Can Volunteering Replace Tithing? Pastors & Church Members Disagree

…being composed mostly of slaves, would have had to accept some donations of time and labor in lieu of funds, no? And count me among those who cringe at the free-will donations of 2 Cor. 9:6-7 as “tithes”. Sorry, that’s not the New Testament position.

This model spells death for the full-time pastorate. However, I am more and more convinced one typical way we “do church” (i.e. single pastor model, full-time, alone, four services per week, unrealistic expectations from church = often miserable family life = slavery) needs to die anyway. Many pastors are expected to do a Sunday School/Morning/Evening and Wednesday service. My current church is the first church I’ve been at where this isn’t the norm. It is very difficult for a single pastor to manage all this. I know pastors suffer terribly to get this done, and their poor wives often suffer even more.

I am very, very receptive to a dual-pastor model where responsibilities are shared according to gifts and abilities, where one or both pastors are bi-vocational. I think a dual-pastor model is the biblical approach and I think the “single pastor alone against the world” model will become increasingly difficult to pull off, economically.

So, the tithing issue isn’t terribly important to me, because I think money can be re-allocated to more appropriate areas. I don’t think it is going to be financially viable for the single, full-time pastor model in the years ahead. Healthcare, retirement, a living wage - churches are getting smaller and older. This doesn’t bode well for the single pastor model, economically - doctrine aside.

Keep in mind, brother, your experience was outside the mainstream. First, I know of no other church that has four different services in a week, each requiring new material. Second, you were apparently set up to fail, and I feel bad for you about that. But, every church I know of, even if it has a single pastor, has plenty of people helping him and supporting him.

….agreed that Tyler’s experience is abnormal, but at the same time even if you don’t have four services a week and all, you’re going to have to change some things if people volunteer effort instead of money. For that matter, with my wife staying at home with the kids, we are in effect exchanging the tithes we would have made on her income for the volunteering of up to four children we likely would not have had if she’d stayed working. No?

(my guess is that we’d have had 2, not 6, kids if we’d had to pay for daycare and all….economics and such)

But that noted, my church gets volunteers to mow, do snow removal, build storage, and more….I’m not entirely persuaded that a shift to time instead of money would be a bad thing.

BTW, Mark, good to see you back commenting here, and hope that your search for pastoral employment is going well.

To clarify - I commented on the single-pastor model because the pastor’s full-time salary is often the largest chunk of the budget - apart from building expenses/mortgage. Thus, it would be the factor most impacted by volunteering in lieu of tithing.

[Mark_Smith]

Keep in mind, brother, your experience was outside the mainstream. First, I know of no other church that has four different services in a week, each requiring new material.

This is not that abnormal. It is becoming less and less mainstream and certainly doesn’t exist with much frequency outside of fundmentalism, but within fundamentalist circles this may be more common than we would like to admit. There are many times (churches I have been in or visited), where the maturity is not present in the congregation and the pastor does teach the adult SS, Sunday AM service, Sunday PM service, and some type of lesson prior to a prayer time on Wednesdays. I agree that the congregation should not hold the pastor to that type of load, but it does happen and in many instances, it is expected from the congregation.

From what I have seen it is not that unusual for a pastor to do 4 services per week. Currently I am a bi-vocational church planter. We only have one service on Sunday and an informal Bible study on Monday. I also do private Bible studies, but they do not require any prep time like the messages do. Even though I am bi-vocational, I still have more free time now than I did when I was a full time pastor and taught SS, Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday, and then a once a month Sunday afternoon nursing home service. It was not just the time to preach all those messages, but prep time as well. Then I had a seminary professor tell us that we should be spending 20 hours on preparation for each message. Of course I was not spending that much time. Had there been a solid retired pastor in the church who gave time to preach a message a week instead of putting money in the plate would have been a huge blessing and considering the amount of time it would have saved me, it would have had a value of way over 10%.

One of the biggest drawbacks I see with the 4 message per week schedule is that it forces a pastor to spend a lot of time in his office rather than getting out with people.

One benefit that I am reaping from that past ministry schedule is that I have files full of messages from books I have preached through that I am currently using. This definitely cuts down on my time for message preparation and allows me to do more outreach now.

Tyler’s experience is not unique. I still do Sunday School, morning worship, evening bible study, and for many years did Wednesday evening as well. We dropped the Wednesday service when for awhile my wife and I took over the youth. We no longer do the youth, but I have been criticized for not continuing Wednesday night (I must not believe in prayer). I also have a nursing home service every other Tuesday and one Sunday a month. For many years I spoke to a senior citizen group one Friday a month. We also do each Sundays’ bulletin, etc. God is faithful and has been gracious to us, but after 31 years of that this old man is tired!

Churches usually expect more of their pastors than is reasonable. They base their expectations upon what they have personally experienced from previous pastors. Congregations need to be taught from the Bible what the responsibilities of pastors are, and pastors need to be willing to sweetly resist un-Biblical expectations.

I say this from personal experience. In my early years, I was extremely busy six or more days (and nights) a week with important tasks that were not essential to Biblical pastors responsibilities. Sermon quality suffered, but I was busy meeting as many other expectations as possible. (And still falling short. Meeting every expectation is humanly impossible.) At some point you have to say, “Folks, I can’t visit everyone, mow the grass, produce the bulletins, attend every fellowship function, and deliver solid sermons. If someone else doesn’t take over the tasks that do not require pastoral participation, they will have to die. We will have to learn to live without a bulletin. We will have to come to church with scrappy, unmowed grass.”

