Pastor Rick Snow of Atlanta City Church spoke last week at CBC. The title of his sermon was The Generosity Factor, which struck me as odd, because I instantly recalled listening to a sermon from CBC last year by Rick Snow also called The Generosity Factor…in fact I even blogged about it.
*Quick side note, did anyone else at CBC catch this? I beginning to feel like Kathy Griffin in the Seinfeld episode The Cartoon. I've really got to get a life*
So, for the second time, here is "The Generosity Factor":
:36 – "Generosity was laid on his heart". Tells a story of a pastor who took a job at a Christian School that was completely broke and this pastor listened to Rick's series on Giving and then someone gave them 2 million dollars.
7:12 – "Tell Me what you think about money and I'll tell you what you think about God"
9:15 – "Have a need, Sow a seed" – or as Frank would have you believe "Have a greed, Sow a seed"
10:01 – Mentions that for the first time in many years this tax season he is "Getting a substantial amount back from the IRS" and do you want to know why…because he "sowed almost $27,000 into his church". Then Rick mentions that he "is in the top 5% of givers in his church." – Ok Rick, I hate to tell you this, but getting tax money back does not qualify as a "blessing from God"…your tithe is tax deductible…that's a gift from the IRS, not God…and there are formula's for calculating how it all works…not really a miracle is it?
Also, why do you know that you are in the top 5% of givers in your church and why does that matter?
12:22 – His goal is to "give a reverse tithe" (I'm not making this up). Giving 90% of his income and living on 10%, Rick Warren already does this.
15:07 – Tells us that his church "sowed $100,000 to a "Black" Church in Portland, OR & God gave back not in the form of dollars but instead the reaped in square footage" (they now own a 100,000sf building). – Whoops, don't let Pastor Frank hear that…Frank doesn't believe that is possible:
"The special law of sowing and reaping is that the product of the harvest will be the same in kind as the seed sown. Tares will never produce wheat, nor wheat tares. But each seed reproduces its own kind."
Sorry, Rick maybe you sowed a house somewhere and that is how you received the bigger building.
16:35 – "God is in the business…" I didn't catch the rest of this statement, but I don't think God is in any business…he's God.
16:50 – Tells a story about a guy who was in debt with over $100,000 on 2 credit cards that came to him for help. With Rick's advise, the guy pays it off in 2 years. The guy didn't receive any raises at work or anything. So how did he pay it off? Rick says it's because "once God saw that this man was serious…it's amazing how quickly the blessings come". – OR…once this guy got on a budget (with Rick's help) its amazing how much money he actually had.
Let's be honest, average Joe doesn't have the ability to run up $120,000 on 2 credit cards, clearly this guy makes plenty of money; he just needed someone like Rick to slap some sense into him. And there is your blessing…God didn't pay off the credit in 2 years, this guy did.
19:00 – Tells everyone that if they don't listen to his sermon (which is led by the Spirit) over and over then none of this will work.
20:02 – Quotes Scripture "My God will supply all your needs..." but then says "Every promise has a premise" (Marc, are you getting all these quips. They're gems). "Every promise has a premise" so that scripture "doesn't apply to everyone". Anyone want to guess what that premise is?
33:30 – Rick says something to the effect of "I'm not watching where you give your money…that's not my job…God forbid I would have to do that". Sure, but you know that you are in the top 5% of givers in your church. Stop lying to us Rick.
33:50 – Quote of the night. "I tithe for protection from the curse that is in the earth out there". Let's read that again
"I TITHE FOR PROTECTION FROM THE CURSE THAT IS IN THE EARTH OUT THERE".
My friend Jenny wants to know which scripture that comes from…no seriously, which scripture?
33:59 – "I tithe for Protection but give offerings for Progression". Frank, write that down.
Ok, you see where this is going. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Pastor Rick had a lot of GREAT things to say about getting your finances under control and I'm sure he makes a great financial advisor (just talk to the guy who paid of $120,000 in debt in 2 years). The problem for me is when you tie Financial Trouble with Giving Money to the Church. It sounds good, but just isn't Biblical.
People, stop and think about all this for a minute. Do the math. Listen to everything you've heard from CBC on giving and receiving, run it through the Bible, and see if it adds up. It doesn't. If you have financial troubles today, giving money to the church isn't going to solve them. Getting on a budget, however, will. Tithing isn't a miracle cure for debt, in fact, ask around and you'll find people who tithed regularly and only dug themselves deeper into debt. I'm one of those people.
When my wife and I first got married 7 years ago, we gave 10% of our income every week to CBC. By the end of the month we were living on credit cards. Why? Because we didn't know how to handle our money. Here we are years later, we don't give a full 10% to the church anymore (although I wish we could) and now we have no credit card debt. Imagine that.
I'd like to offer this challenge: I bet that if you took 2 people (or 100 for that matter) and had half of them give 10% of their income to their church, but after that not look at their money at all, and take the other half and have them not give a dime to the church but follow a strict budget you'd see the truth to how much blessing*is involved in tithe. The blessing is in the budget, everyone. The blessing is in the budget.
*by blessing I mean in a CBC sort of way…financially that is. I believe that there is a great "general blessing" for those who are generous, I just won't put a dollar figure on it.
