Session 2

Introduction

My approach to this session is very simple. I'm just going to walk through seven passages in Scripture—you can see them there on your handout—and I'm going to think through implications for each of them. In particular, I will focus on a "do" and a "don't" from each of them as we think about how we can best serve our congregations in encouraging them to give.

Principles of Cheerful Giving (2 Corinthians 9:6-7)

Let's start with 2 Corinthians 9:6-7, which maybe you memorized as a child. In this passage, you remember Paul is writing to the church in Corinth, and he's encouraging them to give toward an offering he is collecting to help famine-stricken Christians in Judea. It seems in the context that they had actually promised him they would contribute, but they haven't done it yet. Yet, despite all that history, Paul is very careful not to use guilt as a tool to extract the promised money from them. In verse 6 of chapter 9, he summarizes what he's written:

The point is this: The person who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the person who sows generously will also reap generously. Each person should do as he has decided in his heart—not reluctantly or out of compulsion, since God loves a cheerful giver.

— 2 Corinthians 9:6-7 (CSB)

I've always found that statement fascinating: "God loves a cheerful giver." When you get a letter in the mail asking for some contribution to a local charity or a political campaign, they have no interest in your motivations for giving. All they want is your money.

But that's not true with God. He doesn't need our money, like we talked about before. I love Psalm 50:12 so much, I'll read it again:

If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and everything in it is mine.

— Psalm 50:12 (CSB)

God's plans are not mere hopes or dreams or ambitions; they are facts of the future that will come to pass regardless of what your church does with its money. God works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will, regardless of what your church does with its money. Yet, by giving, we make a powerful statement that He is worthy of our money.

When you give to your church instead of buying that nice vacation, you say that Jesus is worth more than the vacation. When you give to your church out of gratitude for what Christ has given to you, you show how great His gift of Christ really is. When your church values God's promises and shows that through their budget, you show how good and trustworthy God really is.

This is why God loves a cheerful giver. The gifts of a guilty and grudging giver don't accomplish what God wants. Grudging gifts don't glorify God; they glorify you as the giver. Grudging gifts say, "You know, frankly, my money would be better spent elsewhere, but because I am such a moral and upstanding person, I will give anyway." That's not the cheerful giving we see here.

Instead, we should give because it's good for us to give. Remember that clause in Hebrews 11:6:

Now without faith it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

— Hebrews 11:6 (CSB)

We give cheerfully because it's good for us, and that is the giving that glorifies God. I think the fact that the Bible gives so little detail on what that reward is in Hebrews 11:6 only magnifies this effect.

Let's say that I tell my son to go clean up the garage, and if he does, I have a surprise to give to him. If his next question is, "Well, what's the surprise?" he then weighs whether it is worth cleaning up the garage to get that surprise. That makes me kind of crumple inside. What I wanted him to say is, "Sure, Dad, I'll do it because I trust that whatever surprise you have for me is going to be awesome and well worth giving up my time."

In the first scenario, he doesn't have faith in me, so he wants to know what the surprise is. That doesn't honor me as his dad. In the second scenario, it honors me hugely. Giving in order to take hold of heavenly reward is only mercenary if we first evaluate the reward before we choose to give—which, again, is the problem with the Prosperity Gospel. But giving cheerfully in order to take hold of the heavenly reward because we trust that whatever God has for us is well worth whatever we give up—well, that glorifies God. Without faith, it is impossible to please God.

On your handout, you will see a "do" and a "don't" of implication from this first section. First, do teach your church that the goal of giving is to be counted faithful, as we saw in Jesus' parable in Matthew 25: "Well done, my good and faithful servant." Faithfulness has faith in God's promises, and so it risks the things the world values, like money, in order to show that God's promises are better. If my congregation is ahead on the budget but they're not giving faithfully, that's failure, not success. If we're behind and they're giving faithfully, well, God is pleased, and I should be as well.

I want to contrast that with two motivations for giving that we should don't do (avoid). The first is giving through guilt, which is what Paul is so careful to avoid here in 2 Corinthians. Guilty giving can easily make your people into legalists who think that God loves them because of all the things they do for God. Guilty giving is not cheerful giving. Sometimes pastors shame their churches like disobedient puppies for not giving: "Shame on you! If you would just spend a little less on yourself, look at all the good we could do." That rarely results in cheerful giving.

That doesn't mean that Christians should only give if they feel like giving. I think some of the giving which is most precious in God's sight is done by Christians who honestly would rather spend the money on themselves, but they trust God, and by faith, they give to Him and give cheerfully. That's faithful giving.

