- Church bills needs to be paid
Why it’s illogical: My mortgage and bills pays for a warm place roof over my families head. Why should church bills take precedence to anyone’s personal bills when there’s no one living, eating, or sleeping in a sanctuary? Foreclosures have been a hot topic lately. If we are called to bail out the Church at times, where is the reciprocity in bailing out individuals who cannot pay their mortgage due to illness, or unemployment? If a church building were to be foreclosed, would anyone be without a roof over their head? Who would be without a bed? Obviously, no one. If anyone should be seeking donations for a payment on mortgages, it should be those who have a need to keep a roof over their children’s head, and a bed to sleep in. - Let’s invest in the next generation
Why it’s illogical: It’s hard enough to provide a future for my children, let alone someone else’s. One of my goals is to build up a savings account for my children. This is a challenging discipline to perform. It’s hard enough to have a savings account of my own, let alone for my children also. 2 Corinthians 12:14 states, “for the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children”. As a clear directive in the New Testament, this should be the goal of every parent.I’m aware that the Church is expressing interest in creating programs, buildings, and other resources that can be accessible for future generations, but in all honesty, i would bet the statistics prove your children will not be attending your church as adults anyway. I would also venture to guess that statistics prove the average lifespan of a church only lasts one generation also. - We are doing the work of God
Why it’s illogical: Is everyone else doing the work of the devil? In a church service I just attended recently, they were going over the yearly budget. The total budget was around 3 million, and within that budget included a tithe towards outside missions. Although i applaud that the budget for outside missions was beyond the world-wide average of 3%; it still is disturbing to me that we can consume 90% of donations for internal operations, and because we donate a meager 10%, we are doing God’s work. - We need better programs
Why it’s illogical: I need to pay for better schooling for my children.
Hands down, schooling is the most important decision to make for any parent. I had a conversation with a personal tutor one time who taught children of all diversities – smart, dumb, young & old, rich & poor. There is one thing that she said that will stick with me for a long time. It was that she would scrub toilets for the rest of her life, night and day, to make sure that her children attend a private school. This came from a tutor who handled many children that attended Grade “A” government schools.
Are There Logical Reasons to Give?
When I was a kid, we would drive by the McDonalds almost every day. Back in the day, they used to have signs that they could change. What most of them would says is something like, “over 1 billion burgers sold”. And the number would change every so often. I remember eagerly anticipating the sign to change from 9 billion to 10 billion, or whatever the number was. It was a feeling of celebration and amazement as I tried to picture a crowd of that many people or a room with that many burgers. For McDonald’s it was a way we could measure their success. Unfortunately for the Church, there’s no sign outside that says, “over 1 billion lives touched”.
Finding logical reasons to give sometimes can be tough because i relate it to a situation on whether a fat man should skip a meal. The Church is bloated. We have tons of money. Don’t think so? Well, read the giving statistics. The Church rakes over 100 billion a year. 370 Billion is given towards ‘Christian’ causes world wide each year. According to some estimates, it would take 30 billion/year to solve world hunger and an additional 10 billion to provide clean drinking water. Suddenly 100 billion and 370 billion seem like a lot of money if that’s all we need to solve the extreme goal of world wide hunger and thirst.
I’m not trying to get you to stop giving. I want you to give as much as you can for the reasons that God has for you, not some fabricated excuse made out of emergency. Most of us go to local fellowships that have big budgets, but can we really justify not giving? I don’t think we can make the fat man skip a meal, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about that. It’s just too bad there is no way we could see a sign outside of every Church’s door that said “over 100 billion spent and over __ lives changed”. Would we be amazed or would we be disappointed, and would we eagerly anticipate seeing it, or would we pretend the sign doesn’t exist?
What do you say? Do you struggle for reasons to give to your Church? Speak below.