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July 19, 2011

The "Whole Life Offering"

Giving is a part of discipleship—and many churches miss out.

 by Eric Foley


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Just as a major error in discipleship is focusing discipling conversations on the needs and interests of the student, an especially common—and major—error in discipleship related to financial giving involves focusing conversations on the giving interest and passions of the student rather than on the curriculum of Christ embodied in the lived experience of the teacher—that is, if discipleship conversations on financial giving happen in the first place.

Of all the Works of Mercy and Piety, discipleship conversations related to financial giving are, regrettably, the most rare. Western Christians in particular consider it a kind of virtue or personal courtesy not to talk about money. Some cite Jesus’ admonition in Matthew 6:3, “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,” as reason enough to stay quiet about the specific nature of their generosity. But this overlooks the fact that the passage in question is indeed a sterling example of Jesus having a discipleship conversation about giving practices with his students.

Giving, like every other Work of Piety or Mercy, is learned through explicit teaching and guided practice, especially in reflection on the body of lived experience of Christian teachers who are growing to full maturity in Christ in their financial generosity.

The discomfort related to conversations about money typically stems from a reluctance to name actual numbers, amounts, and percentages. But discipleship conversations on financial giving should emphasize the point stressed repeatedly throughout this book, namely, that the Scripture itself dwells surprisingly little on questions related to specific numbers, amounts, and percentages. Instead, it dwells on the hows and whys of giving. The focus is on the presentation of the Christian’s whole life as an offering. God is less concerned about the total dollar amount of one’s donations and more about who one is becoming as one makes them.

Christianity-as-philanthropy contends that comprehensive discipleship is the Scriptural framework for talking about giving. It recognizes that the financial giving of Christians parallels their overall maturity in Christ. If teachers seek to aid students in growing their financial giving in a particular Work of Mercy, teachers must equip the students to grow to overall maturity in Christ in that area. Christians’ financial donations will be roughly the same size as their heads, their hearts, and their hands in relation to a particular Work of Mercy.

The principle is amply demonstrated in Scripture and in current statistical research. Households containing individuals who volunteer for charitable service give twice as much to charity as households where no one volunteers, according to a 2001 Independent Sector study.

Similar results were obtained in a 2008 Stanford Graduate School of Business Center for Social Innovation study. The research, conducted by Jennifer Aaker and Wendy Liu, consisted of three laboratory experiments demonstrating that when test subjects were asked to volunteer for a nonprofit and then only subsequently solicited for a financial donation, they gave twice as much money as those asked for a donation in their first contact. Aaker and Liu concluded that connecting people to the “deep mission” of a charitable organization through voluntarism made them “more inspired to be involved in that endeavor in every way”—including financially. Adds Aaker:

What’s particularly interesting is that participants who were asked first about their time not only gave the money of all, but also they donated the most time to the organization. This affirms for the researchers that what motivates people to give dollars when they are asked first for their time is not simply guilt; that is, they are not donating more generously as a way of “buying out” of having to give up precious hours. If guilt had been operating, then those who were asked for time first may have given more money, but they would have given less time than any of the other groups. In fact, the reverse was true.

Research, Scripture, and common sense coincide at this point: one gives to what one cares about, and one cares about those things in which one is deeply involved. Because Christ is a generalist and not a specialist with regard to the Works of Mercy, he calls Christians to comprehensive involvement in the means of grace that mirror his Father’s friendship-love and reliable care to the world. Such comprehensive involvement is about more than giving, but the Work of Mercy of discipleship rooted in the Work of Piety of giving ensures that it is not less.

Excerpted from The Whole Life Offering (.W Publishing, © 2011)

The Rev. Eric Foley is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Seoul USA and the pastor of .W, a congregation of The Evangelical Church that meets simultaneously in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Seoul, Korea.

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Posted by Matt Branaugh on July 19, 2011 8:00 AM

Related Tags: finances, giving, money, offering, tithes, Tithing

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