We also shouldn't motivate them by greed, like so many prosperity teachers do: "If you give to the church, God will bless your bank account, your marriage, and your business ventures." Even if God had made such promises—which He hasn't—that giving glorifies the gift, not the Giver. The fact is that God has not made such promises, and when we pretend like He has, we make Him out to be a liar. What's more, we set up our people for a crisis of faith when God doesn't deliver on the promises that we said He made. God has not promised a healthy bank account for those who give. He gives us something much better: He gives us treasure in heaven.

Spiritual Investing and Eternal Treasure (Matthew 6:19-21)

This brings us to the next passage, Matthew 6:19-21. We mentioned this earlier, but let's read starting in verse 19:

“Don’t store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves don’t break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

— Matthew 6:19-21 (CSB)

Very often, people pride themselves on how much they give, or they think that they are superior because of how much they give. But that's silly. We give in order to get something better in return; that's the giving that glorifies God. That's why giving can be cheerful. Jesus is saying, "Don't invest in the silly things of this world that are corroded by moth or stolen by thieves. Instead, invest in heavenly treasure that will last, that will never be taken away."

Consider the example I gave this morning about running into Jeff Bezos on the street. If I had given him $10,000 and he had given me 1% of Amazon, who would be grateful for that transaction? Me! I'm the one who gets something of value that could be worth billions of dollars. In the same way, we need to teach our people that giving to the Lord's work is spiritual investing. We give because we think that what God has for us in heaven is better than anything our money can buy.

Two implications of this: First, do use this as a very powerful answer to a question I often get as a pastor: "How much should I give?" Some of us in this room probably believe the Old Testament tithe is mandatory for Christians today. I don't personally find that argument to be compelling in the Bible; nowhere in the New Testament do Christians get a command to tithe. You can disagree with me, but even if I did think that the command to tithe is binding today, that still doesn't answer the question of how much I should give, because maybe I should be giving well more than 10%. So, how much should I give?

I think Matthew 6 gives us a wonderful answer to that question: Give enough that it draws your heart toward heaven. If I buy Amazon stock, I'm going to pay special attention to how Amazon is doing. Much more so, if I invest my money in the Lord's work around the world, it will draw my heart to what He's doing and to how He's preparing me for heaven. Teach your people that they should give enough that it draws their hearts toward heaven, which, for many Christians, is going to be well north of 10%. Give until your heart is in it.

On the converse, don't normalize faithless giving. If I go to my church and say, "Look, if everybody would just purchase one less latte every week, then we could fund this missionary," that statement may be true mathematically, but what it does is set the expectation that people in my church are not living faithfully—that none of us are giving as we should. No, I want to invite my people to a life of exciting faithfulness where even our money can proclaim the excellence of our Savior as we invest in His promises. I never want to normalize faithless living.

Giving as a Means of Spiritual Blessing (Philippians 4:17)

That leads to our next passage, Philippians 4:17. Here at the end of Philippians, we discover that this whole letter is really a very thoughtful thank-you note. It's a very odd thank-you note because when you get notes thanking you for gifts from Christian ministries in the mail, they generally follow the same formula: "Thank you for your generous gift. Here are a dozen other needs that are currently unmet (with photos of adorable children). Don't forget next month's gift, and please prayerfully consider..." by which they just mean, "please make it bigger."

That's what you expect, but that's not what Paul does. Look at Philippians chapter 4. He starts out in verse 11 by saying he has no needs because he is content in every situation. What's more, in verse 13, he can do all things through Christ who strengthens him, regardless of whether the Philippians make another gift. He goes on to say in verse 18 that he is well supplied. So why should they give? Verse 17:

Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the profit that is increasing to your account.

— Philippians 4:17 (CSB)

He wants them to give because it's good for them when they give. It seems that Paul also believes in Matthew 6:21. The same goes for you. If you rarely talk about giving, you are depriving your people of a very real spiritual blessing, because it's good for them to give.

You might say, "Oh, Jamie, you don't understand people here in Los Angeles. If you talk about giving, they'll assume you're doing that because you're greedy." To which I would say: I have given talks like this in many cities around the world, and it is no different anywhere else—whether it be in Washington, D.C., Shanghai, India, South Africa, Portugal, and I suspect, in first-century Philippi. But that hardly suggests that I should not say what God's Word says.

Whenever we talk with our churches about giving, we need to remind them that God is encouraging them to give because it's good for them to give. Neither God nor my church needs their money. But again, all that rings hollow if the church thinks that I, the pastor, need their money. This is why we need to be careful—through a reserve fund or other aspects of our budget—that we rarely get into a place where our motives are suspect. We want them to really believe that when we say it's good for them to give, we have no other reason for saying that.

So, as you see in your handout, don't only talk about giving when your church needs money. Instead, do tell your people that you want them to give because it's good for them to give.

Funding the Teaching of the Word (Galatians 6:6)

Let's move on then to speak about a verse that actually does quite specifically address the financial interest that pastors have in a church's giving: Galatians 6:6.

