“Dave Ramsey says pastors should not ask 'broke people' to tithe until they first work on their debt and budgeting.”

I’d love to spend time with that couple, helping them understand budgeting (etc.). But, I wouldn’t preach a sermon on how to budget! I also disagree that 10% tithe is a New Covenant requirement. The only principle I see is that people should give to support the ministry of the congregation, and to help their fellow believers in time of need.

A lady at church ( a non-member) had a meeting with me a few months ago. She’s married to an ex-Mormon who hates all religion. She feels convicted to tithe, but her husband is against it. She asked what she should do. I replied:

• Tithing is not a NT requirement
• There is a basic principle that people should give to help a local church fulfill its mission
• You need to decide if this is a “I must obey God rather than men” moment, and I can’t tell you in this circumstance if this is that moment. If he commanded you to not go to church, this would be that movement.
• You also need to consider 1 Peter 3, and your obligation to try and win your husband to the Lord in a winsome way.

I know nothing about Ramsey. I do know people fawn over him and swear by him.

I can’t help myself… I have to support Dave! :-)

I believe that Financial Peace University is one of the most worthwhile teaching programs that any church could possibly implement.

I also believe that financial bondage is a factor that hinders Christians/churches/ministries to a greater degree than any of us can imagine.

Dismiss Ramsey with a harumph if you will…. As noted above, the Bible is filled with references to money in both testaments, so you are not fully discipling people Biblically if your church has no plan to talk about it. Furthermore, very few pastors that I have ever known have the financial background or knowledge to apply those Scriptures in a detailed, specific and skillful way to our contemporary society.

You wrote:

Furthermore, very few pastors that I have ever known have the financial background or knowledge to apply those Scriptures in a detailed, specific and skillful way to our contemporary society.

Then they’re incompetent at life.

With all due respect, I find that statement highly offensive and wildly inaccurate!

Paul wrote:

As noted above, the Bible is filled with references to money in both testaments, so you are not fully discipling people Biblically if your church has no plan to talk about it.

No doubt. But, it’s certainly not a priority. Evangelism and discipleship is the priority. Within the discipleship rubric, preaching or teaching a series about money management is far, far down the list for me. I’m actually considering a series on a proper view of marriage and sex, using Song of Solomon. It’ll be a ways down the road, but I may well do something, in some venue.

It depends on what context you’re referring to. You wrote:

As noted above, the Bible is filled with references to money in both testaments, so you are not fully discipling people Biblically if your church has no plan to talk about it. Furthermore, very few pastors that I have ever known have the financial background or knowledge to apply those Scriptures in a detailed, specific and skillful way to our contemporary society.

Here is my more detailed response:

1. If you’re referring to a preaching series, then a pastor is incompetent if he can’t preach a passage in which there is a discussion about debt.
2. If you’re referring to a discipleship context, then a pastor is incompetent if he cannot teach a young couple about how to make a budget and follow it.

I grow weary about whining from pastors about how they’re not qualified for certain things. I have no sympathy. Find another job. This incessant mania for specialization is a bad one. I’m not qualified to talk about infidelity; let me refer you to a counselor! I’m not qualified to talk about budgeting; let me refer you to a specialist! I’m not qualified to talk about evangelism; let me refer you to a specialist!

It gets old after a while. So, I stand by my contention that a pastor who doesn’t feel he can talk about debt principles and household budgets is incompetent at life, and fails a pastoral test of managing his own house well.

The issue of money did not seem to be “far, far down the list for” Jesus or Paul. They talked about it all the time!

Not sure where to begin … so I will just leave it alone!

Suffice it to say, I do not endorse your comments. Please rethink them.

Jesus and Paul did not discuss households budgets, and explain principles for debt-free living! If you have a passage, I’m ready to hear it!

I am well aware my comments make me seem like an angry curmudgeon. If we were chatting in person, my comments would come across as good-natured pushback. Let’s be frank here about the “I’m not qualified to talk about budgets!” angle; do we really have to be such wimps?

Why is a pastor not qualified to advice a young couple how to make and follow a household budget? Why is he not capable of helping them understand whether they should buy a home? These are not difficult things to talk about! Either that, or I’m a genius; and that isn’t the case - my wife can confirm this.

Tyler, with all due respect, I can think of a handful of pastors I have known in my life (and I have known A LOT of pastors!) to whom I would go for advice about a mortgage. Most of them were also attorneys.

You’re in a hole buddy… stop digging!

Paul, I’m not talking about technical advice. I’m talking about the general, average stuff a pastor deals with. This typically revolves around household budgets or general “what if” questions (e.g. “should we buy a house?”). I once had a guy ask me if he should take out a student loan because his job didn’t pay enough to make ends meet, and a student loan had lower interest than a conventional loan. I told him that was a bad idea. He did it anyway.

Why would a pastor not feel competent to teach what the Bible says about money? That sounds ridiculous, to me. Perhaps we’re talking past each other.

This conversation, and many others, reinforces my opinion that I’m a very strange pastor. I generally don’t understand other pastors, and they seem like they live in a different world than I do. I am a pastor, so it’s not that there’s a disconnect for me between theory and reality. It’s just that I’m forced to believe I operate completely differently than many of the people who comment on SI.

I know of no possible world where it would be acceptable for (1) someone to take a job, then (2) complain about how he feels he’s not qualified to perform an aspect of that job, and (3) expect to elicit sympathy. My mind is always blown when I see this kind of thing. Did you not expect to have to handle sexual infidelity, young couples who can’t budget, and “gay Christianity” during your pastorate? Is this really a shocking surprise? And you claim you’re not qualified to deal with this? Why did you take the job?

