GIVING IS AN ACT OF WORSHIP

 

            In my reading, I’ve been working through Giving to God: The Bible’s Good News about Living a Generous Live by Mark Allan Powell. In the very first chapter, he talks about giving being an act of worship.

            I know that, originally, giving in churches wasn’t a monetary gift because churches were supported by the government. But as that changed, then the offering time became a time to offer monetary gifts.

            The author talks about how, in the Bible, when people made their offerings or sacrifices (grain, birds, animal, food, etc.), those gifts were actually burned at the altar. Can you image if on Sunday morning, after the ushers went around and collected the offering, that the plates were carried forward to the altar, and the pastor dropped them all in a little burn barrel and lit them on fire? Wow! How do you think the congregation would react?

            Most of us figure that the reason we have the offering during the service is because the church needs to pay its bills and to allow the church to do good things with the money. Of course, both of those things are true, but it’s not WHY we have an offering during the service.

            The offering is an act of worship. We are invited to give up something that we value—our money—as a sacrifice to God. The author has this to say (which I loved). “It is the high point of the liturgy. We come to church to worship God and at no other point in the service are we provided with so pure an opportunity for worship as this.”[1]

            So is this is such an important part of the worship liturgy, why do we act embarrassed when the time to receive an offering comes?

            I know I’ve been part of stewardship programs that talk about the needs of the church, how much the bills are, and even what the mission and ministries are that the church is doing. But that actually misses the whole point of giving. We give because we want and need to give it. We give because we can do nothing else when we decide to follow Jesus and become a disciple.

            Think about it. Why are we giving? Are we giving to the church? Or to God?

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[1]Giving to God: The Bible’s Good News about Living a Generous Life, by Mark Allan Powell (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2006), page 11