Let the one who is taught the word share all his good things with the teacher.

— Galatians 6:6 (CSB)

This is about as close as the New Testament gets to a very simple "Thou shalt give to thy church" command. I find it really interesting, by the way, that such a command doesn't explicitly exist in the New Testament. We see all kinds of evidence that the churches of the New Testament were giving because we see commands about what to do with the money that people gave, but we don't actually see a rigid command for people to give to the church. Why is that? Because "God loves a cheerful giver"—because we should be giving out of an overflow of the heart, not simply because we're told to do it.

What we see in the New Testament is a great expectation and assumption that Christians give. The closest we see to a command to give to your church is particularly focused on funding the teaching that we receive as Christians. It says, "Look, if you are taught in your church, you should give to your church. It's your responsibility to fund the teaching that you receive."

We see all through the New Testament—be it here or passages like 1 Timothy 5:18—that the New Testament creates a very healthy connection between the money that a church gives and the teaching they get. I think it's a spiritual version of what Paul says to the Thessalonians: "If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat."

In fact, when Paul speaks to congregations whose ministry he accepted support from—like the Philippians or the Corinthians—he wants them to understand the oddity of having their teaching paid for by someone other than themselves. He says so forcefully in 2 Corinthians 11:8:

I robbed other churches by taking pay from them to minister to you.

— 2 Corinthians 11:8 (CSB)

So, it was good for the Philippians to give toward that effort. There were obviously good reasons for Paul to have done things the way he did in Corinth, but he in no way wants the Corinthians to get used to the idea that their teaching is funded by somebody else. It's fine when the church is young, but it is dangerous in perpetuity. Just as a parent who provides for their child's needs long into adulthood can suppress that child's growth toward maturity, a church that forever relies on the generosity of others is deprived of the natural forces that will help it grow into maturity.

Two implications of that: First, do teach your congregation that it is good for them to give enough money to secure excellent teaching. One implication from Galatians 6 is that those with means have the responsibility to do so. Maybe your church can't do that right now, so you are bivocational. That's fine; I respect you for what you're doing. Maybe your church can't do that, and so you're raising support from other churches. That's fine, and I respect what you're doing, but make it your ambition for that not to be your ending point. It is good for your congregation to get to the point where they can fund the teaching they receive.

Second, don't let the church rely on external sources; a church should normally rely on the giving of its members and not much else. Sometimes extreme poverty will require a bivocational pastor or require the church to depend on the generosity of others, but even when that's necessary, it's not the healthiest long-term place to be.

I think we confuse that sometimes. My 26-year-old son may need financial assistance from me, and it's a good thing for me to provide it to him. That doesn't mean it's the healthiest place for him to be, and we want to exit that arrangement as soon as we can. It may be that your church has depended on others for the teaching they receive, and that was necessary, but we want to eventually get to the point where they are independent.

I do find it interesting that the one example in the New Testament of a congregation that was infected with extreme poverty is the Macedonian churches. 2 Corinthians 8:2 tells us that they were the ones who, in their extreme poverty, overflowed in wealth of generosity. It's just good to remember that poverty is not a reason why we can't be generous. The Philippians are a wonderful example of that.

1 Timothy 5:17 tells us that we should give double honor to those elders who rule well, by which Paul clarifies he means preaching and teaching. In 1 Timothy 5:18, he quotes Jesus to clarify that by "double honor," he is referring to financial pay. Paul's justification for paying their pastors is not grounded in their office, as if all elders are worthy of pay. It's not grounded in their need, as if we should pay pastors as little as we can to meet their basic needs. It's grounded in their work. To do this, he quotes Jesus from Matthew 10 and Luke 10: "The worker is worthy of his wages."

If a church has excellent preaching, it should give enough to pay for excellent preaching. If a church pays their pastor, that will allow him to focus on preparing excellent teaching, undistracted by the need for money. We need to remember that preaching is the engine that drives all the other good things in a church. A good standard for paying our pastors, I think, is the one we find in Titus 3:13: see that they "lack nothing." Not to get rich by being a pastor, but to see that your pastors can give themselves wholeheartedly to the ministry without being distracted by a lack of money.

Galatians 6:6 gives us an excellent motivation for all of us as Christians to give to a church to fund the teaching we receive. If someone is unable to give but they still benefit from that teaching, they should be able to articulate why other people should be paying for the teaching that they receive. Sometimes that's a very easy thing to do: "I can't give because I don't have a job." Great, we understand. But I think sometimes that articulation is a little more challenging, and maybe some soul-searching is necessary to understand why other people are paying for the teaching I receive.