I had a meeting today, at work, with the Chief Deputy Commissioner of my agency, all the Deputy Commissioners, and several other members of the Manager’s Council Steering Committee. I’m the Chair of the Manager’s Council; so I run the inter-divisional managerial meetings and act as the manager liaison to the Deputy Commissioners. As we discussed one topic, someone suggested that some managers don’t feel empowered to collaborate with their peers across divisions on certain issues. The Chief Deputy asked me what I thought about that. I replied, “I have no sympathy for a manager who is unable or unwilling to collaborate with a peer to get something done. That tells me something is either wrong with the divisional climate or that particular manager.”

The truth hurts, sometimes.

Haven’t met any pastors who were also attorneys, but those are the two groups I’d counsel with last regarding mortgages. Attorneys maybe about the legalities, but I’ve known too many law students who couldn’t balance a checkbook, let alone calculate the impact of a mortgage. :^)

(OK, professional athletes and actors would rank even lower, to be fair….and of course politicians)

Seriously, though, I would concur with Tyler that pastors ought to be among the first people one should think of when it comes to financial advice, and I would concur with him that there is a degree of “wimpiness” among those who would be unwilling to take on some role—again, one of the key principles of financial stewardship is “thou shalt not covet”. Budgeting is merely a tool to measure the degree to which you are, or are not, covetous.

You have to follow the links two steps backward from the link above, but you’ll eventually find this story originated from a Baptist Press piece. I don’t have a problem with Ramsey per se; I know very little about him. I am intrigued by the kind of church culture he’s used to seeing, because I don’t recognize it:

Ramsey acknowledges his advice can sometimes generate criticism and its share of “hate mail.” He said one piece of advice not everyone agrees with is when he urges pastors to stop preaching about tithing to “broke people.”

I don’t think tithing is a NT requirement, so I don’t preach on it.

“Unless,” he explained in his interview with BP, “you’ve done two sermons on … debt — one on getting out of debt and one on getting on a budget.”

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t appreciate his comments about what I ought to preach about.

“That’s the ratio for me instead of just tithe, tithe, tithe,” he said.

What responsible pastors preach incessant sermons about tithing? Where does the NT command tithing? Where does it specify an amount?

Without those initial sermons on debt and setting a budget, he said, the reaction to a sermon about tithing is often “yeah right, I’ve got a light bill. That’s a great spiritual concept. Maybe someday I’ll get around to that.’”

The NT doesn’t spend any time discussing budgets or the implications of a balanced checkbook. Of course, these are logical and prudent skills to have and acquire, but it isn’t a didactic part of any single passage in the NT. This doesn’t mean it’s unimportant, but it does indicate it wasn’t important enough to any NT writer to mention. This should help us weigh teaching priorities.

Is it prudent to have a class about debt for the congregation? Maybe. This is fundamentally about what your vision is for the local church. I don’t see the local church as a local community hub for activities. I see it as a vehicle to carry out the Great Commission in a corporate fashion, and grow in our knowledge of the Lord. Classes about finances and other life skills are fine, but they’re not anywhere near to being a core function of a local church.

“Christians and non-Christians face the same grim reality: The leading cause of divorce in marriage is financial trouble,” he said in an email interview. “Therefore, we believe as the church we must do all we can to equip our people and the people in our region on how to deal with their financial struggles.”

I dispute that. I believe this is likely a false statistic meant to scare up business and drive a brand. Let’s not forget this; Ramsey makes his own money by convincing Christians they need his services. He has a financial incentive in drumming up business, and he does this by convincing people they need his services. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it should make you a bit wary when you endure his pitch.

Finances are quite important, but I don’t believe they’re “the leading cause of divorce.” I’d much rather see these issues (e.g. budgeting, basic finances, etc.) tackled as part of the informal relationships that exist between church members who know each other.

I recently helped a man at our church with his resume, because he didn’t know how to write one. He’s 37, and is recovering from a drug addiction that wasted the last 15 years of his life. I knew he needed help with his resume because I try my best to talk to my people and know their problems. I didn’t need to host a “Resume Writing” class; there are secular organizations who do a better job than I could do. What I can do is try to know my people, lead the congregation to know each other, and empower them to help each other out.

Getting out of debt, Ramsey emphasized, is the key to giving. “Because if you’re out of debt and on a budget and you love Jesus, I think tithing is a natural thing that occurs.”

It’s then no longer “a beg,” he told BP. “It’s not ‘I’m trying to get blood out of a rock.’”

I am very, very uncomfortable with this constant assumption that pastors always preach about tithing. I suspect Ramsey is framing things this way, in this interview with an SBC publication, to drum up business for himself with SBC churches. Please, don’t be so naive as to dismiss this hypothesis out of hand!

“And so I want the financial peace classes to be an attraction to someone like I was — a reason for them to come over to the church to go to class to get out of debt but, oh by the way, Jesus is there.”

Hey, if you have the personnel and resources to host a class and turn it into an evangelistic vehicle, go for it. Many churches don’t. For reasons I outlined, above, this is more of an elective idea, not a core function of the local church.

I’ve also heard the claim that a huge portion of divorces are related to financial trouble, and I think there is indeed good data for this. That noted, it’s just a correlation, and if you look closer, you’re going to see a number of ultimate causes. Some divorce because it’s how they get welfare, some divorce because over-spending reveals huge character issues in their spouse, etc..

And yes, someone wise enough to sit down with couples having trouble is going to be likely to suss this out.

I’m just waiting for some Christian chef to say that pastors should not preach to overweight people about gluttony unless they have first preached about nutrition and natural foods. :)