Are We As Generous As We Think We Are? (Redux)
A few months back, I wrote a post titled ”Are We As Generous As We Think We Are?” I argued that people in the US are indeed generous but that we generally thought of ourselves as being more generous than we actually were. When polled, most people believed that the US was devoting too much of its budget to foreign aid. At the same time, they dramatically overestimated just how large a percentage foreign aid takes up, believing the level to be 20% instead of the actual level of less than 1%.
In a subsequent post looking at Jeffrey Sachs’ UN Millennium Project, I pointed out that the US and other wealthy countries have pledged to increase their level of contribution to international development aid so that by 2015 each country would be giving 0.7% of their GNP to international development projects. Currently, the US is contributing only 0.15% (last among signatory nations).
This paints a pretty eyeopening picture of US generosity. But it is an incomplete picture, something I admitted in my original posts. In the extensive discussion we’re having in last week’s ”Jesus Is So First Centry” post, commenter Jacke made the argument that these figures don’t reflect the generosity with which people in the US donate to private charities.
This is a fine point to make. People in the US indeed give billions of dollars each year to private charities. And that’s truly a wonderful thing. Americans, as I’ve said before, are indeed generous.
However, this figure is often used to argue that all of this charitable giving must make up for the gap we talked about in US foreign aid. Since the question I’m asking is “are we as generous as we think we are?”, I think we need to dig into this number a bit more to see if that argument holds up.
The most-often-quoted expert for this argument is Carol Adelman, former USAID official and now Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute. Her article in the Nov./Dec. 2003 issue of Foreign Affairs is a good one. Her conclusion is impressive:
In the last decade, U.S. government aid has been far outstripped by private donations — from foundations, private voluntary organizations (PVOS), corporations, universities, religious groups, and individuals giving directly to needy family members abroad. There is no comprehensive measure of how much Americans donate overseas, but a conservative estimate, based on surveys and voluntary reporting, puts annual private giving around $35 billion.
The numbers are admittedly rough, but $35 billion is an awful lot of money. Keep in mind, however, that Adelman’s breakdown of that figure later in the article points out that about half of that is made up of remittances — money sent by workers in the US (mainly foreign nationals) to their families in other countries. These remittances are significant, and the US policies that allow foreign citizens to come here to work and send money back home are laudable. But to refer to these remittances as examples of American generosity seems to stretch the term a little.
When you remove the $18 billion of remittances, the amount left is still impressive, but only half as impressive as Adelman would have us believe. So how does this figure stack up against the private giving of other countries?
The Center for Global Development has created a Commitment to Development Index with data from the past three years. The CDI is an attempt to combine the effects of aid, trade, investment, migration, environmental policy, security and technology into a single metric. It’s not without its deficiencies as an overall model, but since we’re just talking about aid at the moment, it gives a decent set of numbers for our comparison.
In an article in the Sept./Oct. 2005 Foreign Policy, the most recent CDI had the US in third to last in its Aid category. For our purposes, the following graphic is most instructive. It breaks down government aid and private aid into a daily amount given per person:
As you can see, US private giving is significantly higher than the private giving of most of the other countries listed. But does it bridge the gap, as we asked earlier? Sadly, it does not. We swap places with Japan, but still trail the other countries by a significant amount.
We can certainly talk about why this is so, but the US is not the most generous nation, even when factoring in public giving. In fact, it’s not even close.
What about churches in the US? Since a large part of our discussion centers around role of the church in alleviating hunger and reducing poverty, I figure we may as well look into that.
The church numbers are a little more difficult to track down in terms of foreign development giving. But what about giving in general? Many churches preach the Biblical mandate of tithing — giving 10% of your gross income to your church (some people include other charitable organizations in this 10% figure). Do churchgoers in the US live up to this mandate?
Here’s a passage from Ron Sider’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience:
John and Sylvia Ronsvalle have been carefully analyzing the giving patterns of American Christians for well over a decade. Their annual The State of Christian Giving is the most accurate report for learning how much Christians in the richest nation in human history actually give. In their most recent edition, they provide detailed information about per-member giving patterns of U.S. church members from 1968 to 2001. Over those thirty-plus years, of course, the average income of U.S. Christians has increased enormously. But that did not carry over into their giving. The report showed that the richer we become, the less we give in proportion to our incomes.
In 1968, the average church member gave 3.1 percent of their income — less than a third of a tithe. That figure dropped every year through 1990 and then recovered slightly to 2.66 percent — about one quarter of a tithe.
Evangelical giving, consistently higher than that of mainline denominations, has fallen from 6.15 percent in 1968 to 4.27 percent in 2001. Sider again:
As we got richer and richer, evangelicals chose to spend more and more on themselves and give a smaller and smaller percentage to the church. Today, on average, evangelicals in the United States give about two-fifths of a tithe.
In 2002, Barna discovered that only 6 percent of born-again adults tithed — a 50-percent decline from 2000 when 12 percent did. And in 2002, just 9 percent of Barna’s narrow class of evangelicals tithed.
These figures are staggering. Churchgoers in the US are falling far short of the bare minimum amount of giving that their Scriptures ask.
Poverty is an enormous problem. The Bible is very clear about how important it is for Christians to meet this enormous need. While we’re certainly giving a lot of money to these efforts, we could be giving more. We should be giving more.
Look, I’m certainly open to arguments that we should rely less on government aid to relieve and reduce the extreme poverty around the world. But you have to prove to me that something else will fill the void. You think that something else should be the Church? Great. So do I.
Let’s talk about how to make that happen.
51 Ripples from “Are We As Generous As We Think We Are? (Redux)”
dufflehead says:
November 14, 2005 at 11:11 am
good work!
the wife and i have have moved our tithe outside the church in order to help the world. sad that it has to be like that. maybe i’ll have to post a dicussion on that sometime.
zalm says:
November 14, 2005 at 5:11 pm
There are a few government sources that usually have breakdowns, although they tend to be in bigass table form and not handydandy chart form.