A church that responds to the call of Galatians 6:6 is a church that will supply the financial cost of its own teaching, and quite likely, like the Philippians, will also be generous toward other churches. This is a church that, in turn, can start new churches that will supply the cost of their own teaching, rather than being dependent on others. What we see just in this one verse is the seed in the New Testament for a sustainable movement of gospel expansion and church planting. Churches that are forever dependent are a Great Commission cul-de-sac; they're just not going to go anywhere.

The Mechanics of Faithful Giving (1 Corinthians 16:1-2)

Turn then to 1 Corinthians 16:1-2, where Paul, I think, gives us some good descriptions of the mechanics of faithful giving. How, when, and how much should I give? Paul gives us a really good answer:

Now about the collection for the saints: Do the same as I instructed the Galatian churches. On the first day of the week, each of you is to set something aside and save in keeping with how he is prospering, so that no collections will need to be made when I come.

— 1 Corinthians 16:1-2 (CSB)

Paul did not ride into Corinth and make a big, emotional appeal for funds. In fact, he wanted to make sure that such an appeal was not necessary. He did not want the Corinthians to hear from him about the neediness of the Judean Christians and only then dig deep into their pockets to help. He wanted generosity to be part of the regular cadence of their Christian lives, so that when he arrived, the money would just be sitting there.

There are three things we learn about how to help our churches give from this verse:

First, giving should be planned, Sunday by Sunday. Paul wants the Corinthians to consider how much they should give. That's something that is deliberate; it is something that should be regular. It is the exact opposite of emotional appeals for funds, which I think wrongly confuse spontaneous giving with spiritual giving. Giving that is planned, deliberate, and regular is not something you're going to write an exciting missions letter about—it's not flashy on the surface, but it's deeply healthy. I think it's a much more sustainable kind of cheerful giving than the giving that happens in the heat of an emotional moment.

That's one reason why, at my church, I've really encouraged us to do giving online, where I can set myself up for a regular cadence of giving because that's planned and deliberate. I've never wanted us to do giving by text message, because I don't think that generally encourages planned giving; it encourages spontaneous giving. I'm okay with spontaneous giving, I just don't want that to be the regular cadence of how we give. I want our regular cadence to be planned, like Paul says here.

Second, giving should be proportionate. Those who have been blessed financially should probably give more; those who have been blessed less financially should probably give less. That's what Paul says here. That echoes the tithe ethic of the Old Testament where we give not membership dues, but a portion of what the Lord has entrusted to us.

Third, giving should be plentiful. The whole point of these instructions is so that when he arrives in Corinth, he won't have to ask for their money at all. Instead, he can quietly pick up the funds and take them to Jerusalem where the needs are. So when we teach our congregations about giving, we can emphasize these three things: giving should be planned, it should be proportionate, and it should be plentiful. It's interesting that Paul is advising this for the Corinthian congregation for a one-off benevolence offering. How much more so for the regular, ongoing needs of the church?

Transparency and Accountability (2 Corinthians 8:20-21)

A sixth passage to consider, also from that same collection he's making from the Corinthians: 2 Corinthians 8:20-21. There's a connection here between the generosity of a congregation and the right management of the money.

In 2 Corinthians 8, Paul is describing his goals for how the money raised from Gentile congregations (like the Corinthians and the Macedonians) should be handled. He describes his plan to have multiple men of good reputation appointed by the churches to handle the money. Why is this important to him?

We are taking this precaution so that no one will criticize us about this large sum that we are administering. Indeed, we are giving careful thought to do what is right, not only before the Lord but also before people.

— 2 Corinthians 8:20-21 (CSB)

That's really interesting. This is Paul who, earlier in 2 Corinthians when he's responding to their accusations against him, basically said, "I don't care what you think. I don't even care what my own conscience thinks; it's only what God thinks that I care about." But here, he says he does care about what people think. He wanted what was done to be honorable not only before God, but also in the sight of man.

One way that we encourage our members to give is by making sure that they know that what happens with the money is going to be honorable in the sight of man. I would encourage you to follow Paul's example: don't concentrate decision-making about your church's money in the hands of just one individual or in the hands of a few. Understand that in an age of prosperity teachers who famously get rich off the backs of the poor, transparency and accountability are useful pastoral tools. Don't think about the CPA who's helping you with your money as just trying to think through the business side of the equation; that is a pastoral tool.

Sometimes a congregation can go too far in that regard, where even the purchase of a new carpet is scrutinized by the entire congregation. We do need to understand the role that elders play in leading a congregation, and that staff can have delegated authority. But in all we do, we want to aim at what is honorable in the sight of God and the sight of man.

Contentment and Trusting God (Hebrews 13:5)

One last verse to consider: Hebrews 13:5.

Keep your life free from the love of money. Be satisfied with what you have, for he himself has said, I will never leave you or abandon you.

