Alarm bells are ringing. Ever more loudly and more ominously throughout the nonprofit world, warning buzzers are sounding a grim caution: Charitable giving is in a perilous dip.
Shame on us all! And especially for a Christian, who has been taught by Jesus what sacrifice is all about, to rely on tax technicalities to call himself generous—that misses the whole point, and may also miss the blessing God intends for really committed givers.
Christians in America know very little about serious giving. …The problem lies deep in our own stingy hearts.
Here is the story as reported by Empty Tomb, a research group based in Champaign, Ill.: "Protestant denominations have published data on an ongoing basis throughout the century. In 1916, Protestants were giving 2.9 percent of their incomes to their churches. In 1933, the depth of the Great Depression, it was 3.2 percent. In 1955, just after affluence began springing up through our culture, it was still 3.2 percent. By 1999, when Americans were overall much richer, after taxes and inflation, than in the Great Depression, Protestants were giving 2.6 percent of their incomes to their churches."
Most evangelical Christians in America could double their giving and still fall short of the tithe God instructed His people in the Old Testament to consider the starting point of their giving.
[Excerpts of an article by Joel Belz, World magazine]
No comments:
Post a Comment