Here’s a breakdown of the President’s proposed 2006 budget from the Washington Post. Keep in mind that this is proposed, and that what comes out the other side after Congress has at it is often somewhat different. But still, the proportions probably won’t vary that much.
ninjanun says:
November 14, 2005 at 5:11 pm
Thanks for all this info, Zalm. I had remarked in the ealier thread that I’d like to see what percentage of our tax dollars goes to the various purposes of government, but no one actually showed me the percentages. It would still be interesting to see what percentage goes to the other areas of government (military, corporate welfare, salaries, etc). I’ve tried doing a Google search, but I guess I’m using the wrong words. Any suggestions? Thanks!
Greg says:
November 14, 2005 at 10:11 pm
Excellent figures!
I myself am always a little suspicious of church giving. I just got home from a church council meeting in which we discussed the budget for the coming year. On the face of it, our church gives about 25% of its total budget to benevolence. So right off the bat, 75% of what we give to the church we are basically giving to ourselves - for the pastor, the building, etc. Of the 25% which goes to benevolence, half of that goes to the synod, which is again just giving the money to ourselves, since it supports an administrative structure which provides services to us. Another 30% of our benevolence goes to support a vicar (basically a pastor-in-training) at our church. While it is certainly nice of us to do this, we also reap a very real and personal benefit from the vicar, so that’s not really benevolence either. What we are left with is 20% of 25%, or just 5% of our total giving. So 5% of what we (as a congregation) give to the church actually goes to help someone outside of the congregation, or even to provide someone in the congregation with more than pastoral care, church activities, etc. The rest is essentially payment for services rendered. I wonder how many other church budgets break down similarly.
I once read that Mississippi has the highest rate of charitable giving in the US (in terms of percentage of income), based on tax returns. The reason is that so many Evangelicals live in Mississippi, and as you pointed out they give more to their churches than do members of mainline denominations. But I wonder, are they too really just giving the money to themselves?
zalm says:
November 15, 2005 at 12:11 am
Thanks for sharing your experiences, folks.
I had a few thoughts…
First, the truth is that there are a lot of sunk costs in being a church. A building, for one, even if rented. And salaries. I have too many friends who are pastors and I know too much about how painful a career ministry can be to begrudge them a salary that will allow them to support a family. Now, we can certainly discuss how much is too much for any of those. But they’re unavoidable, even if they might be “giving back to ourselves.”
It’s possible that the percentages you talk about are a reflection of your church’s priorities. And perhaps a church that can only afford 1% for missions/benevolence is paying way too much for their sunk costs. But it’s also possible that it’s a reflection of the fact that the congregation is giving at the levels in my post. If people are giving 3% instead of 10%, it’s not terribly surprising that churches can’t afford to devote much to ministries beyond their sunk costs.
What can we do? Well, we can start tithing ourselves and encourage others to do so. We can try to become more involved in council meetings and the budgeting process. We can try to start our own ministry within the church focused on benevolence or missions. Many churches are dying to have people take the initiative on this.
Maybe that’s na�ve, but those are the first things that come to mind. I know a few pastors read this site, so maybe they’d have better ideas.
And if after trying to influence the church humbly and in good faith in all of those ways, it becomes clear that none of that is possible in the church that we attend, maybe it’s time to look for a new church.
Sadly, there’s a lot wrong in many churches in America. I’ve been reading your story, ninjanun, and have great sympathy for why people who have been burned by a church might feel the need to take a break to sort things out. So please don’t think I’m trying to scold anyone. I truly hope that you will be able to find a church someday that will be able to use your passions.
I guess I’m just saying that if the Church is to be the Church again, I’m not yet convinced that the ultimate solution is to stop going and stop giving.
ninjanun says:
November 15, 2005 at 12:11 am
Hey Greg; similar instance at our church, except actually only one percent went to missions, and nothing went to benevolence. A special offering was taken once a month during communion for benevolence. So our tithe was mostly going back to us church members as the primary recipients. Like you said, it’s a bit like payment for services rendered. Or like paying your “dues” for the use of a social club.
Jim says:
November 15, 2005 at 7:11 am
Zalm,
I’m glad you brought up tithing. It seems (from my limited perspective) to be a topic as well as a practice that is going away.
People like to criticize how the church gives, and there is a lot of justification for that criticism believe me, but much more rarely do they contribute to the church’s ministry at a sacrificial level. It’s not really the tithe that’s important, though I think it’s a wonderful benchmark. It’s giving sacrificially. You should feel it when you put that offering in the plate. The act should make the prayer of dedication absolutely necessary.
Both in the evangelical big show church I used to work in as well as the small, struggling mainline one I’m in now, if even a third more people tithed we would have an unbelievable amount of money. Such abundance, if nothing else, would have shamed us into doing something kingdom worthy with it. Imagine if a whole bunch of churches did this?
Jacke says:
November 15, 2005 at 8:11 am
Ninjanun writes:
I think we have to be careful about looking at percentages because we know that real lives are effected by the numbers contained in them.
I’m going to keep searching because you’ve piqued my interest, but so far all I have been able to find is a politically biased analysis of what our government is spending. There is an anti-war site which is posting a pie chart which they admit varies up to 30%, on the high side, from what other analysts have said regarding how much responsibility military spending contributes to the deficit but they provide no links to any other analysts (very convenient, wouldn’t you say, and a red flag?) Where I see the problem is that when we think about past and present military spending we need to also consider that a portion of that spending goes to health benefits and assistance to military veterans and military injured, today.
This anti-war site presents their own pie chart in an effort to discredit the government pie chart. I’m unconvinced, just as I was unconvinced by Michael Moore that Iraq was living a peaceful and dreamy existence before the American military tore up their playhouse. The only pie charts I can find are reproduced from that anti-war site and if you scroll on them, say “the government’s deceptive pie chart,” causing me to be reluctant to post it, though, according to them, it is the pie chart which was posted by The New York Times, Feb. 8, 2005, and was based on the Budget of the United States FY2006.
