is coming up with the latest greatest thing that will attract more people to the church. In fact I will probably set people off with this idea. I am sure there are not as many still reading this as who started. I know this is radical and it goes against so much that we know, but it is what Jesus asked us to do when we decided to follow him—give up everything we have (Luke 14:33).

No, I don’t think we have to sell all our possessions and give everything we have to poor people and live a destitute life and grow a big beard (I cannot grow a beard anyway, so it’s a good thing that’s not on the list).

Conclusion: If a church did not “charge” its members to come to their weekly meetings, what would happen? I think that a church could thrive. I think that God would open the floodgates of heaven and pour out a blessing so huge that we would not even be able to old it. I think that we would no longer have to rely on our own understanding of money, but rely on God. I think that we could realize that God does not need our money, just our willingness to serve. God’s church will go on until the end of time, with or without your money. The church does not need it to survive or to serve.

Instead of collecting money a church could collect ideas of where its members could use their money to serve others. Instead of collecting tithes a church could encourage its members to give to local charities that are active helping the least of these. Instead of collecting money a church could collect people who need to be served and ask its members to serve them. Instead of collecting money a church could collect people who are lost and need the saving grace of God and connect them to people in its membership who can tell them about that grace. Instead of collecting money a church could __________ (You fill in the blank).

I know this is unrealistic and this is not a change that will take place in “church” as we know it, but think about the possibilities. Think about the differences we could make in our communities if we had that much capital to work with. Come to think of it, what I just described is pretty close to what the church looked like in Acts.

Just a thought.