22
2010
Examining Church Finance Priorities
An article by 
As Haitians suffer the devastation of an earthquake that his ripped apart the lives of many and left an already poor nation crippled even further, it was with sadness that I read the Sunday Star Times article regarding the empires of three prominent Auckland churches, revealing their financial situations and their growing wealth.
The suffering of the Haitians and the opulent wealth of the three churches examined in that article may seem disconnected and possibly they are. Since the name of Jesus is invoked by those churches, and every other church that pursues great wealth, the horrible nature of that disconnection, where it exists, must be made clear especially since the image of the money grabbing, wealth hoarding church is fast becoming the public’s perception of what it means to be Christian.
It seems to me that for a long time the general populace has subconsciously had a very good understanding of what it should mean to be Christian. Images of people like Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr, the late Pope John Paul II and most importantly, Jesus himself, are often invoked when discussing the model Christian.
Images of these people are foremost in our minds when we consider the ideals of Christianity because they uphold values of service, sacrifice, standing up for the voiceless and valuing others as we would wish to be valued. They uphold the ideals of putting ourselves last and putting others first and indeed, this would be consistent with the life of Jesus, the very person those of us who call ourselves “Christian” strive to follow. It’s these ideals that should come to the fore when faced with situations like the Haiti earthquake.
The Bible is replete with challenges to use our lives and all that we have to serve the poor, marginalized and oppressed. It becomes very clear on a careful examination of scripture, that such a pursuit is central to the call God places upon people who identify themselves as his followers, not the increase of our own wealth as Prosperity Doctrine adherents would have us believe via the supposed blessing of God. Church communities building empires and amassing wealth when that wealth is not used to serve the poor flies in the very face of God’s desire for justice and mercy for the poor.
With a little practice it becomes easy for church leaders to justify the building of wealth via church donations and it becomes easy to justify lavish expenses. Such justifications include believing that the leaders work so hard and sacrifice so much that they deserve the congregation giving them lavish gifts and sizeable salaries. There is also the justification of good works – the creation of responsible citizens – such a pursuit, in the minds of some, needs loads of cash, large buildings, expensive musical equipment and many programmes for personal development, programmes that are often only available at a cost.
To add weight to these justifications, the leaders of such churches are likened to Kings or prophets of the Old Testament and they draw on the practices of ancient Israel and equate them to the modern Church, often with little to no real evidenced understanding of the practices they are talking about.
It is not uncommon to hear the Old Testament practice of tithing being put forward as a requirement of a Christian with scriptural passages used to add weight to the message of needing to give abundantly to the church. A classic passage used comes from the words of the prophet Malachi as he conveyed a message from God to the people of ancient Israel:
Will anyone rob God? Yet you are robbing me! But you say, ‘How are we robbing you?’ In your tithes and offerings! You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me—the whole nation of you! Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing. I will rebuke the locust for you, so that it will not destroy the produce of your soil; and your vine in the field shall not be barren, says the LORD of hosts. Then all nations will count you happy, for you will be a land of delight, says the LORD of hosts. Malachi 3:8-12 (NRSV)
The implied and sometimes stated message given when this passage is used is that if people do not give to the church, they are effectively robbing God. It is not hard to imagine how a vulnerable believer whose only wish is to faithfully serve God will react to such coercion.
But this is where the challenge for wealthy churches and any church that pursues wealth as one of its central aims begins, with this very passage and others like it.
An examination of biblical tithing (in the Old Testament this was giving ten percent of one’s produce for the year), specifically involved primary produce – agricultural products such as grain, cattle, olive oil and wine. These were the economic back-bone of the culture at the time. If these goods could not be transported to the temple where the tithe was collected, then they could be sold for money. The money would then be taken to the temple and used to purchase produce again. Interestingly, artisans were not required to tithe a tenth of their products and things such as gold and silver are never mentioned. The tithe was never collected as cash, only as food.