I also found an interesting bit of information here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2006/hud.html
Of course, it is only discussing housing, but that is partly my point, each piece of pie in a pie chart addresses many separate issues under separate headings and I think that by reducing it to percentages spent here and percentages spent there we might be trying to oversimplify the issue. I think time would be better spent looking at what is being done to improve lives.
dufflehead says:
November 15, 2005 at 11:11 am
geez Jacke, i mean, cmon, how many times have you tossed around percentages and now your trying to lecture about not using them?
Jacke says:
November 15, 2005 at 11:11 am
Geeze, dufflehead, yew tryin’ ta start sumthin’ wit me!?
I don’t know how many times I have tossed around percentages, you tell me. I remember citing some numbers about how much money is given by private citizens and organizations in the U.S. for foreign aid but you’ll have to enlighten me on any percentages I have given.
ninjanun says:
November 15, 2005 at 12:11 pm
Hey Zalm, thanks for your encouraging thoughts.
I guess I’m just saying that if the Church is to be the Church again, I’m not yet convinced that the ultimate solution is to stop going and stop giving.
I totally agree with you. You may have heard bits and pieces of our struggles with our former church at various points on my blog or in discussion on others’ blogs (such as stupid church people), but I’m reluctant to share it all or in too much detail because some of my friends who still go to that church read my blog, and I don’t wish to influence them or have them judge the reasons we left as being “not good enough, those bunch of discontents.” Needless to say, Zalm, we have done every single things you mentioned:
Well, we can start tithing ourselves and encourage others to do so. We can try to become more involved in council meetings and the budgeting process. We can try to start our own ministry within the church focused on benevolence or missions. Many churches are dying to have people take the initiative on this.
To no avail. The one part of your statement that didn’t apply was the last one. The leadership of that church was NOT dying to have people take the initiative where benevolence or missions was concerned, and it was like pulling teeth to get people to care about those things. In fact, you mention that many church members don’t tithe enough to cover “sunk” costs, and one of my frustrations with my former church was that they were actually increasing their sunk costs, and as a result, many faithful people were concerned that this was poor stewardship and left. The theology behind the church’s reasoning was “as long as one person gets saved, the cost (put into “sunk” costs) will be worth it.” Something about that just seems wrong to me.
Jacke says:
November 15, 2005 at 12:11 pm
I wasn’t trying to bring the war into the discussion at all. I merely pointed out that the only source I could find for a pie chart came from an anti-war site.
Excuuuuse me.
zalm says:
November 15, 2005 at 12:11 pm
Easy there, kids.
Jacke, I already posted a link to a Washington Post breakdown of the President’s FY2006 budget. It seems pretty straightforward and unvarnished. I even included the appropriate disclaimers about how these numbers may change.
Yes, any time we start throwing around numbers and percentages, there’s the very real chance that they are being presented to shed the best light on a desired outcome. But at this point, there’s really no need to bring anger about who was or wasn’t against the war into this discussion.
And yes, percentages are simply rough guidelines for how money is being spent. And of course they are an oversimplification. But they are still instructive, and I don’t think we should give people a hard time for being curious.
As far as I can recall, the only percentages you tossed around in the previous discussion were tax rates.
Jim says:
November 15, 2005 at 12:11 pm
In your post, Zalm, you mentioned that many churches preach tithing. In my previous comment I suggested that this may not be as true as it was even a few years ago.
Maybe it’s just the churches I’ve attended or worked for and everybody else out there is not scared by asking people to tithe. In the meantime the average church giving level for those congregations has gone from about 3% to about 2% which squares with Sider’s statistics above. So maybe it’s not just my own experience. The church will never even begin to fill the void while it’s hampered by the stinginess of its own people.
And when someone like you asks how the church can start stepping up to the plate, discussion immediately starts going off into the weeds. Which also matches with previous experiences of mine.
I know I sound more strident than I mean to be, I’m sorry in advance but as you know this issue has a great deal of salience for me.
So how do we make it happen?
Jim says:
November 15, 2005 at 1:11 pm
Oh, and Ninjanunn, you and I were commenting simultaneously but you beat me to the punch. It almost reads as if my comment was in response to yours, which it wasn’t.
Actually, my comment wasn’t in response to anything in particular other than that discussions about the stewardship of the Church have a habit of devloving and so accomplishing next to nothing.
I have no idea about the particulars of your experience but what little you shared of it is stuff I’ve experienced as well, in spades.
May God bless you wherever you wind up.
ninjanun says:
November 15, 2005 at 2:11 pm
Thanks for clarifying that, Jim. I was afraid I was the one you were referring to about making the discussion go “off in the weeds.” Truly not my intent! I’m just as concerned as everyone else as to how to encourage others to be generous and conscientious stewards, and how to make sure the contributions are used effectively and justice is done in the world.
Greg says:
November 17, 2005 at 1:11 am
All,
There is a pretty interesting article in the NYT about charity here (my apologies if you can’t get on...). Some interesting statistics (here we go!) from the article: In 2004 Americans donated $248B to charities (based on income tax deductions), but of that, only about 8% ($20B) went to “human services.” The rest goes to things like arts organizations, medical non-profits, universities, churches, etc. The lost tax revenue for this charitable giving is about $40B, so in terms of providing services to the needy, the tax exemption for charitable giving is profoundly unsuccessful. 40 years ago the fraction of charitable giving that went to human services was 28%, and there is some speculation in the article about why this type of giving has declined so much relative to other sorts of giving (increased government spending for social services, less of the population that can afford to give that has experienced poverty, etc.)
Of particular interest to this thread, Research by Mark Chaves, a sociology professor at the University of Arizona who was principal investigator of the 1998 National Congregations Study, the first comprehensive study of churches and their spending, showed that less than 3 percent of the average congregation’s total budget was spent on social services. So my church is actually above average at 5%. Woo hoo!
And here’s one for Jacke: The federal budget for health and human services rose 183 percent, adjusted for inflation, to $459.4 billion in 2002 from $68.3 billion in 1980, according to research by Patrick Rooney, director of research at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.