— Hebrews 13:5 (CSB)

It's one of the sweetest verses in the New Testament as we think about money, and I think it's one of the most important. I want this verse to speak to us in two ways: first, quite directly as a warning and a promise, and secondly, less directly as we apply the same principle to how we think about a church's money.

Very simply, first: keep your life free from the love of money. If you are not generous, how can you expect the people in your church who follow you to be generous? The love of money comes from greed and it comes from fear, and Hebrews 13 addresses both of these.

First, it says we need to be content with what we have. The Lord knows your needs. He knows the balance you have at the bank. He has been very deliberate in giving you the balance you have and the needs that you have. Paul's words in 1 Timothy 6, I think, are a forceful warning against the greed of church leaders. He says:

But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out. If we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation, a trap, and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and by craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

— 1 Timothy 6:6-10 (CSB)

From the popes of the Middle Ages to the prosperity teachers of today, history is sadly riddled with examples of men and women who I'm sure read these words, knew what they said, and yet somehow convinced themselves that they were an exception to this rule. But there are no exceptions to this rule. Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare. Brothers and sisters, may that not describe any of us. Remember, it's not merely the wealthy who struggle with greed. Be content with what you have.

Hebrews 13:5 also addresses fear. Maybe you're a pastor, and your congregation has been shortsighted and is needlessly depriving you of the money you need to provide for your family. Quite contrary to Titus 3:13, your ministry is, in fact, lacking for want of money. Brothers, if that's you, I grieve for you, and I admire you. You likely have some difficult decisions to make, and this promise is especially for you: "I will never leave you or abandon you." God does not promise prosperity, but He does promise His presence, and in His presence is wonderful comfort and contentment. So let us be free from the love of money in our own lives; that is probably no more important for anybody in your church than for you.

But we can also apply that principle to our church's money. Many a pastor is content with what the Lord has given to him, yet deeply discontented with the amount the Lord has provided for his church. "If only they gave more generously, I could have my full salary. If only they gave more generously, I could hire an assistant. If only they gave more generously, we could start a new church." Let us beware lest faithful ambition become faithless discontent. Just as for you as an individual, so for your church: be content with what you have.

The limits God has placed around your church budget are perfect. The pace at which He is growing your congregation's maturity is perfect. His plans for your church's future are perfect. He will perfectly accomplish His ambitions for your congregation, and in that hope is a wonderfully contented mindset.

Two implications of that:

First, do teach your congregation that a budget is a plan, not a promise. It is neither a promise by God, nor is it a promise to God—as in, "Lord, this year we vow to give $100,000 to your work"—nor is it a promise from God, as if we know that our church will beat its budget if only we have enough faith. We don't know. A budget is merely a plan, and with it comes the humility of James 4:15: "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." When my congregation gives less than we budget, I tell them that we should not worry, and I do my very best not to be a hypocrite, because I probably would be more prone to worry than anybody else. We trust God. We deploy the resources He's entrusted to us for gospel purposes, and if that's $5 million next year, praise God; if it's $500,000, praise God; if it's $50,000, that's a lot more than we deserve. We'll deploy what He's given to us for His purposes, even if it's less than we expected. Our goal is not to meet the budget; our goal is for our congregations to be faithful. Be content with what you have.

But a second implication: What if you suspect that many in your congregation are not giving as they should? That could be because they've honestly never thought about giving before. That's actually sometimes pretty widespread in places where Christianity is new. In a place like Southern California, my guess is that's unlikely. It's possible, but unlikely. Much more likely is the possibility that they would honestly like to give, but they have made lifestyle choices that make giving seem impossible.

I was reading a study a long time back from the University of Chicago about what happens to generosity when people move from working class to middle class. They looked at working class, middle class, and upper class. The most generous of all those groups was the upper class, because generosity doesn't hurt them. The least generous were the middle class. When people move from working class to middle class, they actually become less generous. Why is that? (By the way, if you're asking me for the citation, I've lost it. I don't remember where it came from, so I can't tell you where the study can be found, but I remember its findings.)

What happens is, when you become middle class, your "needs" grow faster than your income. Netflix was a luxury; now it's a need. A vacation was a luxury; now it's a need. A second car was a luxury; now it's a need. The same goes for violin lessons or private school or whatever it is. That's a trap that many of your people have fallen into if they are not giving faithfully, and it's a very hard trap to get out of. That's not simply something where you say, "Hey, you should give," and they say, "Oh, okay."

This is important: don't think you're going to help them out of that trap merely by harassing them about their lack of giving. What they need is not more information; what they need is to change what they value. They need to learn to value Christ more and the trappings of this world less. They need to treat His rewards as the real necessities of life, not the luxuries that they currently treat them as.

