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Tactics Used to Convince You to Tithe

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Need more tithers at your church? Here are some methods you can use to get more people to tithe.

1. Tithing chants

Kenneth Copeland had this brainwashing method to have the Church chant a tithing creed. here it is below

“The tithe guarantees financial favor.
“The tithe guarantees your covenant partnership with God.
“The tithe is proof of honor.
“The tithe is proof of obedience.
“The tithe silences the devourer in your life.
“The tithe guarantees consistent harvest on your seed.
“The tithe opens the windows of heaven …”

I want you to stare at the spiraling image and repeat this 50 times every day before you go to bed

“We are a cult and Kenneth Copeland is our leader”
“We are a cult and Kenneth Copeland is our leader”
“We are a cult and Kenneth Copeland is our leader”

2. Tithing pledge cards

hitlerI’ve been in a church where I have seen two pledging materials in the pocket of the seat in front of me. One pledge was on an offering envelope. Another pledge was on a commitment card. Was there a bible or a bulletin? No, just pledge cards, and two of them nonetheless as if one pledge card wasn’t enough.

I’m not counting the bulletin that was handed out when you came in the front door, because that was also asking you to commit money to the building fund as well.

I really don’t have anything against making pledges. Many times pledges are committed at an emotional time in one’s life. We need to decipher if it’s the Holy Spirit convincing us, or if our emotions are clouding our judgment.

I’m not a fan of pep rallies in churches that are focused on building campaigns. Look around you at your church’s next pep rally for the building project. See how big people’s eyes get when they show the 3-D models of  the new facility. The big eyes . . . um yeah. . . classic sign of the materialism pitfall. Last i checked, eyes only get that big when we see what we’re getting out of this deal, and not when our money is going to the mission center in downtown.

3. Tithing Challenge

**FINE PRINT
This is just some fine print that will tell you that you have done a very bad thing whenever you don’t read this. Just to let you know we are fooling you by making this very very small. Don’t worry your grandma can read this. All she needs is a big magnifying glass. If you were smart you would realize that the larger the print the least important it is. The smaller print is what’s important.

This is acclaimed as a “Win-Win” situation for both the giver and the receiver. Here’s the deal with this. Usually, you commit to giving the tithe over a 3-month period of time. If by the end of that period, you cannot pay your bills or if tithing has brought you debt, then the church will refund your tithe back to you.

That seems fair until you ask for the money back from the church. At that time they will want to probe into your finances and tell you how you spent too much money on going out to eat or buying Starbucks. That’s when you realized that the small print at the bottom of the tithing challenge was actually important. Silly us, we thought it was the large print that was actually the most important. (sigh)

Another thing the church is relying on are those who actually have enough intestinal fortitude to ask for your money back. I mean come on. Who is gonna walk into a church and ask for their money back? It’s almost like stealing candy from a baby. Seriously, could you imagine the guilt trip for taking from a church? Not only that, what about the embarrassment or humiliation of having to ask for your money back? I mean is the Church like a Walmart? I doubt you’ll have long lines in the return aisle.

4. Tithing Testimonies

Harmless right? Not if the testimonies are one-sided or in a twisted perspective. If you believe that your situation will play out just like the testimony you heard, then I feel bad for you.  Not that everyone believes their own storyline will turn out exactly the way the other people have, but they do believe the results, in the end, will be the same.

For every good tithing testimony you hear, you can easily find a bad one. If you can’t seem to find a negative tithing testimony, then you probably have gotten used to those rose-colored glasses you have on.

Look, i don’t want to just slam testimonies. I guess they have their place.

My Tithing Testimony

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I haven’t done so officially yet, but I was just thinking the other day about writing a testimony about how i came to my conclusion about tithing. I guess what prompted this was when I had mentioned to someone that i used to tithe. They asked me what reasons did I switch my views on tithing and if it had anything to do with the abuse of money in the church. Typically people ask questions like that because they wanted to see if my tithing stand was born out of ill conceit. Most people think that if your opposition sprouted from rebellion then they think that your argument is not legitimate. I’m sure there are many people out there today that believe in Spirit-led giving because they questioned abuse in the church. I’m sure some of them are still rebellious and bitter about it. But let’s not throw out the truths that we find even though they are found in the doubting moments of the church.

My tithing testimony doesn’t include a rebellious foundation. I grew up in a church that was very good with money. We had no debt, and we had great outreach. We didn’t have the bells and whistles, like coffee shops and stage lighting like most seeker-sensitive churches, but we still had more than what we needed. I remember the church going into debt only once because the school needed classrooms. It was a facility that cost only 1 million dollars and was well worth the cost for the students of a complete high school and church to constantly use.

