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The Journey from Dollars to Uncommon Sense

See Ya!

I had the opportunity to attend a church service on Saturday night with my wife. The sermon topic for the evening was The State of the Church, an issue we both happen to be distinctly interested in. After prayer, a few praise and worship songs and an announcement or two, the senior pastor introduced the distinguished bean counter from the board of elders. This fellow graciously shared that during the fiscal year just ended (6/30/05) the church moved into its first building in seven years and had no mortgage (raucous applause). The second point he shared was that the fiscal budget for the year ending 6/30/05 was $3,100,000 and that the church had given $3,150,000. The budget for the same period in 2004 was $2,000,000.00 (thundering applause). Finally, he said that the church had donated 12% of the giving for the year or some $300,000 to other churches and parachurch ministries (again, joyous applause). He took his seat. The whole place seemed as if it was floating in a sea of helium filled Christians.

The Senior Pastor took the podium again and announced how important it was for the congregation to sign up for the upcoming serve day. This is the day when this church joins other congregations in the area to complete specific community service projects. They even prepared a snazzy little booklet, like a small menu, that described each service opportunity by it’s location within a specific city in the area. The back page was a tear-off where you put down your contact info and your first, second and third choices for serve day. He called the ushers forward and they collected the completed forms. People began squirming in their seats, just a little bit. My wife looked and me and without speaking, she was becoming concerned: Not many of those forms were filled out like the pastor asked…a little helium seeped from our balloons.

The place went dark and a video began on the two screens up in front. The video was a humorous characterization about people coming up to a drive-thru window in their cars and ordering their spiritual sustenance for the day. The lights came up and the Teaching Pastor climbed onto the podium. He delivered a dynamic three-point message about what it means to be the church. He railed against the menu-driven, restaurant mentality that western culture had fallen prey to regarding their practice of being the church. He admonished us to be missional, to serve others. He poured over Acts 2:42, emphasizing what we have in common with one another, and the model Scripture illustrates for us to follow. I almost forgot the third point. He used a line from Rick Warren’s book, it’s not about you. The emphasis was on serving God, bringing Him the glory and downplaying our penchant for personal fulfillment. Anyway, he led us in celebrating communion and took his seat. Clearly, this was a message many had not come to hear tonight, or had heard it five thousand times before.

The Senior Pastor now took to the stage. He shared that the church had grown by some twelve hundred members during the last year. Recently, the church had conducted a survey during its weekend services. The results of that survey had given the church leadership some insights into that growth that he wanted to comment on. The vast majority of the growth over the past year was due to transfer growth from other area churches. He expressed his gratitude for this growth. Second, many respondents said they were attending the church because they were wounded by life, others, and even other Christian ministries they had been involved with. “That’s fine. You’re welcome here,” he said. Finally, he confessed that at one point in his life, he and his wife showed up at church to get their “hit” of the Christian faith experience when they lived in Texas. However, the reason he moved to southern California was to get away from all that “hit of faith” stuff and become a committed follower of Jesus Christ. He said the recent church-wide survey revealed that far too many of the respondents were of this type. He told the congregation that the church needed their seats and invited them to go elsewhere after this evening. In other words, “See ya!” I could now overhear some distinct muttering and posture readjustment from those seated around us. I was afraid to look around. I stared straight ahead. So did the people right in front of us (you wouldn’t want your body language to telegraph to anybody else what you really thought at a moment like this). I suppressed the distinct urge that had been building in my bladder over the last thirty minutes to visit the Men’s room. Somehow I was now delighted to stay seated. All the lift in my balloon was gone.

He invited the band to the stage and we closed with a series of magnificent worship songs. My wife and I took a direct route to our car, bypassing the Men’s room like it was an open door to the embalming room in a mortuary. I felt like I was departing the final graveside ceremony at the end of a funeral for somebody your spouse barely knew, you never met, and were missing an important playoff game on the tube.

If “Statistics represent faces with the tears wiped off,”[i] why were we crying when we left this place? Let me explain.

