Two Kinds Of Giving

TWO KINDS OF GIVING

I have witnessed in my years of ministry people come to church and when they do not like a decision of the leadership or the minister, they decide to stop giving as a protest or decide to shift their giving to missions in order to inflict pain on the ministry of the church. That might be okay if it was a spiritual problem but I have seen it happen over things like the kind of music the church is using or the refusal to put a plaque on something or because they wanted things to go back to the way it has always been done. I have also witnessed people give to the church anonymously with no strings attached – to me those people are models of what it means to sacrifice. They present their gift and say “God I know you are in control of your church, I release this to you for whatever you want.” It is harder to do something like that because it means trusting not only God but the people who are in the leadership positions of the church. Giving sacrificially hurts to do and takes faith because it means letting go of control and believing that God can work through even unsure circumstances.