As they grow in Christ, they will begin to adjust what they do with their attention during Sunday services—a little less on their phones, a little bit more on the preacher. They'll begin to adjust what they do with their time—a little less on the golf course, a little bit more sharing the gospel. They'll begin to adjust what they do in their marriages—a little less about my needs, a little bit more about yours. And they will begin to adjust their financial values as well.

We should not expect that money will be the place where maturity begins, but it is something maturity will eventually affect. So yes, teach them about money, teach them about giving, but be content with what you have. Be content with the people you have. Embrace a godly ambition for them to embrace Christ more fully, which will eventually show up in their giving, but be content with the pace the Lord is growing them, because His timing is perfect. This means that you don't address poor giving mainly by teaching about giving; you address poor giving mainly by teaching about Jesus, and praying that your church will increasingly value Him, which will show up in its giving.

As we finish this session, I think it's important to remember that generous giving is just one aspect of Christian maturity, and as I said, it's often one of the last pieces to fall into place. As a leader in your church, you don't merely want a generous congregation; you want a congregation that treasures Jesus Christ, and generous giving is mainly important because it is a sign that they are doing that.

How do you help your people be generous? Ultimately, you show them what it looks like to fall in love with Jesus Christ. You preach to them from the Scriptures, you pray for them, you instruct them and teach them to instruct each other, you guard them from sin and error, and you help them do the same for each other. You exemplify what it looks like to live a life marked by love for our Savior, and as you teach faithfully about how we follow Jesus with our money, giving should follow.

Let me stop here. We'll take questions for a while, and then I'll explain what we're going to do for our last leg of this workshop. If you have a question, go ahead and put up your hand, and give us your name, your church, and your question.

Questions and Answers

Miguel Martinez (First Baptist Norwalk): At one point you said the church should rely on giving and not much else. What about churches that have rental properties or things like that? What do you think of that?

Jamie Dunlop: Yeah. The problem with most of your income coming from rental properties is that you can preach a false gospel, your entire congregation can leave, and your church can still be there—which is what happens so often. So many church buildings in my city should have closed down a long time ago, and Jesus would be better glorified and magnified if they had. But because they have rental properties or endowments, which were originally funded by gospel-believing brothers and sisters in Christ who would be appalled by what's being done with that money today, that false flag is still flying.

So, what do you do with that money? Well, make sure you put it to good gospel purposes. I would love for every church to be in a place where, if they stopped preaching the real gospel, their finances would fall apart. Don't put your church in a situation where you can run in perpetuity if your congregation never gives; that's not a healthy place to be.

If you are currently in that situation and you are preaching the right gospel, praise God for providing for you. But think about how you can make sure that your congregation is increasingly dependent on the giving you receive. I say that sounding a bit like a hypocrite, because my congregation, through a variety of circumstances, owns all kinds of properties, and we use them to house our staff. In the back of my mind, I'm thinking, "Okay, fifty years from now, if we've lost the gospel, these properties could be used to keep a dead congregation afloat, and we shouldn't be kept afloat." I haven't quite figured out what to do about that, so I'm not telling you to get rid of them. But right now, use them for good purposes. In our case, rental properties make up very little of our budget; our budget is mainly just the giving of our members.

Are there any questions that don't make me into a hypocrite?

Alex (Christian Fellowship Bible Church): We're expositional preachers, and we've had a lot of new people coming into our church. I was preaching through Romans for two and a half years, and I didn't get to giving until about two and a half years in. Outside of membership classes and membership meetings, how else do you address giving in the local church given the context of expositional preaching?

Jamie Dunlop: When you preach through Romans, just because Paul doesn't make that a specific, explicit application in every chapter doesn't mean it's not a faithful application of the gospel principles he's given you. I would always keep stewardship as a category in your mind to potentially apply once in a while.

For example, as you're working your way through the book of Romans and you get to chapter 12, he talks about the importance of hospitality. Well, hospitality is kind of something we do with our money in our homes, and that's a good entree to begin to talk about giving. You don't want to stretch things too far, but because people's lives are wrapped up in their pocketbooks, even preaching through Romans is still going to offer application.

We do teach about it in our new members' class. One advantage of not being in one single book of the Bible for too long a period of time—maybe you could be in Romans for nine months, go somewhere else, and then come back to Romans for a while—is that it does allow you to cycle between different genres of Scripture. Some genres are going to naturally emphasize particular applications, while other genres will emphasize others.

Alex: So, you would say like maybe if you're preaching Romans 6, you still could draw out a giving application from new life in Christ? Is that a category in your mind as you're thinking about preaching?

Jamie Dunlop: Yes, absolutely. If you've been baptized and raised to new life, then one way that will show up is in what you do with your money. That is a great example.

