Pastors and Tithing

I was recently asked by a church if Grace Church requires their pastors to practice tithing. This is my response to that email:

The word tithing means giving ten-percent of income to the church. I do not teach or practice that approach to money. I think that is based on a faulty understanding of the Old Testament practice, and creates and propagates a wrong understanding of God’s relationship to our money.

In the OT, the Israelites were living in a theocracy, and everything they owned really belonged to God. God drove that point home by making them revert their land sales and free their slaves every 50 years. Tithing in this system served as a form of taxation. While God owned everything, he required his people to fund the Levitical system (Levites were priests, and thus generally were not farmers, merchants, or shepherds) with a tithe collected annually (Deut 12:2-19; 14:22-29). Leviticus 27:30-32 reiterates this tithe, and applies to livestock as well.

In the NT, the tithe goes the way of the Levites and the temple curtain. As the Baker Bible Encyclopedia says, “Tithing is mentioned in the New Testament only critically.” The fact was, Pharisees loved the tithe, because it was easy to enforce, said nothing of the heart, and had little to do with actual love for God. Not only that, but religious leaders were the recipients of it, and in exchange all they paid was ten-percent (to themselves!).   Keep Reading >>>