The food would then be used for various purposes. One purpose was a big party. The food would be eaten in Jerusalem with great rejoicing, creating an amazing sense of community and festivity. Some of the food would be kept in storehouses and given to the Levites who administered the national religious duties as servants to the high priest and government and who were one of the few people groups that were landless, thus unable to produce their own food. Levites, as recipients of the tithe were neither allowed to own or inherent land inside Israel. Alongside the provision of food for the Levites kept in the storehouses, the storehouses were also where the rest of the food was kept for the poor, the orphans and the widows.
The chief purpose of the tithe was to act as a type of social security for those with no land or family protection so they would be provided with food. Thus in the challenge of the passage of Malachi we see God’s anger burning because the people’s priority around their wealth was to keep it for themselves rather than filling up the storehouses to provide for the needy. In the quoted passage God is promising to bless them when they provide for the poor and those who need assistance.
It is shameful to see how that challenge and promise has been manipulated today to justify pumping large sums of money into church buildings, lavish gifts for church leaders, fleets of modern vehicles, large salaries and countless programmes.
In the words of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25, we see God judging humanity according to how we have treated those who are left naked, hungry, thirsty, imprisoned or in a strange land. His admonition is that how we treat them is how we treat him, yet how many are hoarding wealth and building personal empires?
If the pursuit of churches such as those represented in the Sunday Star Times article is to grow great citizens as stated, is that best achieved by the creation of an empire and encouraging people to fund that empire, or is it done by demonstrating service to the hurting and broken in the world around us, demonstrating and teaching sacrifice and lifting others up while we put ourselves last? How can a Church teach this when it’s biggest priority evidenced in its bank accounts is the growth of wealth – where our treasure is, there our heart is also. This is not to say that wealthy churches cannot and do not have their priorities right, but the trappings of wealth should cause all to regularly stop and examine their priorities and how that wealth is used. None of us are free of this challenge.
If our example is Jesus, the one who emptied himself of all of his glory and was born as a refugee in a dusty town within an occupied territory, entering life in an animal’s stable and placed in a feeding trough, taking the form of a slave, humbling himself and becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Phillipians 2); if this is our example then the challenge is on to make sure, as churches, that our financial priorities reflect his concerns and his concerns are not big buildings, large salaries, flash cars and lavish gifts for those who call themselves his servants.
There is an old maxim in relation to the use of our finances that is fitting here and that should challenge us all both individually and communally – enough is enough.
I want to lay down one simple challenge to all church leaders, even those of us who may be standing in critique of churches that are perceived to be wealthy, thinking we are free of guilt in this. I work for a Christian development agency where we do our utmost (along with many other agencies) to try and work close to a principle of keeping our administrative expenses to 20-30% of income while 70-80% of our income goes into the field to serve the poor. We do so knowing that people’s donations matter immensely.
I would like to challenge all churches to carefully examine the proportions of their income used to operate buildings, vehicles, salaries and programmes compared to contributions to serving the poor and needy in New Zealand and abroad (whether that be through services you directly offer to those in need or through the use of third party organizations). Does this use of our resources best reflect the one that we claim to follow, Jesus of Nazareth – friend of sinners, father of the fatherless, defender of the widow and orphan, the one who hears the cry of the poor?
The church can reclaim its strong voice advocating for the poor, marginalized and oppressed, but it cannot do so unless we can truly demonstrate that this is where our priority lies rather than in the expansion of our own buildings and business empires.
Let’s take up the challenge of the prophet Micah in Micah 6:8 to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God and let’s do so in every aspect of our lives and communities, including our finances.
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About the Author: Frank Ritchie
Frank is the Education and Advocacy Manager for TEAR Fund NZ. Frank is a licensed Minister in the Wesleyan Methodist Church of New Zealand and has a keen interest in biblical perspectives of Justice and how this connects to service to, with and for the poor, disadvantaged and marginalized people of the world.
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After reading the Tear Fund Annual report, it’s great that expenses have been kept relatively low.
An even higher challenge would be the model of Charity Water where all donations go straight out to the field – thus a 0% admin overhead.
This would require a special group of backers who do nothing but cover admin costs – but are a separate group from the donors.
