gmelrod
Resident Heritic
My girlfriend and I go to diffrent churches. We have each gone to the others service and It seems like whenever one of us switches for a weekend the topic of the sermon/homily is giving. She had the bad luck to come on the day of the yearly Bishop's appeal. His reasoning was that the Catholic Church is a global institution and money given to the Church could have a greater impact then individual giving. There was no real appeal to the bible just "we want to do good things we need money to do it. Please give us money."
When I went to her church on the other hand there wach much made of biblical injunction for giving. The one I remember well enough to look up is as follows.
[FONT=VERDANA, ARIAL, HELVETICA][SIZE=-1]Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open for you the windows of heaven, and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows (Malachi 3:10).
Now this is the old testament and so for me does not carry the same weight. I see this passage as I do much of judaic law, a way to survive. Don't eat pork because of tricinosis (sp?). Store away ten percent and you will not starve.
I see much church giving as a form of natural selection. Churches need money to do their ministry. Churches who ask for money tend to get it. The more money you have the bigger your ministry can be. The bigger your ministry the more members you get. The more members the more money. ect ect. The end result of this is the megachurches we see poping up (Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, et al). But on the other hand churches without money seem to go under pretty quick.
In the end I think it is what is done with the money that matters the most. But issues like that have to be delt with on a case by case basis.
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When I went to her church on the other hand there wach much made of biblical injunction for giving. The one I remember well enough to look up is as follows.
[FONT=VERDANA, ARIAL, HELVETICA][SIZE=-1]Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open for you the windows of heaven, and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows (Malachi 3:10).
Now this is the old testament and so for me does not carry the same weight. I see this passage as I do much of judaic law, a way to survive. Don't eat pork because of tricinosis (sp?). Store away ten percent and you will not starve.
I see much church giving as a form of natural selection. Churches need money to do their ministry. Churches who ask for money tend to get it. The more money you have the bigger your ministry can be. The bigger your ministry the more members you get. The more members the more money. ect ect. The end result of this is the megachurches we see poping up (Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, et al). But on the other hand churches without money seem to go under pretty quick.
In the end I think it is what is done with the money that matters the most. But issues like that have to be delt with on a case by case basis.
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