I believe that this makes it about equal to defense spending. According to a link that I found on a government web site that doesn’t seem to work in this post, SS outlays were 4.5% of GDP in 2002, and Medicare outlays were 2.5% of GDP in 2002. This graph shows that GDP was about $10 trillion (=$10,000B) in 2002, so Medicare outlays were $250B and SS was $450B. Thus we can deduce that the $459B figure for 2002 is dominated by Medicare, and does not include SS. According the this link, the total federal budget for 2002 was about $2 trillion, or about 20% of GDP (which agrees well with numbers that I have seen elsewhere. Due to recent tax cuts, that has dropped to about 17% of GDP this year - among the lowest for industrialized nations). So in 2002, about 23% of the federal budget went to health an human services, about the same amount when to defense, and about the same amount went to SS. The remaining 30% of the budget was “other”. (Note: this last link has too be taken w/ a grain of salt. Athough it is an official government document, it is also a fine piece of propaganda. It shows a $200B surplus for 2002, when in fact there was a $300B deficit. It shows that spending in inflation-adjusted dollars has been rising, but fails to mention that spending as a percent of GDP is falling. It grossly understates defense spending, including nothing for Afghanistan or Iraq. And so forth. You get the picture.)
Egads! That’s enough numbers for tonight.
zalm says:
November 17, 2005 at 3:11 am
Thanks for posting all that, Greg. That whole article was pretty interesting and introduced me to a few wrinkles in this discussion that hadn’t ocurred to me before.
I’ve put a few more extended excerpts from the NYT article together with a different study on the replacement value for the social services provided by US congregations into a new post so that people who don’t delve into this discussion will still be able to see them.
I also want to get back to Jim’s question of how we encourage more giving in our churches, but I might not be able to chime in fully until tomorrow.
Anybody else have any thoughts?
Jacke says:
November 17, 2005 at 8:11 am
Greg:
Well, my goodness, Greg, that would almost give the impression that America cares as much about those in need domestically as she does about National security! 183%!!! :0
Kevin says:
November 17, 2005 at 1:11 pm
Geez, I always end up late to these sorts of things. I’ve seen numbers much higher than that for military spending. I’ll have to find them and check the sources. It may just be outdated info.
Also, when you think about giving, one variable you also have to consider is debt. Many poor nations are up to their eyeballs in debt to other nations, so often aid money isn’t really doing any good anyway. It’s just going to pay off interest in one way or another.
And by the way, I really don’t think Michael Moore was claiming that “Iraq was living a peaceful and dreamy existence before the American military tore up their playhouse.” I’m assuming this refers to the few seconds in Fahrenheit 9/11 when he showed a few scenes of daily life in Iraq that didn’t involve people being beheaded or gassed or whatever other media-induced images we’d come to believe about a country most of us really knew nothing about?
Julie says:
November 28, 2005 at 10:11 pm
I just found this site and thought I would add my two cents from a more personal perspective. I have been tithing for many years and have also geen giving above my tithe to worthy organizations. Recently, though my husband and I have found it more difficult to tithe a full 10% since I have been out of work. Our evangelical church in CT has just finished a series on giving (tithes, alms, faith promise.) The pastor made several worthwhile points. One is that when Christians pool their resources (contributions) together (in a church), more can be accomplished in terms of missions and helping the needy. Secondly, when we honor God with our tithes and offerings, He will provide for our needs (not necessarily wants). It has been my experience that by tithing and being faithful with my contributions that God honors it and provides for us. My husband and I have definitely experienced this in the way God provided us with a house with mortgage payments that we can afford. Both of the churches I have attended recently have made good use of their budgets with I believe at least 10% going to missions. In our church, individuals can actually indicate they want a specific amount of their contribution to go to directly to missions. If you really want to ensure that your church contribution goes to missions/services, you may want to check out churches that organize their budget in a way that allows you to earmark it specifically for that purpose. Our church uses it to support specific missionaries. It really does come down to priorities. Hope this helps.
LotharBot says:
November 29, 2005 at 3:11 am
As long as people are coming late to the party…
It’s hard to answer the question without having some agreed definition of what we mean by “generous” and how we account for it. Are we counting only monetary contributions? Does inviting a poor family over for dinner or giving a homeless man a coat count? What about government-funded health care in countries like France, or government-mandated but company-funded health care in the US—do those count as “aid”? Do we count only foreign aid, or does domestic aid count as well? How do we account for foreign missionaries who run medical clinics? What about pastors who spend most of their time praying for people and only a little going out and helping the poor? Does the time the military spends rebuilding schools in Iraq or Afghanistan count? Does removing oppressive governments count? What about the money individuals invest in poor countries with the hope that it’ll enable someone to start a business (and also with the hope that eventually there will be profits)? How is money intended to jumpstart an economy (and thereby decrease poverty long-term) counted in relation to money given to a poor person to help them get by short-term? Does something have a cost to the giver in order to count as “generous”? And so on…
In my experience, when people ask if “we” collectively or “you” specifically are generous enough, what they really want to know is if (and how much) you’re contributing in the ways they think are best. For example, I know a few people who’d flame me for the suggestion that military rebuilding in Iraq could *possibly* be counted as “generous”. I know others who don’t think any giving should be counted as “generous” unless it’s part of a long-term plan to bring a specific person up the economic scale. And I disagree with one major premise in the original post—that we’re talking about “aid” and therefore shouldn’t look at investment, etc. IMO, everything any one of us does for the purpose of helping someone else should be accounted for.
With that in mind, I don’t think I can give a rigorous answer for whether “we” are as generous as we think we are for any “we” beyond myself and my wife. I don’t know how much you personally do in terms of giving time, giving or investing money, etc. and I don’t know why you do it.
If I had to speak for the US as a whole, I’d say we’re only moderately generous in terms of direct donations of money and goods, far from #1 (as the above table shows.) But we supply an awful lot of manpower and logistical support to help the poor around the world (like, the carriers and soldiers in SE Asia after the big tsunami, or missionaries who run medical clinics) and we supply a lot of political pressure/support for economic and social policies that are intended to make everybody better off (some of which are more effective than others.) IMO, the thing the US does that helps the world’s poor the absolute most is pushing for things like property rights, minority rights, and free religion in parts of the world that don’t have those things. Objectively speaking, those are all things we do to some degree… I think the major sources of disagreement will be whether doing things that help the poor count as being generous if they happen to also benefit us, whether certain policies really help the poor, and whether we’re putting as much effort into doing those things as we should be. I think we collectively do far more for the poor than most people realize, but I can see how others would disagree.