Whenever I preach, I put together a grid on a piece of paper where the horizontal lines are my sermon points and the vertical columns are different categories of application. I'm thinking about application of this point for my church, for the non-Christian, for families in the church, for people in the workplace, and so on. If you're someone who doesn't naturally think about money as an application, you might just add another column for "money and stewardship" and ask yourself for every point: "Is there an application about money here?" That might be useful for you.

Joshua (Emanuel Church of Orange County): Being a church plant, a portion of our finances—about 40%—are coming from supporting churches. What is the wisest way to move toward being self-sustaining, and how do you teach that to the church?

Jamie Dunlop: I think my advice would be to be very, very judicious as you add expenses until you are self-sustaining. Because you could be on track to be self-sustaining in three years, but then you decide to add an associate pastor. Boy, that associate pastor is so helpful, but then you can keep doing that kind of expansion indefinitely. I'm not saying you should never add an associate pastor before you're self-sustaining; just have an appropriate biblical drive to be self-sustaining that balances out all the reasons why you might decide to add expenses before you hit that mark.

Matthew (Christian Fellowship Bible Church): If you're wanting to grow your budget—let's say you're historically around a certain ballpark, but you want to grow it—do you ever intentionally ask the congregation to make a "faith promise"? For example, asking, "Next year, depending on how you've given this year, do you see yourself possibly giving a little bit more?" Not directly to one person, but in general, so you can help create a more accurate budget for next year?

Jamie Dunlop: Well, let me give you two scenarios.

One scenario is: We do want to hire that second pastor, and it's a little bit beyond what we can currently do. Once you hire him, you've got to keep paying him; you can't just hire him for a year and then lay him off, ideally. In that situation, it's tempting to go to the congregation and say, "Hey, can you guys give more so we can hire him?" But it's one thing to ask them to give more for just this next year (where maybe they're like, "Okay, I won't save for retirement this year so I can give more"), and it's another thing to ask them to give more in perpetuity. If you ask them to give more in perpetuity, essentially what you're saying is, "Look, I know you people are being faithless, please become faithful." As I said before, I never want to normalize faithless giving.

In that situation, rather than going to the congregation saying, "Hey, can you kind of bump things up so we can hire this guy?" I might say, "Could we raise one-time funding for the first half of his salary?" We do this because we assume that our regular giving is going to grow slowly over time. Once we have half the salary raised as one-time funding, we can hire him, assuming that over the next two years we'll grow to the point where we can cover the whole thing.

Second scenario: What if, instead of that, you want to buy a building, and you're trying to figure out if you have enough money to put the cash down? In that case, I think a survey can be very useful. There are plenty of people who couldn't increase their regular giving by 25% per year, but they have assets. Maybe they saved more for retirement than they ended up needing because the stock market did better than they realized, or they bought multiple houses back when they were non-Christians and now they want to figure out how to deploy that wealth for the Lord. That's where you might go to the congregation and say, "Look, this is not a pledge, because we know circumstances can change, but please give us an estimate as to how much you can provide toward this one-time need of cash." I think that can be a useful opportunity to understand whether the money is there for you to do what you have in mind, without pastorally manipulating people.

Dean: I'm wondering if you have some advice as to how I can encourage my children, and the other children who are believers in our church, to give, even though they don't have any regular income? I know you want to start the habit at a young age.

Jamie Dunlop: With my kids, we honestly haven't talked about giving much until they actually have income. But "income" for those conversations could be cash gifts by grandparents at Christmas, or it could be the allowance they get for cleaning the bathrooms once a week, or eventually a first job. I'm sure other parents have had great experiences talking about giving outside that context, but at least for my kids, I've always wanted to associate giving with income. I just define "income" very loosely.

Questioner: I wonder about your comments on transparency and how much information we should give the congregation on pastoral pay. We are very transparent at our church—possibly maybe too transparent—and how that fits in with the needs of a pastor and raising pay, especially for a congregation that might not make as much or have less money than what the pastor gets paid.

Jamie Dunlop: If you only have one pastor on staff, either you're not going to tell them how much you pay for staff at all, or you're going to tell them that specific pastor's salary.

Questioner: The way we are transparent is we actually have it line-itemed out: his rent, cash income, retirement, and the taxes that we pay for him.

Jamie Dunlop: I think when you have only one pastor, that level of detail is actually very helpful. If you just give them a single lump sum number, people are naturally going to compare that with what they get for their own take-home salary. Of course, they're not thinking about the fact that their company puts payroll taxes away, covers health insurance, pays disability, and all these other things they don't ever see on a paycheck. If you have only one person on staff, more detail actually protects his privacy more because now people aren't just comparing a single large number with their own salary, which they sadly will.

