Imagine...not Lennon style, Steve style...
Jehovah God is perfect, and that includes all His plans. I believe that God instituted the plan of tithing as one of the very first laws to connect earth with heaven in tangible worship, and to insure that the most legitimately vulnerable would be cared for. I believe that this perfect plan was to result in the “temple” or “church” being what the prophet Malachi called the “storehouse” for the community – of faith first, and then the community at large.
That said, imagine this: if the church I pastor is of a demographic that mirrors the county at large, then according to state and private statistics the average household income of the church would be $86,000. Therefore, if 90% of the congregation participated in tithing (giving $8,600 annually), the church I pastor would be debt-free in one year and have a 4.6 million dollar surplus every year thereafter.
Imagine if every evangelical church in the county I live in participated in the plan of tithing. And those churches saw this surplus as an opportunity to serve the needs of the legitimately poor, not expand their empire. The church community would be well on their way to redeeming its call by God to be the “storehouse”.
Implications – given churches by-in-large hold dear the holy expectation of the tithe:
· People would be looking to the church for answers not the government.
· Churches could develop compassionate and responsible filters to insure the resources are getting to the legitimately poor, without government bureaucracy.
· Churches would no longer be the curious religious pet of the end all and be all government.
· Government would deflate, and the current tax rate could not be justified. Therefore, it would have to deflate as well.
· Churches would be highly influential in the community and in politics, in a very real sense.
· Churches would be creating jobs for those in the social serving fields.
· Churches could establish thriving educational systems that would be affordable to vulnerable populations and pay teachers what they deserve.
· Churches would become philanthropic grant fund sources for faith based initiatives without government control.
If we saw an inversion of the tax and tithe; it would lead to a national transformation. However, as it is, the tax is robbing the tithe. My hunch is that the government will not be reducing taxes for the purpose of increasing the tithe. Therefore, the church is going to have to recover what we’ve lost on our own and expect that eventually God will distinguish the church from government as the church restores it self to the status of “the storehouse” found in Malachi 3.