A Hill of Beans

In his most recent book, George Barna writes, “Churches, and by extension, the people associated with them – continue to evaluate the success or failure of a congregation and of individual lives according to factors that do not do justice to the life, death, resurrection and teachings of Jesus Christ. Churches measure attendance, donations, numbers of staff, numbers of programs and square footage as their primary indicators of spiritual health and growth. Jesus did not die on the cross for such incidental outcomes. Individual believers, taking their cues from their church, measure their spiritual vitality on the basis of the frequency of their church attendance, whether they donate money to ministry, and their general sense of personal goodness on a day-to-day basis. Again, such measures insult Christ.” [ii]

Notice what wasn’t shared with the congregation in the church service we attended. There was nothing shared about the people who began their personal journey of discipleship with Jesus as their Lord and Savior, behavioral change in existing disciples in the church, indicators of personal spiritual health and growth, compassionate care of the poor, the elderly, the homeless, the hungry, helpless and the disabled, advocacy for the oppressed and actions taken to rectify existing social injustice.

The Senior Pastor also skipped over the insidious disease of transfer growth that has infected this church. This is typically not a subject that Harry and Sally churchgoer are familiar with (he certainly did not spend even a split-second informing them about it either). Let’s get honest. “Growth for the sake of growth is wrong. How a church grows matters—especially when basic biblical principles are being compromised to achieve success.”[iii] One author points out that “No longer are we seeking the lost, unsaved people nor are we laboring in the harvest; instead we are raiding one another’s churches.”[iv]

Recently, the Pope said “that in contrast to the developing world, where there is a “springtime of faith,” the West was “a world that is tired of its own culture, a world that has arrived at a time in which there’s no more evidence of the need for God, much less Christ, and in which it seems that man alone can make himself. This is certainly a suffering linked, I’d say, to our time, in which generally one sees that the great churches appear to be dying,” he said, pointing toward Australia, Europe and the United States.”[v]

How can you fault the Pope for his comments when research reports reveal that “It is quite astounding that although Protestant and Catholic churches have raised – and spent – close to one trillion dollars on domestic ministry during the past two decades, there has been no measurable increase in one of the expressed purposes of the church: to lead people to Christ and have them commit their lives to Him.”[vi]

Barna goes on to characterize exactly what my wife and I witnessed at this particular church, and provides further insight into the Pope’s comments stating, “The axiom you get what you measure is certainly true for the Christian body in the U.S. Until we start to think about, pursue, and measure genuine spiritual transformation in individual lives, we will continue to get what we’re getting, as unsatisfying as that is, for years to come.” [vii] I hope The Barna Group leads the way by changing their annual surveys of Christianity in the U.S. in 2006 by developing and using meaningful, empirical measures of genuine spiritual transformation in their work, and making the same available to churches and disciples of Christ. That’d be putting your money where your mouth is now wouldn’t it.

It’s time that the body of Christ recognize the fact that the church is dying in the West because causes have effects. As one author points out, “Causes have effects, and if we lie to ourselves and to others, then we cannot expect to find truth and reality whenever we happen to want them. If we have chosen the way of falsity we must not be surprised that truth eludes us when we finally come to need it!”[viii]

Hello…Christendom? You get what you measure. Causes have effects. “We will have to give up those smoke-screen issues that are great for debating but just don’t amount to a hill of beans for eternity.”[ix] Let’s consider budgets that amount to more than a hill of beans.

Beyond Bean-Based Budgeting

As I listen to the people around me today, I hear them utter phrases like “I can’t seem to find the time, maybe next year, I don’t know where the time went, maybe next time around, there’s just not enough hours in the day,” etc. If it is true that time is truly our most precious asset today in the West, isn’t our time the first fruits that we should be dedicating to Him? Shouldn’t time be the basis for our tithing and our budgets? Perhaps we should consider moving from budgeting based upon tithing dollars to budgets based upon tithing our hearts…our time. I’ll call it timething.

Here’s how it works. Since time is our most precious asset in the West, it is distinctly our first fruits. Imagine what impact Christendom could have on the communities within which our churches reside, if we moved from tithing dollars to tithing our time. Let’s look at an example.

The church I am referring to in this article resides in Orange County, CA.[x] This county has a population of almost 3 million residents. It is the second most populous county in California and fifth in the U.S. There are 935,000 households in the county. The median household income is $58,000. 10% of the population and 7% of households live below the poverty line. 30% of the population is between the ages of 25 and 64. ( To be conservative, let’s say, a million adults ).