Thanks for the comment,James
Having a special group covering admin costs would mean that there are still admin costs that money coming in goes towards… whether donations be specifically directed towards those costs or not. It would be impossible to run an organisation without those costs.
I’d tip my hat towards any donor that was giving purely towards admin costs though, it would demonstrate a good understanding of such operations… but they are still donors.
The challenge to keep costs low to better reflect our Christian values of keeping the poor as our central focus of work whether we be churches or NGO’s is a challenge that should always remain close to us. We should be critiquing ourselves in this area all the time. It’s not an easy challenge to face, but it’s a necessary one.
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Don’t let my comments dissuade from a very thought provoking article. Alas most church income appears to be used just to keep the machine going.
Maybe this is because churches are more about producing a product for consumers. NGO’s have far more accountability to those they serve (as well as the donors).
Hey Frank,how are you bro its Marc Hamilton.
Loving the article & its something that I have struggled with for years…The heart & ways of Jesus are so often opposite to that of the church. When I look at the early church in Acts there is so much in there about absolute generosity(selling land etc..) & being more concerned about others being looked after & cared for.
It is a challenge for each & every one of us!
Hope you are well
Great comment, James.
Marc! Great to hear from you man. I’m doing very well!
It is a big challenge and I write such things acutely aware that I personally fall well short of the ideal and need to allow myself to be critiqued… it’s a healthy challenge we should always be allowing ourselves to be subjected to.
Hey what was that article called in the SST?
Great article Frank, we need more voices in the blessed west challenging the church to keep it real. Would love to read the Sunday Star Times article you refer to. Is it available on line?
Good work Frank.
Mark
“The Business of Religion” is the name of the article – it’s not available online so when I asked them about it, then sent it to me in PDF format. I would put it up here, but I’d probably be breaching copyright or something.
Mark, I just checked out The Cappuccino Club. It looks great!!!
Thanks for the encouragement Frank, just trying to do our bit. Heading out to Metro Manila in a couple of weeks to serve alongside Servants for 6 months. I need to get back there, feel like I am suffocating here in “Gods Own”.
I can understand that – it’s hard enough coming back after examining slum work for only two weeks!!
My prayers are with you. I have a great admiration for the work of Servants.
[...] here to see the original: Examining Church Finance Priorities | The Humanitarian Chronicle Categories: Tithing Tags: being-put, bible, christian, commandment, hear-the-old, jesus, [...]
Of the 70-80% of Tear Fund income that goes into the field to serve the poor, is any of that used for support of aid workers in the field, building expenses for providing services to the needy, travel on aid work business etc?
Of course it is… you know that
It’s why I was careful to make sure that the challenge put forward is open ended. If a church is confident that it’s priorities in the use of its finances reflects the heart of Christ then I’m happy. I made sure that this included services directly offered by churches… but I struggle to see how large salaries and leasing top of the line vehicles helps in this area. We would openly challenge any of our partners in the field who were using money in such a manner.
Justifying a large church salary by using salaries in the charitable (and the question is which charities… not all Executive Director salaries in the charitable sector are equal) and corporate sector doesn’t work in my mind either. Churches are not businesses.
But where the SST article falls short is that it doesn’t examine what is provided by the infrastructure that takes up those large chunks of expense. If a church can truly justify all its expenses in light of its mandate to serve, then so be it… if not, then may they be challenged.
Yeah. I was just wanting to get my head around your challenge.
Bench marking church salaries against charitable organisations, misses the issue of call (which could be present in charities too of course). A large salary suggests that the size of the church means its more work (not true), that you need a large salary to attract the best (now there’s a trap) and that paying the person more money will somehow increase the benefit to the people the church is called to serve…
Flash cars – can’t see how a case can be made for it. I do think that some organisations do a good job of using lease cars and that might mean a new car on a regular basis but you still have a choice on what you go for.
The SST article was a bit poor really – mainly because its sources were poor. The Charities register is not a great place to get the data it seems! For example if you do the maths on City Impact the average salary is 35,000 which isn’t over the top at all (especially when the min wage is 25K). Someone needs to do a decent investigative job on it all.