As for “we”, the church… I’d prefer if the church, as a whole, got rid of nearly all of its sunk costs and encouraged people to give their tithes to appropriate charities (which may or may not be run by the church.) I just don’t see how paying multiple pastors, buying massive facilities, and having a few small social ministry programs can be considered generous in the slightest.
zalm says:
November 29, 2005 at 4:11 am
One of the great things about this medium is that discussions can fire up again even on old posts. I appreciate your taking the time to share your experiences and your thoughts, Julie and LB.
Julie, you make a good point about earmarking. While I think it’s probably more important that a church body and leadership decide of their own volition and common understanding to allocate a generous portion to community service and global needs, I can certainly appreciate the desire to influence that understanding through earmarking. I also would like to explore the point you make about giving generously with the faith that God will provide. I’ve been meaning to write a followup post about that, and I’ll try to put my thoughts together in the next few days.
As for LotharBot’s comment…
You make a number of excellent observations. And I certainly recognize that I was framing this discussion rather narrowly. In fact, I was pretty careful not to spend too much time trying to tease out an answer to the question “are we generous”? I think we are. But I thought it interesting that we seem to like to think of ourselves as more generous than the numbers seem to support.
I chose foreign aid numbers in particular because they are somewhat easy to quantify, because they corresponded to the public opinion surveys that I wrote about in the first post, and most importantly because they directly address the specific topic that led me to this post: our efforts to reduce extreme global poverty.
Is my discussion in this post incomplete? Most certainly. I heartily agree that foreign aid dollars are just part of the picture. I hope that in other posts I’ve provided a fuller sense of the scope of what we’re dealing with we talk about extreme global poverty. Dollar figures are a handy metric, but as you point out, they’re only part of the story. And while I have some issues with the CDI I linked to above, I admire that it tries to paint a picture that is broader than just aid.
Finally, I also wanted to constrain my post to extreme global poverty because, quite frankly, the discussion gets a lot murkier when you start talking about domestic charitable giving and domestic government social programs and the like. Those are worthy discussions to have as well, but I’ve just found that tackling all of that at once gets messy fast.
Ultimately, I think I was trying to be a bit provocative. We have certain self-perceptions as a country and as a church that I think need to be questioned from time to time. And so I hope I can encourage people to ask themselves questions like: Are we giving enough? Could we give more? Should we give more?
I realize that I haven’t really addressed a lot of what you wrote, and I’d like to at some point. I think that could be an interesting discussion. But first I wanted to give you a better sense of why I chose to frame things the way I did.
And now I need to go to bed.
Kevin says:
November 29, 2005 at 8:11 am
This isn’t meant to be an attack on Julie or others who tithe by any means, but there are a couple of problems I have with the whole thing. One, as LotharBot points out, is that these funds aren’t necessarily going towards anything other than paying pastor’s salaries, buying a new gym for the church, or whatever many of our spoiled congregations happen to think they need this week. The church my wife and I have been attending the past couple of years is the first one I’ve been to in my life (and I’ve been to several) where I feel confident that any money I put in the offering bag is going towards something other than either storing treasures in our whitewashed tombs or Americanizing other cultures with the gospel of American Jesus. Our churches waste incredible amounts of money, just like we as people waste incredible amounts of money. I know that there are lots of churches out there that use resources wisely and effectively. But there are also a lot that don’t. It’s good to be aware that just because a church says it’s going to do something worthwhile with its money doesn’t mean that it is.
Tithing also, I think, tends to let us off the hook. There’s a built in idea there that 10 percent is all that God expects or requires of us. And while that’s probably a noteworthy goal, that isn’t all that God expects or requires of us, at least according to the way Jesus lived and taught.
LotharBot says:
November 30, 2005 at 10:11 pm
I hope it’s OK if I’m a little provocative in response, then
IMO, the questions “are we giving enough? Should we give more?” need to be asked in tandem with the questions “is the giving we’re doing going to the right places?” and “will this giving actually help anyone?”
As Kevin said, a lot of times tithing is treated as getting us off the hook… like, we gave our 10% so we’re done. And perhaps 10% is all we should be giving, based on our current situation or whatever… but if we’re giving 10% and it all goes to paying for a big building and a pastor’s salary, we may as well be giving 0%. Even if we’re giving 90% and we make a million dollars a year, if all it’s doing is paying for a bigger building that will be empty 166 hours per week and declare the wonder of AmeriChrist the other 2, it’s not really helping anybody.
I think a lot of times we feel like we’re being generous because we’re doing a lot to meet the needs the pastor or the TV or whatever puts in front of us. The problem is, they’re not showing us the right needs, so we remain blind to things like living conditions in other parts of the world, or even living conditions in the low-income areas of our neighborhoods (and we like it that way!)
What makes this even worse is that, when we do become aware of those things, our natural inclination is to throw money at the problem. Have a poor neighbor? Give them money. See a starving kid on TV? Send money. Hear about the genocide in Darfur? You got it… money. The bigger the check, the better. And the poor without health insurance in the US? Let’s throw a bunch of money into a huge bureaucracy to provide them with health care that they can often get for free anyway (and we’ll ignore the fact that the majority of the money we put into the system will go to paying for health care for rich people who already had it.) And just look at how much money was put toward the welfare of the Iraqi people through Oil for Food! Never mind what they actually need; we’ve got money to send! Even when we do see the needs, we don’t often see the right solutions.
I’ve had the chance to get to know some poor people recently, and it was astonishing to me how different their needs were. One couple just needed a little money to cover his legal fees so he could get his green card so he could get a job; another friend needs someone to show him how to be responsible with the money he has and with the work opportunities he’s been given; one woman needed someone who could lift boxes and drive a truck when she and the kids moved from one shelter to another to another to another—and now the biggest need is someone to show love and be a role model to the kids because they (thankfully) can’t see their (psycho) daddy any more. On a global scale, there are poor people in Africa who just need a few bucks (or a few bucks worth of food) that we can send right over, but there are a lot more who we can’t *get* food or money to because the local government is so corrupt it doesn’t allow aid through, and what they need is heavy political pressure and legit soldiers (not ill-trained “peacekeepers") to bring aid to them.
