Can Volunteering Replace Tithing? Pastors & Church Members Disagree

Now we’re up to a whopping three convergents! It’s TylerR, me and now T. Howard!

Seriously, I’d love to be able to write a fat check to the church every month, but we have some pretty severe medical issues that eat up all of our discretionary income, so we try to be super involved in it’s place. Someone noted that writing a big check is the easy way out, and I completely agree with that.

As for the whole Wed. night - Sun. School - Sun. AM - Sun PM service thing…we have to do what works best for the congregation. In the area of the country where I live, many, many of our families have long (1+ hour one way) commutes to work and home again, so the traditional model doesn’t work for us. We do have a Wed. Night Prayer Meeting that the Pastor and Elders heavily emphasize, but other than that it’s SS and Sunday AM services only. Some families run small groups, but locations and times vary. It seems to work well for us.

Situations exist in rural locations or where many in a church travel long distances where adjusting the “traditional” format works well (such as Jay mentioned). What I am referring to are churches in cities where distance is not a problem but people won’t come to anything except Sunday morning worship (AM service). We are seeing increasing secular attitudes among Bible-believing Christians and these attitudes are affecting church attendance. So we cancel Sunday night, weekly church-wide prayer meeting and substitute “activities” designed to “reach” people. I question the wisdom of this practice. The huge emphasis on children and youth (which we do need to reach, of course) has developed generations of Christians who are self-centered and entertainment oriented. Sure, we have lots of children and teens, but they don’t know how to pray with other Christians outside their age group and don’t know how to listen to a message/sermon without being entertained along the way. Small groups are today’s “fad”. Eventually people will lose interest in small groups. Then what? We’ve cancelled everything else - Nothing left except Christianity lite. We tell ourselves that we are adjusting to changing times. That’s just a cover for how 2 Timothy 3:1ff is working its way through our culture. The original topic of this discussion was money & volunteer service. What are the first 2 qualities Paul mentions? Lovers of themselves and lovers of money. How interesting!

[WallyMorris] Small groups are today’s “fad”. Eventually people will lose interest in small groups. Then what? We’ve cancelled everything else - Nothing left except Christianity lite.

Wally,

Small groups are just a method or tool that we use in ministry. Just like Sunday school. Just like Sunday PM service. Just like Wednesday PM service. If it stops accomplishing its intended purpose we give it a proper burial and move on.

Honestly, I don’t know why churches continue using methods that have died out (whether because of lack of interest, changing culture, etc.) except because of pride or fear of change. I know churches that still spend tens of thousands of dollars on a bus ministry, yet can’t afford to hire more staff to meet the needs of the congregation. They’ve made the bus ministry their crown jewel and believe churches who don’t have one don’t care about the lost. Same thing with VBS, Awana, etc. Why do we get so attached to certain methods or tools that may have worked in the 50s but have really lost their effectiveness?

Why don’t we seek to find new and creative ways to make more and better disciples?

Sure, let’s do that. Let’s find creative ways of evangelism and discipleship. I’m all for that. And I agree about cancelling what isn’t “working”. Buta deeper question is “WHY isn’t something working?” And what do we mean by “working”? If church has an excellent Sunday School ministry, good teachers, good material, good classes - and people STILL won’t come, then the problem isn’t Sunday School or the specific method. The problem is people. Let’s be honest. Many people won’t come to Sunday School because they want to sleep in a little later on Sunday morning. That’s the blunt truth. OK, so we have Sunday School after morning church. They leave after church and skip Sunday School because they “have things to do”.

Prayer Meeting: Why won’t Christians come to small group prayer meetings at church where prayer requests are shared, then break up into small groups? If people like small groups so much, then why not this small group? I suspect they simply aren’t enthusiastic about praying with other people and use a variety of excuses to justify not coming. Those churches which do not have a church-wide prayer meeting: I wonder exactly HOW they do pray as a church. Yes, we send requests through email, texts, and church websites. But that’s not the same as people meeting together in person to pray together. We assume people in churches are praying without an organized prayer meeting, but how do you know? I think the many substitutes that churches have developed for Sunday School, Sunday night, and prayer meeting are simply attempts to excuse/hide declining attendance. We create something “new”, hoping that people will come. But if the problem is people themselves, then new “ministries” won’t solve that problem.

Have these ministries “lost their effectiveness” or is the problem wrong attitudes and behavior among Christians? In other words, just plain sin and selfish/worldly attitudes where people just want to stay home. We often assume that the problem is the particular ministry itself, which may sometimes be true. But I think more often the problem is with disobedience, rebellion, & selfishness. And so we cover up the real problems by creating a different ministry opportunity, which may work for awhile, until the same people get bored with that. Then what do you do? We keep cancelling ministries and creating new ones to adjust to “changing times and interests”. Eventually the point will come when the AM service itself will be victim of those changing times and interests.

There are probably a few other reasons out there that people don’t like to come to services beyond Sunday morning, but one big reason is that they’re quite simply tired of sitting down and being talked to. They want to participate. Moreover, this is a good thing, as the role of the pastor is, per Matthew 28, to make disciples, and Paul fleshes this out to indicate that the early pastor Timothy is to train men who can take his job.