Part of the article is here: http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/news/3254601/LIFE-CHURCH
And here http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/news/3254603/DESTINY
Last but not least: http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/news/3254602/CITY-IMPACT
Thanks for putting those up. I was going to do it myself, but you beat me to it
Think of me as a guest administrator = posting links and asking helpful questions
I would like to see the qualification of “advancing religion” removed for organisations looking to gain tax exempt status. This may mean that churches who do genuine charity work would have to split that particular outreach off from the proselytizing and day-to-day belief-enforcement aspects but it would be a fairer system IMO.
That would mean that I don’t have to support the likes of Destiny by way of my taxes (a fact which infuriates me) and churches would be incentivised to put their tax-free money towards what we can all agree is a worth-while cause (i.e. alleviating suffering) as opposed to sending solar-powered Bibles to Haiti or building churches with better sound systems.
They’d be free to continue to do build churches or buy Harleys of course; it just would be taxed like everything else.
Damian,
I don’t have a problem with churches being charged tax for business activity but most churches do not earn income that would be taxable if their tax exempt status were removed. So for example the crazy merchandising that goes on should be taxed. I was on a site today charging for downloading MP3 messages…really? There’s not even a blank disc to buy!
It’s not just MP3s.
If you give, say, $1000 as a donation to a tax exempt organisation (Destiny or your own church) you will get a tax refund of $330 from the government come tax time. I help pay for that in my taxes and I don’t think I should when it goes towards “advancing a religion” I don’t believe to be true. I *have* helped pay for Tamaki’s motorbike and your church’s projector but I really didn’t want to.
Ah you’re not talking about tax exempt status, you’re talking about donee status. That’s actually quite a tricky issue which I might even try to find the time to tease out
For the moment, let me say this: you and I are in the same boat on Tamaki’s motorcycle. But when it comes to our projector we’d find it hard to slice it down the middle – you see we use it on Sundays as part of Christian worship, on Tuesdays for a drop in group for Mums and kids from the community (you wouldn’t believe the community isolation for some of these people), on Tuesday nights the Air Training Corps use it for free (they are quasi military but it seems to work for these kids), after school and most holidays another trust use it for their programmes for children with special needs for free and then there are the one-off courses like marriage support which its really helpful to have a projector for…
“proselytizing and day-to-day belief-enforcement” – I wouldn’t use those terms
but my point is, the line on those issues in many churches is just too difficult to draw. And in many cases, its the commitment to something “religious” in nature that draws a group together so that they can pursue social good. Thats certainly for many churches an indivisible part of their DNA.
What I’d be more interested in joining you in, is a campaign to have the “personal benefit” clauses that are required for all trusts to be enforced rigorously. I bet you that would throw up some interesting abuses of the system where exorbitant sums of money are spent on salaries, vehicles and buildings that don’t visibly offer assistance to the vulnerable.
If you remove the “advances religion” as a qualification to become a charity (tax exempt and donee status) then churches who make their facilities available to the community will still qualify under the other qualifications and you will automatically disqualify the corruption you and I both loath.
Of course, if donated money goes toward community-available equipment everyone can agree that there is a benefit there. But money spent on a guitar that is only used for worship ought to be excluded and people like myself shouldn’t have to help pay for it.
I’ve only really been involved in two churches in my life and both of those never really made their facilities available to the community. There would have to be some way for groups seeking charitable status to account for where their money goes. I realise that our current system doesn’t do this despite the recent changes and that there will always be grey areas but some form of audit combined with the removal of “advances religion” will go a long way toward eliminating the corruption we see and the unfairness of forcing others to support a belief they do not hold.
So, instead of:
* advances education
* advances religion
* relieves poverty
* is otherwise beneficial to the community
changing it to:
* advances education
* relieves poverty (suffering?)
* is otherwise beneficial to the community
Sound fair?
