In thinking about questions to ask the Pastor and a deacon of a church that is prayerfully considering me to be their Youth Pastor, I was writing down and coming up with a list of questions. Obviously finances were among those questions.
Money is always a difficult one for me to ask about. While I don't want to appear greedy, I would rather not just barely make end meet and have no room for savings or when things like car repairs, beyond my ability, happen. I think it is wrong of ANY church that has the ability to adequately to more than adequately support their Pastor(s) and families, to not do so. This of course stems from the understanding and heeding the conviction of the tithe. And that goes back to the foundation of the family and the individual's relationship with Christ. There are something's in Scripture we are simply to obey and just do. Tithe is one of those things. I have never missed the money that I have given to the church or to someone in need when it was God clearly leading me to give/share. Our God owns everything already, so to say that we simply can't afford to give……..how can we afford NOT to give.
God charged the church with caring for each other. When the widow gave her 2 mites, it was just a few pennies worth in today's terms, but it was all she had and she gave it fully trusting God to take care of her needs because she simply obeyed Him. I have no doubt that someone else saw that widow's actions and reached out to her in ways that she never thought of. Perhaps supplying her food and drink for the week when she was used to having enough for just a day at a time. Perhaps someone supplying her food for just that day instead of her working for it or figuring out where it was coming from, a day off, so to speak. Perhaps paying a bill for her and she hadn't even asked for help. Perhaps even cleaning her house or offering another service to help her out. This is how the body of Christ is supposed to work. There should not be a single Pastor (senior, youth, assistant, worship, children's, etc) that has to scrape by week to week.
But as stated earlier, this goes back to the family and individual conviction and relationship and understanding of what Christ says in His Word. When someone understands the fact that they should be tithing, if they do not simply obey, they are in the wrong and will misunderstand many other teachings in the Word of God. Of course this does not just apply to tithing, but to any of the ordinances of the Word of God. The faith of a child is what is needed here. We are to simply obey what we learn. I am sick and tired of hearing about how God says to take care of your family first and if you don't have the money to tithe because you know you have to buy food for your family instead, you feed your family instead. God understands and it's the heart that matters. Here's a big word line for ya….the theme God set in the Deuteronomic code was obedience brings blessings and disobedience brings cursings. You do the math. Today we can call that obedience brings blessings and provisions and disobedience brings cursings and chastisement. You do the math.
So many people with the above mentioned thinking and teaching are missing out on seeing how the body of Christ works and seeing the blessing of God in their lives. This is not to say God is ignoring them. God forbid that statement. Because there are other areas in which they are obeying Him. But it begs the question, why would you settle for only a little of God's blessing when obedience in every area of His Word in your life will bring about more of His blessing in your life? We just can't take this to extremes. If someone takes the verse "He went and hanged himself" and then reads the verse "Go do likewise", and applies simple obedience…….clearly there is a misreading and misunderstanding.
Of course there is a little more to this, so what have you to add??
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