Right now, I think there’s enough aid money being spent worldwide to provide everyone with a pretty decent upgrade to their living conditions. What we need isn’t more aid spending in the federal budget; what we need is smarter aid spending by everyone (and that might start with putting your tithe toward helping the poor instead of supporting the pastor.) I think the church can and should take the lead on this, by identifying *good* paths to send aid through and then stepping up or redirecting our giving along those paths, and pressuring the government to do the same as they’re able.
Jacke says:
November 30, 2005 at 11:11 pm
Excuse me, but what exactly is wrong with paying the Pastor?
If you are going to church then you are listening to his sermons, you are enjoying a heated facility in which to meet, you are not sitting in the dark, you are being handed materials to read, the church may be feeding people (mine does, they feed the bus children every Sunday morning and every Wednesday night), and I could go on and on with a list of very real expenditures that a church has. So, if not from your tithes how is the church supposed to pay for the little amenities like running water and climate control so you can sit yer butt in a pew and get peeved that 100% of your tithe is not going to the needy?
No one seems to even be qualifying these simple facts, so I thought I’d ask.
dufflehead says:
December 1, 2005 at 12:11 am
so, jacke, you are saying that since we are being entertained and fed, we should pay for it. like dinner and a movie.
why do congregations think they need a building? why can’t they use a house, or several houses? why can’t they use they high school, if they need a large place? why does the pastor need to be the ceo of the congregation and therefore warrant a salary?
my guess is that having a pastor, like tithing, gets us off the hook of helping. we make it the pastor’s responsibility to cater to everyone’s needs.
Jacke says:
December 1, 2005 at 12:11 am
Oh, why do we need anything as fancy as a house or a high school!?
Let’s jest go to a drafty old barn summers on sumbuddies farm and call et gud? Or mebe we’uns cud jest meet unner that big ole oak tree in Sister Mary Lou’s frunt yard?
Paying the Pastor’s salary is not like dinner and a movie. We aren’t paying for entertainment, at least I’m not. There’s a verse somewhere in the Bible that says that we shouldn’t deny food to the ox that thrashes out the wheat.
Pastors have to eat too, you know? They have to maintain a roof over their head and transportation so they can visit people like you when your in the hospital and such. Wha!? You want him to take the City bus???
C’mon....
dufflehead says:
December 1, 2005 at 1:11 am
do you really want to understand where i and a few others are coming from?
or would you rather just attempt to make fun of us with your hick slang.
and why is a barn out of the question? are you too good for a barn? are you too good to have your congregational meeting outside?
and that’s my point; why is it that the pastor has to visit everyone in the hospital? where’s the rest of the Church? where ‘s the rest of the “family of God” .. . wait, you’re paying the pastor to do that.
Jacke says:
December 1, 2005 at 8:12 am
Dufflehead, Dufflehead, Dufflehead,
I do think I understand where you and a few others are coming from. I also understand that you can have church wherever, in your own home with a few friends, in a barn, under an oak tree outside. The problem is, I don’t think you’ll get a large congregation in those places, I don’t think it will meet the “needs” of all people. If you choose to meet in a barn I don’t have a bit of a problem with that, meet in a barn and collect an offering from the 12 to 15 people who might meet with you there and then give 100% of your collection to whatever charity you care to give it to, whatever is the consensus among your “parishoners.” I even have a few misgivings about large, expensive to maintain, facilities for churches, myself. I just think that you won’t reach the vast majority of people by doing so. That’s okay, you don’t have to and you should do whatever you are comfortable with, Dufflehead. Is it necessary for you to do away with all large, expensive to maintain churches in the process though? Do you have to run them all down to make yourself and the others who agree with you feel that you are somehow superior and your motives somehow more pure in the process?
I go to a small church, the small church has a building fund because there are many more things we’d like to do in the community to reach out in that poorer community on the NW side of town. We recently started an AWANA program there. We bus kids in who otherwise might not hear anything about God. We bus them in on Sunday morning and feed them a hot breakfast, we bus them in on Wednesday night and feed them a hot dinner. Church members defray the cost of the breakfasts and dinners by giving OFFERINGS above and beyond our tithes. Many of these children don’t have the best of homelives but we give them love and acceptance while they are in our care and do our best to teach them about Jesus’ love for them. All of those things cost money, Dufflehead. Do you resent that some of our money must pay the light bill and pay for the facilities in which this work is done or would you like to see it shut down and hope that we can get those kids to meet us under an oak tree? There are times for meeting under an oak tree and times for actually reaching out to the community. You can actually reach out to the community from under an oak tree but I’m not sure where we’d keep the AWANA store. I’m not sure how we’d feed all those kids and if you don’t want to pay for the buses to run I’m not sure how we’ll get them there, or whether their parents will be as enthused about sending their kids under the oak tree on Sunday and Wednesday nights.
You do things the way you feel convicted to do them, I just don’t see why it’s necessary to trash everyone who doesn’t do it your way in the process. That’s all I’m saying. I doubt you do that intentionally, but by seemingly disagreeing with all Pastor’s salaries and the facilities which house churches, you give that impression.
I’m a hillbilly gal. Ah tawlk hillbilly tew awl mah red-neck frens. They’uns don’t take no offense uv et an yew shoon’t eether.
Jacke says:
December 1, 2005 at 9:12 am
One more thing, Dufflehead, even if the rest of the church steps up and takes over the hospital ministry (actually, in my new church they do, in my old church the Pastor did) but even if the Pastor doesn’t call on people at the hospital that won’t take away his need for transportation. He still has to feed his own family, keep a roof over their heads and transport his body, just like the rest of us. Why do you think he should give all his time for free? Why do you think that, though he went to seminary to educate himself out of his own pocket, he should not expect pay for the service he provides?