Damian,
I’m interested in a couple of things:
1. How exactly are you supporting the advancement of religion? You pay tax on income as do I and that wouldn’t change with your suggestion. Unless you’re arguing that everyone’s tax would go down because rebates weren’t being paid to people making donations to churches (which I think is theoretical rather than actual)
2. If there were causes that were problemtic for you under the education, poverty and welfare heads, would you feel the same way? I’d have to say there are causes under all 4 heads that I don’t personally have much time for but I live with it along with democracy!
3. If your suggestion was to lead to churches doing less in the community, mainly because the burden of compliance under the other 3 heads would become overwhelming, would you be OK with that? ie How much do you weigh the elimination of the perceived unfairness against the betterment of society?
I really am not trying to be perverse – just trying to understand the point of view.
I should add, just to create some level of relativity – the average rebate per person in 2008 across all categories was less than $300 per person. c.390,000 people claimed rebates. Income tax in 2008 was 23 billion, so what’s that about 0.5%, I’m not sure, maths was never my strong point!
Brett,
In answer to your questions:
1. I’m being forced to support the advancement of religion financially via my taxes but more disturbingly by the implicit free pass that my government gives any and all religions merely for the fact that they believe in the supernatural and want to spread their belief. (Non-supernatural religions don’t qualify).
2. If there was a charity set up under the guise of education which, in fact, spent its time mis-educating people; sure, I’d have a very big problem with the specific misuse of charity status. Same for welfare, etc.
3. I believe that if churches were to have to show that their tax-free money actually went to activities that benefit the community rather than simply advancing their religion we would see an increase in benefit to society. Abuses such as the excesses we currently see would be less likely to happen because they’d not be able to wriggle out on some ethereal possibility that they may be advancing their religion.
To be honest, I can understand why someone currently in a church environment may feel that there is some hidden hook when an atheist suggests that we’d all be better off if we removed ‘advancing religion’ from the list of qualifications for charity status. But I believe this to be of genuine benefit to all of us. I believed it whilst still a Christian. You open yourself wide to corruption when all you have to do to receive tax breaks is try to spread your beliefs.
What’s more is that it is the *fair* thing to do. Do unto others and all that. If you know that you’d be unhappy indirectly funding the spread of a belief system that you happen to disagree with then it’s a simple matter to see what it must be like to have the shoe on the other foot.
By all means, spread your beliefs, shout them from the rooftops! But please stop making me fund you to do it. I’ll happily help pay for furthering education, alleviating suffering and otherwise building a better society.
I wonder if the two (spreading beliefs and bettering society) can be intrinsically connected?
As an example, a friend of mine works in the faith-based unit of one of our larger prisons. The stats show that prisoners who go through this unit (they must apply) are 3-4 times less likely to re offend. The government loves the unit because it pads their stats for re offending in general.
My point is, I don’t think you could surgically divide what this group does between “community betterment” and “spreading of beliefs”. One informs and drives the other, and they result in real, tangible benefits for the community at large.
This is an interesting conversation.
I’m not going to give my opinion
Looking at the definitions of what fits charitable status – education, poverty relief, religion and whatever else “is otherwise beneficial to the community”, I guess those who put that together originally saw religion as beneficial to the community and certainly, there are many stories where people’s lives have been turned around to become better citizens because of the advancement of religion into their lives. I’m one of them.
The problem we have is that a number of people have used the religion clause as a back-door for avoiding taxes and increasing their own wealth… and in some cases, abusing the lives of others. I’m all for some sort of change if it curbs the latter – the question is, what sort of change?
Does anyone know how the law defines the statement “beneficial to the community”? Understanding that one could open some doors.
In the meantime – there are political parties I don’t like and I resent that my taxes are used to pay some of their salaries and advertising during election time to advance their ideologies, some of which I think are destructive for our country. I don’t like that I’m forced to support the advancement of those ideas through the payment of money I worked hard to earn, but…
Rhett,
I think that people can often improve when they go from criminal to convert and that this happens with a number of different religions and causes. To be honest I’m incredibly happy when they do so as often it’s the only way they can make a break from their previous life and find an accepting ‘family’. I’m not so sure it’s the belief itself that causes this however as people are often looking for a way out initially and it is into the arms of whatever organisation happens to be there at the time (I worked briefly in prisons a while back). But, if you can demonstrate that your religious organisation (whether it be Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Scientologist or Ralian) plays a part in bettering a segment of society then you should be able to get charitable status under the qualification of “is otherwise beneficial to the community” rather than “advances religion”. And I’d support it.