According to a recent county needs assessment, there are approximately 19,000 homeless in Orange County on any given night. According to the study, 14,000 are classified as homeless families with children, with 8,600 of these being homeless children. There are approximately 50 temporary shelters providing 2,197 beds for the homeless on any given night. Translation: There are about 17,000 men, women and children without a roof over their heads every night in one of the most affluent counties in the country.

There are hundreds of churches in Orange County, the vast majority of the Christian faith. For the sake of this example, let’s assume that the national statistics hold true in this county.[xi] Let’s say 80% of the one million adults ( ages 25-64 ) in this county profess to be Christians.[xii] That’s 800,000 people. Let’s say 45% attend church services each weekend.[xiii] Let’s be conservative and say 400,000 folks. Since about 4% of Christians in the U.S. are said to actually tithe their income,[xiv] the tithe from this county is around $92,800,000 per annum (4% of 400,000 =16,000 x $5,800 (10% of the median household income of $58,000). Hmmm…let me see, 400,000 Christians with room on their couches for 17,000 homeless folks? What if this county’s Christian community was timething one hour of shelter in their own homes to the homeless for every dollar tithed? That would be 227 days (92,800,000 x 1)/24/17,000) for each homeless person in this particular county that this Christian community could easily afford to provide for in their midst. Clearly, there’s no shortage of resources for the homeless in this county. Instead of government entities opening up their wallets, the Christian community needs to open up their hearts. Stick that in your church’s strategic plan for 2005/2006.

Imagine that the pastors of the Christian churches in Orange County get together and decide the following: We’re going to eradicate the suffering of those presently homeless in our county. They unanimously agree (with a few holdouts) to make the following announcement in their pulpits the following week: “For the next 12 months, we, the Church of Christ in Orange County are going to eradicate homelessness ( raucous applause ). We are joining with every other church in this county to do this (thundering applause and a few Amen’s roar through the county’s sanctuaries). Effective today, we don’t want your money (Three guys in each congregation leap to their feet, shouting and clapping wildly, embarrassing their spouses seated beside them). The future of our faith requires your hearts. The future is now.” (The ushers come forward. A list of every homeless shelter and rescue mission is handed out to the congregation, with contact names, addresses and directions).

“For the next three months, we will have worship services here as usual. We are going to trust God for our financial sustenance in this time. Understand that this place is not where God’s work is done. It’s out there. However, we expect you to prayerfully consider this courageous call to move with Christ out into our community. You are expected to visit these homeless shelters. God will choose for each household a homeless man, woman, child or family that you will take in and care for. Some of you will work together to share the opportunity to care for somebody else with another household in this congregation. Don’t expect to fix anybody. It’s likely these folks are actually angels in human form. Expect to be blessed by them. Expect to be uncomfortable about this and inconvenienced by it. Love them as Christ loves you. Share all that you have with them. Assist them in every way to get back on their feet and become self-sustaining again. You must approach this matter with the heart of Christ. Go forth.”

Could this spell economic chaos for mainstream churches, particularly in the West? Maybe. (They’re dying according to the Pope anyway). Am I suggesting an essential change in our thinking about worship, church, discipleship and service? Absolutely! Budgeting consistent with you get what you measure? You betcha.

Let’s embrace some new thinking about doing church and be the church… Something beyond bean-based budgeting.

Summary and Sample Letter to Your Pastor

I’m worried. The momentum of the dying institutionalized church in the West continues to erect even new churches on foundations that have been clearly yellow-tagged as unsafe for occupancy. Why do we continue to organize, structure and build on clearly marked slide areas? “We should pray and worry earnestly whether we are on God’s side.”[xv]

It’s time to wake up. The people on the podium and the payroll at our churches in the West are not the folks who are solely responsible for the design, structure and character of His church. As Eddie Gibbs writes, “Those who shoulder the responsibility for the functioning and survival of hierarchies and local churches tend to be too preoccupied in bailing out the boat to be setting a new course.”[xvi] It’s time for the proletariat in the pew who have blisters on their butts and the overflowing love of Christ in their hearts to stand up and point out a better way. “The laity need to rise up and rescue the church. For it is the church’s future that is at stake here, not just the freedom of the laity. This is not about laity versus church leadership, and still less about laity versus clergy. We all live together in a faith community that is dysfunctional in some important respects and needs significant structural change. These kinds of changes come best from below, from those who are least invested in the maintenance of the present structure.”[xvii]