In my church, we have multiple staff pastors, so we just publish a single combined number for salaries, benefits, and payroll taxes. We tell the congregation, "Look, if you feel like you need to see exactly how much the pastor makes before you vote on the budget, go talk to the Deacon of Budget and they can walk that through with you." The reason we make it an in-person conversation is because I don't want people just saying, "Well, I'm happy with us being generous, so long as the pastor doesn't make more than me." We want that to be a conversation. It may be that the pastor actually doesn't make more, you just don't understand how ministerial tax structures and benefits work. Or maybe the pastor does make more than you, but there are good reasons for it—for instance, you're 22 and dropped out of college, and he has a PhD and twenty years of experience. We want that to be a conversation.

But I do want our members to know how much we spend on staff; I think it's an important part of the budget. I would never say I have chapter and verse behind this, but I want them to feel free to find out what I make—I just want it to be through appropriate channels. I will say it is rare that anybody takes us up on that. Almost always, when people do talk to the Deacon of Budget to find out my salary, it's because they want to make sure they're paying me enough, not because they feel like I'm being paid too much, which I'm very grateful for.

Questioner: How did you guys get to that transition? I think you were mentioning that your senior pastor was going to focus mainly on teaching and preaching, and you were hired on to be an associate to help with the administrative things. How did you guys transition to that, even in terms of finance, like hiring someone for that specific purpose?

Jamie Dunlop: I was a non-staff elder working in business, and I was spending more and more of my free time helping the church think pastorally about administrative matters. I joked to my neighbors that I was a "pity hire," because the elders finally said, "Look, you basically spend all your time here anyway, what if we just give you a salary?" That isn't completely true, but it's not far off the truth.

When I was hired, they actually asked me, "Do you want us to just let the current administrator go, and you can do his job for a while and eventually replace him?" I was like, "No. First, I don't think I'd be a good hands-on administrator. Second, I'm not quitting my job in business to become a church administrator. It's a wonderful calling, it's just not my calling." I said, "I need him, and I think he'll do a much better job for you if he has a boss to report to instead of reporting to nobody," which was the case before. And he did a wonderful job once it was clear he was reporting to a pastor.

But I think it's very important to recognize: I am not the administrator; I'm the pastor who gives oversight to administration. That means that I do have a different fundamental calling than my senior pastor. He will let everything fail except for the preaching of God's Word. I will let everything fail except for legal and financial administration. But rarely am I in that extreme situation. Normally, administration is maybe 20% of my job, and I get to just be a pastor the rest of the time. But I'm the one pastor who will give full attention to those things if they really blow up.

That is one difference between our two roles. I think sometimes pastors who are not naturally administrative people are very intimidated by administration. It seems like this big, scary, complex beast, and they feel like they need to go out and hire an "executive pastor" to sort of tame the beast. So they go and find a guy in the church who has a long career in corporate business, and they hire him. But when he gets in, he realizes it's not a beast; it's a little puppy, and it doesn't take too much to train. Administration actually isn't that complicated in the church, and now you've got a guy you hired mainly for business skills who isn't doing much business administration—he's mainly acting as a pastor. So, unless you are a massive church, it is far better to have someone you hire as a pastor who happens to have some competence in administration, rather than hiring someone who is strictly an administrator.

Daniel (Emanuel Church): In your seventh passage, you describe the budget merely as a plan. How do you teach and administrate through a broken plan—whether the church is severely under or severely over that plan?

Jamie Dunlop: I think that of all the people in the church, I need to panic the least when we're behind. I need to be the one who shows faith that what the Lord gives us is good, and to really believe it. This way, I can stand up there and say, "You know what? I know we're $100,000 behind. That's going to make some complicated logistics for me, but if that's what the Lord has for us, we'll figure it out. Don't worry about it."

Whether you're the senior pastor or you're someone like me acting as the administrative lead pastor, that is a very important example for the congregation. If I go up there and I look like I'm panicking, well, it's going to be really hard for me to engender faith in them. So I need to be a good example and take my own medicine.

When we're over budget, it's a lot easier. But even when we're over, I can say, almost joking, "Thanks for creating extra work for me! I take really seriously the mandate to invest this money well, and you guys went 50% over our budget. Praise God! Boy, that's a lot of work for me, and I will do my very best with the elders to come back to you with a plan on how to invest that for the Lord Jesus." I want to take seriously the stewardship mandate we have if they give above the budget, and exemplify confidence in the Lord's providential limits if they give below the budget.

Then I have to be the one to help the elders think through: if we give below the budget and it's really far down, when do we go to the congregation and make a special appeal? That is the once-every-ten-years request for giving that is not motivated by "what is good for you," but because "if you don't increase giving by 25%, we're going to have to lay off some staff whom we took many, many years to assemble, and we would prefer not to do that. If we have to do that, well, we trust the Lord. But if there's ever a time for you to sell your second car, or not contribute to your 401(k) for a season, or do something else the world thinks is really stupid because we value what the Lord is doing in this church—this is the time to do that."