Religion Ain't What It Used To Be (Part II)

I'm a Christian but that ain't what it used to be. My beliefs have changed quite a bit in the past two or three years...

(See Part I for the introduction, and Part III is here. There's a lot of ground to cover here, so I'll open up the different topics and then we can follow up with more detailed discussions if anyone wants to do that...)

Tithing

This is the central piece, the ace that toppled my house of cards. I've been faithfully tithing 10% of my gross earnings since I had a paper route as a ten year old boy, giving that money directly to my local church. I often gave even more money on top of that, usually towards specific ministries at church.

I came to realize that (a) tithing is not a Biblical requirement for Christians and (b) the brand of tithing that we commonly teach at church has very little to do with the original tithing laws in the Old Testament anyway. (For example, poor people aren't supposed to tithe.) After years of habit, and years of collecting receipts for my charitable donations, it actually took me more than a year to fully quit tithing.

Church Income

Once we take tithing out of the equation, this directly effects how a local church runs. The church has utility bills and staff salaries and supplies to pay for. Granted, some churches (a minority?) do not promote tithing and may not even collect money during every service, but even these churches depend on regular donations in order to keep running.

We seem to have three options:

1. Give money to the local church because it's mandatory (a la tithing).
2. Give money to the local church voluntarily - but it's actually mandatory because otherwise, the church will have to close due to bankruptcy.
3. Do not give money to the local church - in which case there can be no local church.

The common result, regardless of a church's stance on tithing, is to have 10 to 20% of the church members give money on a mandatory basis. This supports the majority of the other members who do not give or give little.

I no longer believe that tithing is valid. I see voluntary giving as either being "secretly" mandatory or a hypocritically mandatory responsibility for a core group of members, and I don't buy into either of those ideas now. Therefore, I am left with Option 3 - the dissolution of local church? That's crazy talk!

Church Expenses

For arguments sake, though, let's say that the church continues to get enough money from purely voluntary donations, on a continual basis, and everyone is happy. Then, we need to look at where the church expenses go.

The majority of a church budget goes to two spots: paying for the building (rent/mortgage/utilities) and paying for staff salaries (pastor/youth pastor/custodians). When I donate money to church, the majority of it actually pays for my own experience at the church. The equipment for the musicians, the time it took the pastor to prepare and preach, the child care programs, the actual facilities that I visit.

I like to think that my money supports the poor, or some sort of spiritual outreach like a missionary, but only a tiny percentage (2 to 5%) actually gets there. Instead, I have to accept the view that the church building and the staff are the main forms of spiritual ministry. And while local churches do fulfill certain needs that would not be met otherwise, I no longer see this as necessary or efficient.

Instead, the very best spiritual growth that I have ever received or helped has come within the context of close friendships. And the combined money of this same small group of people can dramatically change the life of another person more easily then a church corporation can. In terms of the plain Return On Investment (ROI), I don't see local church as a good bet.

Paid Pastors

The real focal point of the church is the big guy (or sometimes girl) that stands up front every Sunday to teach us all a little somethin' somethin'. To a lesser extent, the focal point of the church also belongs to the youth pastor or children's pastor of the counseling pastor, since they do the face-to-face stuff with people.

Of course, gettin' paid falls apart unless money is still comin' in. And since I don't buy into the tithing or mandatory giving model anymore, the money isn't there and this position can't exist anymore.

I also have more philosophical/theological grounds that leads me to think that we should not have paid pastoral jobs anymore. For one thing, I now think that Jesus and the New Testament exemplify *not* to do this. I think that each Christian is more than capable of fulfilling a pastor's duties one-on-one or two-on-two with friends. Beyond that, I think that the existence of the pastoral role stifles the involvement of the church members themselves - despite the fact that pastors frequently preach against this type of thing. The church subtly enforces a corporate approach to care giving and relationships, with a hierarchal model and leadership, rather than natural group life.

Church Family

So that leads to the cliche that the local church should be a spiritual family. I have moved between cities a number of times while growing up, and I always realized that churches come and go and we rarely have any contact with former church friends once we depart. These are usually friendships of conveniance - we see these people every week so it's easy to chat and maybe make plans to hang out. Once the conveniance factor is gone, so is that friendship. That's not a big deal because this is true in almost all walks to life. Friendships with co-workers, or even with immediate family members, tends to dissolve if someone moves away. That's normal, but it's a far cry from the concept of "church family."

Note that I use the term "friendship" loosely here since most church friends remain at a somewhat superficial level. Actual discussions about real-life difficulties or our hopes and dreams are not a part of this. It takes a conscious effort to develop a deeper friendship, and church is not designed for that purpose.

The dark side of this is that it's easy for people to leave a local church without anyone talking to them afterwards. Even worse, it's easy to ostracize a person from the local church. People are formally and informally kicked out of leadership or out of church for all kinds of reasons. Don't agree with tithing? Strike one. Don't attend the Sunday service? Strike two. Cause too much discussion about what the church teaches? Strike three - you're out of here!

And once you're on the outside, it's tough to retain those former friends. I've heard way too many stories that attest to this dark side, but it's tough to see when we're still part of the church. Love your neighbour, it ain't. Kinda appreciate your fellow church member, it is.

... Coming in Part III, I talk about the controversial topics. ;)