So anyways back to my testimony, I got my first job at 16 at an ice cream shop. My very first paycheck I tithed on. I tithed from then all the way through the end of college. I didn’t question it. My parents had tithed all their lives and so I would as well. I really didn’t even know what verses that tithing was commanded from, but I tithed anyways. I am glad that I gave all that money, and there are no regrets there. The only thing I regret to tell you about my tithing testimony is that I was living by a law and I didn’t know why. It was automatic.

There’s been some controversy today about ATM tithing and automated debits for your offering. People are afraid that since the money is not physically placed in an offering plate that we will be out of tune with the heart of giving. But with how tithing is automated today, what difference does it make if you blindly press a button on the internet, or you just blindly sign a check? If there is no spiritual interaction involved it doesn’t matter if you have automatic withdrawals or you place cold hard cash in a gold offering plate as it passes by.

Let me tell you that one of the hardest things for me was to tithe my income when I was paying my way through college. Most people have it harder than I did, but I paid for my own gas, insurance, vehicle, entertainment, tuition, and books. My parents gave me a place to stay and eat for free, but they didn’t give me anything extra. Over one summer i had three jobs and was working about 70 hours a week. Regardless of how hard I worked I still had to take out some loans. Luckily it was only about 1 year’s worth of school debt

I mentioned that my parents had tithed all their lives, but let me just reassure you that God didn’t throw money out of the sky at our family. We probably just barely made it. I could honestly tell you that my parents probably had more credit cards than I actually get in offers in a year. They were extremely in debt! And managed to steal my credit and get me in debt as well, but that’s beside the point. The point I want to bring up is actually a question. Let’s say that my parents gave only 4% to the church, but were excellent in their finances and paid all their bills on time? How would God judge them? Of course, they did the opposite, but what do you think God judges more severely – not tithing or getting in debt? Hmmm, good question, but that’s not how God judges our stewardship. You see God doesn’t have a checklist of requirements that we need to meet before we’ve become acceptable to him. Remember the steward that was left in charge of 2 talents while his master was gone? He buried the talents and when his master returned, he gave 100% of the talents back. A good steward is an investor, not a giver, not a bill payer, not a returner.

This is essentially what I did with my money. I was a giver, not an investor. An investor is Spirit-led, but a giver follows directions from a dead law.

So as I was saying about my tithing testimony in college. At the end of college, I became involved in a fellowship that challenged and fed me. We did lots of ministries together. One day a friend confronted us about tithing. He said that tithing is not required of New Testament Christians. I immediately argued with him. Of course, I didn’t agree. I couldn’t have been wrong all these years. After all, tithing is commanded in the bible, right? After that i began to search the scriptures to prove him wrong. The more and more I studied, the more and more, I couldn’t prove him wrong. It was the craziest thing! I kept going over and over scriptures. I kept questioning my reasoning. There’s just no way that this much of the church has been wrong for so long about tithing. Then it hit me. What was the number one thing that Jesus talked about in the bible? It wasn’t heaven, hell, hatred, the tongue, lying, or satan. It was money.

Outside of the Holy Spirit and the Word, money is the most powerful and influential substance known to mankind. If there is anything that the church can be wrong about, it’s gotta be about money.

So I’ve been heavily studying and discussing tithing since 2005. I started a tithing website, started this blog, and started a tithing group in order to get the word out. Hopefully one day, I will write a book.

I cannot tell you the amount of growing and learning that God has given me over the past years. I wish I could just take a portion of my heart, soul, and mind and let you see the truths that God has spoken to me about Spirit-led giving. My passion on this subject is what keeps me writing about it so much. If this truth was not so alive in me I wouldn’t be able to write as much as I do. Right now, I believe there are over 180 blog articles that have been written here since 2006. Each day there are about 245 unique visitors, 3280 hits, and 175 google searches. That is another thing that keeps me motivated about this site. I know people are searching for the truth.

I am convinced that Spirit-led giving is what God intended for his Children under the New Covenant. Would I remain open to new evidence that tithing is required for us, well, sure! I have listened to hundreds of sermons and read dozens of books on tithing, so I’m not sure that much of anything new is out there to reveal, but an open mind is there, believe it or not. I hope my tithing testimony encourages some. Please share your testimony as well. It will encourage me and others.