Of course it would be useful to know what it is that actually makes people better when you go into prisons. Is it the message you bring or is it the fact that people are accepted and given support when they leave? Or both? Or something else?
(As an aside, Ralians don’t currently qualify under the “advances religion” clause because they do not have a supernatural aspect to their religion. But if they can demonstrate that society benefits, say, when they go to prisons then I’d be happy to help fund their prison missions).
The thing is, we can all agree on “beneficial to the community” but we ALL have different opinions about the various benefits of advancing a particular religion or belief.
Frank,
The origins of our tax exclusions for religions are, I believe, historical in basis. From England and the close relationship between church and state. We don’t have the same clear separation that the likes of France or the US have.
I think that the whole “beneficial to the community” is necessarily vague. It gives the Charities Commission a fair degree of leeway to use their discernment when approving a group for charity status. I’m OK with that kind of vagueness. I remain against the idea that a group should gain all the perks of a charity simply because they are a supernatural religion seeking to spread their message.
The difference between funding wild and wacky political parties is that this is a crucial part of the democratic process where we enable the ability to change who governs us and we don’t restrict what kind of policies constitutes a political party so long as they don’t trample on human rights. I’m happy to help fund Tamaki’s (now defunct) political party so long as it qualifies because this is an important part of democracy and the freedom to do away with the established powers. Funding of groups solely on the basis of the fact that they want to spread supernatural beliefs is not, in my opinion, what governments are supposed to do.
I guess this comes down to the deeper issue of the separation of church and state. What are your opinions on that?
Sorry for the long and involved replies. This is an interesting topic though and thanks for the reasonable discussion. (I’m not going to be able to give this proper attention over the next couple of days but will be reading any further comments with interest).
The US has a clear separation between the church and state legally, in cultural practice though it’s sadly a whole other ball game.
We on the other hand have vestiges of a hybrid union between church and state for ceremonial effect, but culturally the two are clearly separated. I’d rather have what we have than what the US has – but it would be no issue for me if things like the parliamentary prayer were dropped and various other Christian traditions that have little to no impact.
I have to admit to not having much of an opinion on the charitable status issue, but with various groups using the “advancement of religion” clause for their own gain – things like Scientology being a fine example – I would be happy to see a decent dialogue happening at an official level that removed that clause but paved the way for the benefits of religion to be recognized in the “beneficial to the community” clause.
Those ain’t “humans” you talking about.
Check out who’s running the show, so to speak.
http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/political_ponerology_lobaczewski.htm
Regards.
There’s a bit too much reading in that link for me, Nacluv (Vulcan) and since there isn’t real any engagement with the post in your comment, I’m wondering if you’re a spammer?
You’ll need to fatten out your thoughts for me in a comment rather than a link to a convoluted discussion about a book on Pathocracy and pathological leaders controlling politics and thus creating pathological societies.
Ain’t no spammer. I was intending to recommend your article on the Haiti Children trafficking to SOTT.net
http://www.sott.net
and so just checking your accuracy and your links that you provided in the article.
It was just a suggestion to read that article on Ponerology. You might then see the connection but it’s entirely up to you. Thanks.
Regards.
Thanks for coming back, Nacluv. This blog gets lots of spam, most of which gets caught, but sometimes a few get through. As you can imagine when I saw the link with no immediate connection given to the post, my alarm bells went off. Clearly I was mistaken
I’ve read through the initial part of your link and it’s interesting. It will be a while before I find time to read the rest though.
I would be really interested in your thoughts on the idea of pathological leaders and how that connects to this post… though I can see where the dots connect.
Yeah, SOTT.net has the same problems too with spammers.
Keep reading and then you might see more.
And oh, I have a “religion” too. Check it out when you have the time.
http://paleochristianity.org/