Pastor Marty Baker is a believer in the idea."When Jesus says, 'I will build the church,' he says, financially, I've got a system for you," Baker preaches, "It's called tithing."
Tithing means giving a tenth of your income - and church construction is exactly what pastor Marty Baker is pitching his congregation to pay for.
"God doesn't fund the church through bingo nights, pancake suppers and chicken dinners," Baker says. "God funds the church through people willing to commit to the tithe."
Over twenty years, tithing has helped transform Stevens Creek Church in Augusta, Georgia from a few people in somebody's living room to a megachurch in the making.
"Without tithing, we would not be here," says Baker. "I would say that the tithe probably would be around 70% of our overall budget. The tithe is the heartbeat of our church."
Giving is central to most religions, a principle of faith. Americans donate $295 billion a year to charity, with just under a third of it - $97 billion - to religious organizations.
On average, Christians are giving about 2.5 percent of their income to churches, not ten, and no matter how much good it does, tithing is controversial.
"We believe that everything the churches teach about tithing is wrong," author Russell Kelly says.
From his home near Marietta, Georgia, Russell Kelly wages war against preachers who use the Bible to justify tithing. His Web site, shouldthechurchteachtithing, argues against the supporters of tithing.
"We believe if you look at those texts they quote," he says, "they are out of context."
But that's not his only objection.
"Almost every person I contact on the Internet, they tell me the same story, where they go to their pastor - no matter what kind of church it is, Baptist, Charismatic, Methodist, you name it - and start asking questions about tithing, they are told to shut up, to be quiet, to leave the church."
It happened to his own wife, when her first husband was dying.
"I had a $5 an hour job, a small child to raise, and my husband kept getting, sicker and sicker," said Janice Kelly. "It came to the point whether I buy insulin for him or whether I pay my tithes, so I went to the preacher."
Janice Kelly didn't expect his response.
"He just ... told me I would be cursed."
"I'm angry that my church would twist and fleece the flock, twist the scripture to such a point that it's just awful," says retired aerospace worker Charles Crabtree.
Crabtree got mad when he received a letter from his pastor.
"In that letter, they were asking us to tithe and they used Malachi."
The reading was Malachi 3:10: "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse … and test me now in this, says the Lord of hosts. If I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows."
"Protestants, both mainline and evangelical, have since the 1870s, fixed upon the tithe and on this Malachi passage as a kind of law that has never been repealed," explains James Hudnut-Beumler, dean of the divinity school at Vanderbilt University.
Yes, only since the 1870s, as a way of making up lost revenue. The First Amendment in effect privatized religion in the United States, cutting off the tax money that once supported it in colonial America. The weekly collection didn't even exist until the middle of the 19th century, when churches gave up selling or renting pews.
"I'm somewhat suspicious of people who want to turn giving ten percent into virtually the only law that applies to people who are under a covenant of grace," says Hudnut-Beumler, "where God saves freely, not for ten percent down."
He says he's reminded of Martin Luther, father of the Protestant movement, who broke away from the Catholic church because it was selling indulgences: Promises of a quicker road to heaven in exchange for cash.
"Stripped down to its basics," he says, "I don't think it's different than indulgences. What we see today, though, is a return to 'this-for-that religion,' give God this and God will give you that."
Iowa Senator Charles Grassley wants to know how God happened to give the trappings of a billionaire lifestyle to certain televangelists and whether donors, many of them tithers, are being exploited.
Grassley, a ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, has requested financial records from six highflying ministers' accounts of their spending on everything from houses to jets.
Since churches are tax exempt, Kenneth Copeland and the other preachers targeted are balking at handing over documents.
Copeland saidthat his church did respond to the request for information.
"We answered them," he said. "We gave them a several page lesson on 'No.'"
Howard Dayton, co-founder of Crown Financial Ministries and a proponent of tithing, responded when asked if he thought the "Bentley club" preachers have given others churches a bad name?
"I think so, absolutely," he told her.
Dayton's not-for-profit counseling service is global. His radio show can be heard on 4,000 stations worldwide in multiple languages.
"What goals do you have?" Dayton asked one caller who, like many, is drowning in debt.
"I think our number one goal," said the caller, "no matter what, is not to cut our tithes."
Dayton agreed, that in spite of her debt, the goal should be to cut down expenses in other areas.
"When you recognize that you can't spend more than 100 percent of your income and if you have 10 percent going to giving, then you've got to be more disciplined on how you spend the other 90 percent," says Dayton.
"Tithing is a matter of obedience," says financial planner Bruce Williams. "To start with, it is commanded by the Bible."
Williams counsels his clients to start at ten percent.
"I would say 75 percent of the people I work with are already tithing or well beyond that. They are a generous lot."
Williams manages the Nashville office of Ronald Blue & Co., a kind of faith-based Merrill Lynch, with fifteen offices around the U.S., that urges high net-worth believers to build giving into their financial planning, but with this caveat:
"Any giving should be done cheerfully and not under compulsion," says Williams. "It's a matter of the heart."
Just to make paying up easy, at Stevens Creek Church in Augusta, pastor Marty Baker has installed giving kiosks.
"Some parishioners call them God's ATMs, last year they took in $300,000."
"Every year we have a finance meeting," Baker says, "that we lay it all out, and say, 'This is what your money is being spent on.' You can look around here and see the growth of the congregation and it's very easy to determine what the money is being invested in."
Stevens Creek supports a medical outreach program and several foreign missions. Other funds go to the shelter the church operates for the homeless in downtown Augusta.
"The Lord had just placed on my heart that I really wanted to help those in need and those broken-hearted in very practical ways," says church missions coordinator Dorna Adams. "And yes, it takes money to do that."
Adams will gladly show the church's tithing dollars, including her own, at work.
"I do tithe, faithful, every month," she says. "It is Biblical, we are called to give 10 percent. My husband and I, our family, we believe in that."
So does volunteer Connie Sivertson. For her, tithing is bedrock, not to be questioned.
"The Lord says if you tithe, you know, anything else that you may have to skimp on because you've tithed, he will fulfill that."
To tithe or not to tithe, that is the question no one asks here.
"It makes me feel good," Sivertson says. "It's a wonderful feeling."
Here, they ask instead: What if everybody tithed? Think how much more could be done
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