“I believe The City Church in Seattle has a gift and ministry of giving to the body of Christ. We have been blessed with more than enough! But there are two reasons we have been blessed. One is that we ask every member of our church to tithe. Therefore the blessing of God and the open windows of heaven are always functioning among our people. There is no curse upon us. Secondly, we are blessed because our church keeps giving money away. Each year we give away over 20 percent of our church’s income.” Wendell Smith, Prosperity with a Purpose, The City Church, Kirkland, Washington, 2005, p. 214
Wendell Smith's book is dangerous. Both solid biblical exegesis and balanced biblical theology are missing. Instead, Wendell devotes many pages to an overly-simplistic list of key words and verses that mention financial prosperity, e.g., "riches," "wealth," "silver," "gold," "gems," "firstfruits," "hundredfold," "lands," "luxury," "bankers," "thousand," "tithes," "money," etc. (pgs. 73-123). (Wendell’s friend, Frank Damazio, uses the same technique in Releasing Financial Provision, pgs. 331-378.) Using such lists, and the total numbers of their occurences in the Bible to prove a point without exegesis and theology is not only lazy but a wrong and immature use of Scripture. It would be similar to saying that Jesus is not interested in the Church since he only uses the word "church" (ekklesia) two times in the gospels (Mt. 16:18; 18:17).
Wendell also lists out quotes in favor of wealth not only from Christian sources but also pagan ones e.g., Euripides and Aeschylus, Greek playwrights, Thucydides, the Greek aristocrat, and Confucius, the Chinese philosopher (pgs. 271-285). In response to the hard questions about Christians and wealth, it is noteworthy that Wendell addresses some of them, but his responses are too short and superficial (pgs. 261-270).
The theme of book can be summed up in one phrase: more money, more ministry. In my view, the book is really Wendell’s personal testimony of how he has accumulated at The City Church, as one of Wendell’s relatives told me: “more money than he knows what to do with.”
Is the wealth of The City Church, all due to the blessing of God? Not necessarily. The King County/Lake Washington area, where The City Church is located, is one of the wealthiest areas in the country. Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, lives on Lake Washington. In 2005, the median household income in King County was $58,370. Out of 3,141 counties or county equivalents in the nation, King County ranks as approx. the 105th richest county according to median household incomes (census.gov).
Let’s do church income by the numbers: Pick a wealthy location to plant a church, require all of your church members to tithe, strongly encourage all of your members to give many, many offerings above the tithe, and Voila! Millions of dollars!
In light of this fact, and not just “the blessing of God,” Wendell can tell in his book how more than once someone in his church wrote out a check for $1,000,000. In light of this economic demographic, people have to realize, that just because a church’s income is in the multiplied millions, it does not necessarily mean that it is because they are preaching the “truth” about prosperity or because they are “obedient with the tithe so that the windows of heaven are opened” for them by God.
Besides demographics, the other critical factor as Wendell himself admits as a reason for such wealth accumulation, is that Wendell asks (requires?!) all of their church members to tithe, as well as to give offerings above their tithe. Someone on this blog posted that Wendell does not allow any of the members of The City Church to counsel with anyone on church staff unless they are known to be a faithful tither. If true, can you imagine the kind of pressure and expectation that such an unbiblical practice places upon all of the members of The City Church to tithe?! If accurate, are we to deem such manipulative practices appropriate because they are producing such a large revenue stream? If only because they are producing "results," have we become pragmatists, worshipping at the altar of the “whatever-works” philosophy of John Dewey, rather than Christians following Jesus to the foot of the cross? Do the "ends" of more ministry justify the "means" used to raising more money for it?
The Mormons have used the same fund-raising techniques of the mandatory tithe and additional offerings for many years. They have accrued the same result: millions of dollars to build their many meeting houses (called “stakes”) and temples debt-free! Is the material prosperity of the Mormons a clear indication that God himself is “blessing” them and directly helping them to take their message of salvation by good works all around the world?
My warning to those leaders and Christians who do not know the Bible very well and inwardly long for all of the benefits that wealth (mammon) can bring is not to look only upon the surface of lists of Bible words and verses along with the high-income numbers in The City Church and in other prosperity churches and try to follow suit. Dig deeper in the Word.
I fear that too many Christians will forget the fact that king Solomon had all the wealth that The City Church has and much more, and it was not because he always walked with God or tithed but because he developed lucrative international commerce in his wealthy corner of the world, and, even more critically, because he raised the mandatory taxes on the people of Israel to benefit his own temple state.
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