I know that Paul, when he was not in prison, worked on the side so that he would not be a burden on others, I believe he was a tent maker by trade? But, the majority of today’s churches employ their Pastors full time . How is he supposed to feed his family if he works long hours for the church and has no time to make tents? What do you want him to do? I don’t get it. Like I said earlier, none of you seem the least concerned about his needs, maybe if your poor old Pastor ends up on the street because you and your fellow church members refuse to pay him anything he can get some charitable foundation to care for him. Will your tithes be in that charitable foundation’s coffers?
dufflehead says:
December 1, 2005 at 11:12 am
my point is that the word pastor shows up, what, once in the Bible? how does that instigate a paid position in a congregation?
what i’m challenging is yours and others traditional understanding of what the congregational meeting and administration looks like. why does it have to be like it is now? because it always was? what about the early church meeting in homes and outside, if they needed the space? why must the work be done inside a building? aren’t we to be “in the world”?
again, why is the pastor the primary paid position and why is it a paid position at all? aren’t we all “called to full time ministry”?
the way i see it, the traditional view of the congregational heirarchy and administration and the need for a “facility of our own” is poor stewardship.
Jacke says:
December 1, 2005 at 11:12 am
Well, I simply disagree with you, Dufflehead, and I believe I have stated how. You are welcome to your own feelings on the matter and if you really want answers to all of your questions it would be nice if you’d answer my questions, too, don’t you think?
I have expressed that if you feel convicted to meet as the early church did, in people’s homes then you should do so. Why do you feel the need to attack the way others choose to meet in the process? There are some things that cannot be addressed in a person’s home and it greatly reduces and limits the amount of people who can attend. I think those are legitimate issues that you would prefer to completely ignore in making your point. All I am suggesting is that there is a place and reason for meeting in a home, as you prefer, or meeting in a facility paid for by the people who CHOOSE to do so. No one forces you to attend church in such a facility. You seem to want to outlaw anyone else being able to meet in any other way. I thought liberals supported choice? All too often they seem to support choice but only if it is THEIR choice. Hmmmm.
dufflehead says:
December 1, 2005 at 11:12 am
and, so if i take offense to your remarks, that’s my problem?
that’s either not fair, or rude.
dufflehead says:
December 1, 2005 at 12:12 pm
first, i did address the question as to needing a larger facility: rent something like a high school, if you need to be indoors. and you had a good suggestion yourself; a barn. and i believe i’ve addressed the question of what the pastor should be doing, but maybe not directly. the pastor should be the equivalent of any other “position” in the church. why not a counseling job?
(funny how you think everyone should answer you and appologize to you without you returning the favors.)
interesting question about seminary and all. my first thought is that i don’t know the answer to that. the next thought is that saying the pastor is providing a service, again, indicates either that position is above that of teachers or deacons (which are rarely ever paid) or that the service rendered by the rest of the Church is not worthy of being paid or set apart as a titled position.
if challenging an idea or tradition is “running it down” then, yes, that’s what i’m doing. however, i don’t do it to feel superior, i do it to see if it is truth.
and i don’t intend to attack, i thought i was bringing up questions (unless questioning traditions and ideas is also attacking them)
Jacke says:
December 1, 2005 at 1:12 pm
And my question would be that if you are going to pay “rent” to use a facility what is the difference, at least in that case?
I really don’t know what you meant by this:
When have I asked for an apology or denied one if requested? Do you feel I need to apologize to you for something? If so, what?
I said that I don’t think you intentionally intend to “attack” anyone, my point is that you don’t seem to be willing to concede that there are some uses for having a church facility and some reasons to pay a Pastor a salary. I am willing to agree that anyone who is convicted that their money should not be paid to a Pastor, or for the amenities having such a facility provides, are and should be free to hold church wherever they want and I even respect and can understand that choice but you seem to want to condemn people who do want to hold church in any other fashion as wrong and not being wise in their use of their tithe. If I’m wrong about that then tell me, so far you haven’t.
dufflehead says:
December 1, 2005 at 2:12 pm
sounds about right to me.
look, if you feel like you’ve never offended anyone then fine, that’s your problem. but if you take offense to someone else’s remarks, then don’t expect them to feel bad about it. if you think my challenge to rethink the use of money on facilities and paid positions is condemning you, then so be it.
rent is much less expensive than the upkeep of an owned facility. as well, some facilities don’t even charge a full rent leaving much more money to go to more usefull means, such as bussing kids to wherever the meeting is.
and to further my point, if the Church is the “family of God” and the head of the church is the pastor, and the pastor is paid, then, in this patriarchal society, why do we not pay our fathers some amount for being the head of the family?
and to sum up and attempt to get back on topic, i think that tithing for a “building for us” fund and paying a person to be the ceo of a congregation is not being generous to anyone but the ceo and the congregation, in effect, giving the money back to ourselves.
Jacke says:
December 1, 2005 at 4:12 pm
Look, Dufflehead, if I offended you then I’m sorry I did. I don’t think you are being quite honest about me never apologizing though, I just apologized to zalm YESTERDAY OR THE DAY BEFORE for taking something out on him that he had nothing to do with. Yer a little touchy sometimes, and I really don’t recall anyone ever offending me to the point that it hurt my little feelings on this blog. I just can’t believe we’re arguing about something like this. I’M SORRY, I’M SORRY, if I offended you.
Feel better now?
Other than the ^ above, I thought we were on topic, at least the topic I thought I had replied to regarding the discussion some of you were having about paying the Pastor. Personally, I see nothing wrong and everything right with paying a Pastor who is working FULL TIME on behalf of a church, who has invested his own time and money in an education for leading a church. The church is supposed to be a house of prayer and worship, yes, and it collects tithes and offerings, yes, but there is a business or administrative part of any kind of an organized community. Our church also pays a youth director, a children’s director, a nursery director, a music director, a pianist and an organist. Personally, I would not charge money to provide some of those services but I don’t begrudge people getting paid a nominal fee for providing a service, either. They do not have the same freedom to miss a service if they so choose, like I do, because they have a RESPONSIBILITY to be there. If you don’t want to go to a church that pays for the Pastor’s service then don’t. I just don’t see the big deal, I guess. If I didn’t like paying for a Pastor’s service I just wouldn’t go to a church that did so. You never did answer my question about how a Pastor is supposed to get by if he is working full time on behalf of the church, Dufflehead. Do you just not care about him or his family? Whut’s up with that?