Try it. In most cases, church members will step up to the plate, and the church will improve greatly.

Do you really feel pressure from most of your parishioners to have Sunday evening and Wednesday services, especially when most don’t attend those services anyway? Or maybe is it pressure from your fundamentalist peers?

With regards to the topic. Most parishioners will take the easy way and just stroke a check and do nothing else. I would think that you would welcome folks to give a tenth of their time, instead because the giving will follow when they are more exposed to the need.

In a former church, Sunday night service attendance was paltry. The pastor would routinely castigate the Sunday AM congregation for low Sunday evening attendance, and attendance would increase for a couple months and then fall off again. This occurred over and over again. It got to the point where the pastor started posting comments on facebook about how God’s people need to be in God’s house on Sunday PM and tagging congregation members.

At this point, my family no longer attended the church so I posted a response to his facebook post and suggested that the church substitute the Sunday PM service for small groups that met throughout the week. He was irate. How dare I question his pastoral authority before the eyes of his congregation! One of his pastor friends joined in and said churches that cancel Sunday PM services for small groups are deprioritizing God’s Word and giving in to the Laodicean lukewarm spirit of the age. The pastor ended up deleting my posts, sending me a nasty gram private message, and unfriending me.

Good times…

Small groups!? Tsk, tsk. You’re clearly a convergent …

One thought on the pastor delivering four messages per week—pretty much all teaching not done by the kids’ Sunday School teachers, no?—is that it deprives the pastor fo the chance to mentor people who could become elders. I would argue that it works strongly against active discipleship.

I agree that T. Howard is a convergent (ha!), and think as well that he got one of the best compliments he could have when he was unfriended. Again, small groups are a great way of developing new leadership, and if one stands against that, he’s hamstringing himself.

I like group Bible studies - been doing it for years - individually & in homes. I find it ironic, however, that Christians are willing to go to a small group study (which can easily turn into a “what it means to me” session) but won’t come to Sunday School, the basic small group study. I am aware that some Sunday School groups are not that good, but I’m talking about good teaching, good interaction, good study and people still won’t come. It has nothing to do with time of day because people are willing to get up early for garage sales, sports, etc. So the current emphasis on small groups sounds hollow to me when these same people who claim to be Christian won’t come to small group Sunday School.

This thread was originally about money. As far as I am aware, the electric company, water company, insurance company, and other vendors who service our churches will not accept volunteer labor or apple pies as payment. Someone, somewhere has to give money to a church in order to pay bills associated with the property. Even if you eliminate paid pastoral staff, as long as you have property, you will need money to pay bills. I have never “pushed” money, only that people do what the Bible says. We have also made efforts to have integrity in the church’s finances. People give freely and generously. Since our church is debt-free, people don’t feel any pressure.

It is very easy for people to slide into rationalizations and excuses when we talk about giving money to a church. People say they can’t afford to give any money but will donate their time. OK, we’ll accept that - for awhile. But they can’t give even $1 a week and slowly give more? They can’t give any money to the Lord, but always find money for pizza. Our sin nature is attracted to what is wrong and avoids what is right. Substituting volunteer labor in place of actual financial contributions, although perhaps practical for some for awhile, can easily become permanent, even when a person reaches a point where he can contribute financially.

I have been speaking 4 times a week for over 20 years. I like it. It’s been good for me. It’s been good for our church. We are the only church in town that still has a weekly church-wide prayer meeting. Other churches either don’t meet at all or have youth activities/small groups. Does praying occur at these youth activities and small groups? Yes. But it’s not a substitute for the entire church meeting to pray. We have a very short Bible study on Wednesday nights, but the main focus is Praying. We’ve seen our attendance on Wed night increase as people understand what we are doing. Some do not come on Wed night because of work, others do not come because they want a church to babysit their children (i.e., youth ministry). Some people are uncomfortable praying in front of others. OK, let’s help them become comfortable instead of cancelling prayer meeting. I suspect many churches which have cancelled Sunday night services and Wed night prayer meeting have done so simply because they can’t get people to come, so we change the format to hide the truth. I wonder how many people who go to small groups on Sunday night or Wed night are also the ones who don’t come to Sunday School. If you want a small group study for Christians, then make your Sunday School the best it can be. Improve your ministries as much as possible. Small group evangelistic studies are certainly an option, but not as a replacement for Sunday School. I suspect that much of what churches are doing today is simply an attempt to deal with the increasing secular attitude of Christians. Eventually, we will find that even small group studies which have become a substitute for Sunday night & Wed night will eventually themselves suffer declining attendance. Then what? Just have a Sunday morning meeting? Bribe people to come with food, games, and, for some, maybe a little wine? How ironic & sad that, in a country that guarantees the freedom to meet as often as we want, whenever we want, many Christians are choosing not to meet at all.

Can volunteering replace praying? Can volunteering replace godly parenting? Our giving is an act of obedience. It is an act of worship. It is a token of gratitude. We can no more replace Biblical giving with something else than we can replace lives of holiness with something else. We can, by God’s grace, do everything the Bible commands, including giving. Some more, some less, but everyone can and should give something.