We don’t pass the plate around at Church anymore… We haven’t since COVID actually. I don’t know that we’ll ever go back. But I think we’re missing out on something important.
Hearing some friends come back from Tanzania and talk about people giving chickens and produce to be auctioned off because they didn’t have cash to give, made me think about this a bit.
Our goal as a Church is to help people find Life in Christ. The gospel is free, no strings attached. Everyone who turns to trust in Jesus will be saved. We don’t have to be good enough, well enough behaved, religious enough and we certainly don’t have to give enough dollars in order to be saved.
We operate on the principle of anonymity. I don’t know who gives what and that helps me love everyone and treat everyone just the same. The good thing about hardly ever talking about money is that no-one can accuse us of just wanting their cash.
But when giving is invisible then we miss out on being encouraged by the generosity of others. We miss out on the shared tangible experience and modelling of giving. We miss that moment in Church of collecting people’s giving and then praying a prayer of thanksgiving to God for it. It’s similar to the way never handling cash makes it tricky to manage how much you have and how much is left in your wallet.
Of course, the Church still has plenty of bills to pay too. In case you were wondering there is no money from the government*. There is no magic funding from ‘central office’. All the expenses of our Church are funded by the generosity of our members. And we as a Church seek to be generous too: generous to the link missionaries we support; generous to our community by providing services to them like community pantry and events like Carols.
So maybe we should talk about money a bit more often, so that we might all have the opportunity to learn to be generous with all that God has given us. What do you think?
Yours in Him,
Ben
*The government does provide significant tax breaks for Churches, in recognition of the public good Churches bring to our society.
NB: Our Church is in a healthy financial situation thanks to the generosity of our members, this is not an appeal – just a genuine reflection on the invisibility of generosity in our Church and what we might be missing.
NB2: My chicken (pictured) is not for sale.