If they’re never getting a chance to test what they’ve learned by teaching themselves (say by leading a Bible study), it’s simply not what Eli did with Samuel, not what Solomon wrote of in Proverbs, not what Elijah did with Elisha, not what Christ did with the apostles, and not what the apostles, especially Paul, did with the early elders of the church. Discipleship is really an apprenticeship program where the goal is to produce masters, not just apprentices or journeymen. Plus, even apprentices and journeymen work at the trade while learning, no?

Bert raises a good point about being “talked to” I have sat in far too many Sunday School classes where the only person who said anything was the teacher. Sometimes just another preaching service. But in our church, that’s not how Sunday School is structured. I teach the adult class, very interactive, good handouts, I ask questions to promote thinking and open ended responses. We have excellent discussions, often people think of something I have not. People who don’t come to Sunday School know we do this, and still don’t come, despite my explaining what we do. That’s why I state that the problem is not the particular ministry itself but often resides within individual people. If we keep changing/eliminating ministries in order to accommodate what is often the personal sin/selfishness/laziness of people, we will eventually have basically nothing left.

Wally, that’s a good start, and I’d simply say that given that Paul made sure Timothy first exercised the position of an elder/pastor, and then handed off that responsibility to others, the question I’ve got is who in your church do you trust to lead that study for you from time to time? Again, if you’re apprenticing many in your congregation, bringing many to journeyman status and a few to mastery, there ought to be someone you trust to do so.

Sure, they’ll make mistakes. Sure, you’re being paid to do it and they aren’t. But by and large, a lot of people would love the chance.

Several people in our church could teach the class in my absence, but that’s not the issue here. I’m more concerned about churches cancelling/changing ministries simply because people won’t come and not thinking about WHY they won’t come. It involves more than just that particular ministry has become “outdated”. I think a LOT of it relates to increasing secular and selfish attitudes among Christians, something Paul warned about in 2 Tim 3:1ff..

I’m now retired after nearly 35 years in ministry and I’ve been on both sides. For more than 20 years I was one of those SS/AM/PM and Wednesday night guys. I call it rectangle church where every meeting is an audience listening to a speaker. I used guilt to get people to come. i.e. “People who love the church come Sunday morning, people who love the Bible come Sunday night, but people who love Jesus come Wednesday.”) I even preached more than one “Thomas Missed the Meeting” sermon. I opposed small groups of any sort because I knew they’d either become the dreaded “what does this verse mean to you meetings” or places where people would plot against my leadership. or gripe about church matters.

For about the last 10 years I’ve been in churches that had small groups. I’ve NEVER been in a “what does this verse mean to you meeting”. Bible study, whether a book or topical has been profitable and the times of prayer have been sweet. They are also a great training ground for developing future church leaders.In addition they’ve given my wife and me opportunities to build relationships with other people in the church where we have time to really get involved in each others lives. The 4 meetings a week model combined with work schedules made relationship building very difficult. Let’s face it, when every meeting involves you sitting in a seat looking straight ahead for an hour (aside from from the infamous and awkward “shake hands with your neighbor” ritual) interaction with other members is restricted to a few minutes before, after, and between services.

…understood, but the adoption of different methods—like adding Sunday School in the 19th Century and Sunday evening/Wednesday services in the 20th—is not inherently secular. The Bible doesn’t even command when the church ought to meet—it records “first day” services in places like Acts 20, but does not flat out say when the church ought to meet.

And really, if we truly believe the priesthood of all believers, we ought to tend towards the decentralized structure of the early church, which could expect key leaders to be killed at any given time. Hence priority #1 for a pastor was to train his replacements, and not surprisingly, the church boomed. Going to a church-buildling-centric model of ministry really parallels the innovations of Constantine and state churches, not Baptistic theology.

And a great way for a church-centric model of ministry to get back to the early church model is to use small groups, which parallel the tiny house churches of the persecution era, if I’m reading history correctly.

Quite frankly, I’ve got a strong reason to favor this; if I had waited on church-centric ministries to reach out to me, instead of being approached by those running Bible studies in dorms, I would likely still be outside of Christ. Along the same lines, China now has something like 100 million Christians in great part because of this model.

(give those men the keys, brother—this stuff works!)

[WallyMorris]

I think a LOT of it relates to increasing secular and selfish attitudes among Christians, something Paul warned about in 2 Tim 3:1ff..

So, Wally, how do you work to change those attitudes? Do you guilt people into coming to Sunday PM and Wednesday PM services? Because, that is what most Pastors do when attendance drops. “Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together… If you love Jesus, you’ll come to church anytime the doors are open, AMEN!”

….the way we’d go is to house churches, love feasts, foot washing, and holy kisses. We’d eliminate Sunday School and prayer services built around a sermon and pray all night….ya know, apart from needing to greet other men with a kiss, that ain’t sounding too bad. (#notqualifiedtobeamissionaryinRussia)

If that makes me a “convergent” or some kind of hippie, fair enough. (like Ron, I’m crushed not to be accused of being a convergent, but I realize that it takes an accusation from Tyler or something like that to qualify)

You’re clearly a convergent, leading many astray by your gravitation towards the devil’s den that is conservative evangelicalism.

Well?

I’m afraid to say anything about Ron. He and I seem to have lived parallel lives. If I call him a “convergent,” it may disrupt the space/time continuum, and create a time paradox, the results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space time continuum, and destroy the entire universe!