Innovation, change and a redirection of the present momentum that even the Pope has recognized, are not likely to come from those pontificating on the podium each week. It’s time to stand up, speak up and offer ideas, suggestions, alternatives…to create a mechanism and expectation for dialogue rather than suffer through more of the same, best thinking that reflects the cemetery we are bound for. As one author succinctly points out, “Funny, the seven last words of a dying church — “We’ve never done it that way before” — may well end up on the tombstone of the church growth movement and the evangelical community if we do not adopt new standards for seeking growth. It is time to begin. Growing into a community of depth and character is the challenge facing the church of the new millennium.”[xviii]

This article is not about “how to get the laity involved in the ministry of the church, but how to get the church involved in the ministry of the laity.”[xix] How’s that going to happen? Notice that the only difference between the spelling of tithing and timething is ‘me.’ If we continue to give our churches our money as our tithe, the Church in the West will continue to be destinations where church is done. If we change our first fruits to our time, only heaven knows what God might do with a groundswell of willing hearts.

As we approach September, the month that is typically regarded as the beginning of the ministry year, after you have prayerfully considered the elements of this article, your first step is to make your Pastor aware of your decision. Perhaps the following example that my wife and I have developed will work for you:

Dear Pastor______:

I have been prayerfully considering my walk with Christ and the plight of this, His Church. I have come to understand that Jesus wants more of me, not just my money. I want more of Him too. Instead of tithing dollars to our church beginning right now, I am going to tithe my time. Don’t get me wrong. I am fully prepared to share my financial resources with those who I will encounter on this journey, Jesus will let me know when that’s appropriate, I’m quite confident of that.

Effective immediately, I am going to spend more time in prayer, read more of God’s word, ask God to lead me to a place in our community where I can help others who are helpless, homeless, hungry, lonely, disabled, oppressed, convalescing, shut-ins and marginalized. Yes, I want to make sure that my time is spent outside of our existing church programs. For every dollar I gave to our church last year, I’m going to match that this next year with one hour of my time. The way God works, I’ll probably end up spending a lot more time than that. That’s O.K. I’m prepared to do whatever is necessary. I’ll still attend worship services at our church, that’s important. I’m not going to do this alone. I am convinced that there are millions of Christians out there who are waiting for permission to do the same. I’m going to bring my gifts to the party. I fully expect to be joined/join kindred spirits who God will provide. I am going to be deliberate about seeking these opportunities. I am going to do the footwork.

You, as my Pastor, can be immensely helpful in this process. Perhaps you have heard of others in our congregation who are presently led as I am. Please provide us with our respective contact information so we can get together, get to know one another and move out into our community. We’re going to need resources from the Church. Expect me to call upon you to assist us with the resources we require. It will be great if you could communicate these needs to the entire church so that others have the opportunity to get involved.

I will provide you with a quarterly update on my journey. I expect that it’s going to be uncomfortable, inconvenient and new for me. It might be for you as well. I’m sure God will teach us how to move through this important transition together. I’d like to get together with you at the end of the next 12 months to discuss how God has changed me. Please pray for me, and those who I will encounter on this journey. I’m excited about this. I hope you are too. Jesus needs me…out there. I’m confident you understand that too.

Yours in Christ,

John/Sally

P.S. It’s not about you Pastor. It’s a timething. It may be a key on our journey from dollars to uncommon sense. To Him be the glory!

NOTES

[v] http://www.bergen.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkyNiZmZ2JlbDdmN3ZxZWVFRXl5NjczMzI5OSZ5cmlyeTdmNzE3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTI=

[vi] Barna, George The State of the Church: 2002, Published by Issachar Resources, a division of Barna Research Group, Ltd., 5528 Everglades Street Ventura, CA 93003 Copyright © 2002 by George Barna p. 63.

[ix] Burchett, Dave When Bad Christians Happen To Good People – Where We Have Failed Each Other And How To Reverse The Damage, Waterbrook Press, A Division of RandomHouse, Inc. Colorado Springs, CO., Ó Copyright 2002 by Dave Burchett, P. 7.

[x] All information for this paragraph comes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_County,_CA

Bill Dahl

From Tithing to Timething

See Ya!

Summary and Sample Letter to Your Pastor

NOTES

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