Jacke says:
December 1, 2005 at 7:12 pm
I’d just like to add something here, Dufflehead.
You are very special and I like you very much even if you are a Dufflehead.
Thank you.
Carry on.
dufflehead says:
December 1, 2005 at 7:12 pm
Jacke,
i did answer your question, in a round about way.
my answer is that the position as it exists now (full time, etc, etct) shouldn’t exist.
dufflehead says:
December 1, 2005 at 8:12 pm
maybe i should clarify further
11And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers,12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ;
so to me, the pastor, the teacher, the evangelist, the apostles, and the prophets are all on the same level. i don’t think that any of these should be “full-time” as we define that today in business terms.
in short, the people that are “given as pastors” should get a job in the world like everybody else and serve the body of Christ like everybody else.
Jacke says:
December 1, 2005 at 10:12 pm
Well, then you should follow that guideline and live your life that way. I have no problem with that and I just think you should be flexible enough to have no problem with the choices others make either. I mean, what is it to you if I choose to go the other route? That’s what I can’t understand. I choose to go to a church which happens to employ the full time service of a Pastor, do you want to take my choice away? I think I understand what you are saying, in that you would like to see it done by a Biblical standard, as you interpret that Biblical standard, I just see no real harm in doing it in the fashion I am doing it and in many ways by doing so I can offer some ministry in ways that could not be accomplished in the way you describe. Do you mind if I continue to go to a church which pays a full time Pastor, Dufflehead? Is that a problem for you? I’m just trying to understand where you are coming from, that’s how I learn about people and that’s the reason I engage in these sort of discussions, because I do want to learn and understand the reasons people believe and feel the way they do.
dufflehead says:
December 1, 2005 at 11:12 pm
you asked “what exactly is wrong with paying the Pastor?” i explained what i think is wrong with paying the pastor. this issue is one of the reasons my wife and i did, in fact, decide that the congregation that we had been a big part of was not for us anymore.
does that mean i’m going to force you to stop doing what you’re doing? no. i’m a big fan of that whole first amendment thing. i don’t have to agree that your way is right, and you don’t have to agree with me, either.
but, if the question is “Are We As Generous As We Think We Are? (Redux)” i feel that examining and questioning and, when necessary, challenging where our “generous funds” go and evalutaing the use of them is a path to good stewardship.
Jacke says:
December 2, 2005 at 9:12 am
Now, see, we can agree. I have no problem with evaluating the use of “our generous funds,” however, I still have a problem with expecting a Pastor to serve in the church, as a full time minister, so that he has no time to work at a job, without pay. Now, you disagree that a Pastor should work full time but I don’t think scripture is explicit in how much time a Pastor is supposed to serve. The scripture you quoted tells about how God calls certain people to serve but it doesn’t tell how much time people are to spend serving in those capacities. Paul certainly spent all of his time worrying about the early church and, while he was in prison, and had certain needs he appealed to the church, very humbly, and the church did meet his needs. On the other hand, when possible, he worked so as not to be a burden on the church.
I once knew a Pastor who worked secondary jobs because his church was small and the congregation could not afford to pay him, he couldn’t do as he wanted and as the people wanted and spend all of his time in ministry on behalf of the church. I still believe that there are valuable ministries taking place across the USA in churches which opt to pay salaries to their Pastors and I think it should be an individual choice as to whether each person feels those ministries outweigh or off-set the fact that part of those congregation’s tithe monies go toward paying a full time minister. I wouldn’t dream of asking a man to spend all his time in service to the church, which of necessity would keep him from earning money in another capacity, to go hungry on account of us not feeling his needs are as genuine as the needs of those in, say, Darfur. So, can you see where I’m coming from too?
dufflehead says:
December 2, 2005 at 10:12 am
yes, i know where you’re coming from. i used to be there.
the fundamental thing that we disagree on is the actual roll of a pastor or the roll of any other congregational position. and as you say, “I wouldn’t dream of asking a man to spend all his time in service to the church” . . .me either. i think everyone is to serve God and everyone else but i think congregations have become too dependant on this congregational position.
Jacke says:
December 2, 2005 at 11:12 pm
Ya know, Dufflehead, my husband and I were just talking, I read him your reply and he said, well, I guess you’d have to go back to “traveling Pastors” that you’d pay with a chicken or something. Do you know anything about that?
I have an Emmylou Harris tape that has a song about a traveling Pastor, only this traveling Pastor’s name was Jesus.
The thing is, those traveling Pastor’s still had a hand out, didn’t they? They still expected something in return for their service. I think there was a time when it was called *hospitality.* I come along and do something for you, offer you a service, take your picture...fill in the blank, and if you appreciated what I did for you, even if not really a material good, you might offer something in return. It might be money, or a chicken, it might be a good home-cooked meal or a place to lay my head for the night.
I guess I get a little something from my Pastor and don’t mind being polite and giving him a little something in return for his trouble.
You follow your convictions, I’ll follow mine.
dufflehead says:
December 3, 2005 at 2:12 am
last word
Jacke says:
December 4, 2005 at 11:12 pm
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/180/story_18012_1.html
ninjanun says:
December 5, 2005 at 4:13 pm
Where the Pastor Came From
Jacke says:
December 6, 2005 at 9:12 am
Ninjanun, thank you for this link.
At first I wanted to argue with the writer but upon looking into it myself I found he was right and had no room to argue...geesh, I hate it when that happens.
Anyway, after discovering Viola was correct I went on to read a portion of the link, which is quite long, with an open mind. I will revisit it and read more as time allows.
ninjanun says:
December 6, 2005 at 2:12 pm
thank you, Jacke. I really appreciate your thoughtful response and open mind in this matter.
I also appreciated the link you provided above; forgot to say so at the time.
Hope you are having a wonderful day!
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