Hello Major;
I want to further my thoughts to what you and MM were discussing. "Institutional church refers to organized groups of professing Christians who meet in designated church buildings and follow prescribed schedules for weekly worship and teaching." In the church institutional includes "autonomous governance" of an individual church ordained by God's plan and purpose and this is where tithing or offering gets sticky, unfortunately. For example,
Our church tried to impose a commitment document called faith giving that is required by each member to sign in their pledge of giving back to the Lord. This was rejected because the person who suggested it did not know the history of our church's finances from giving. As their pastor I didn't know who gave or how much, except to pray as an overseer of the BOD and God's money. As of today we've never had a huge checking account but as God as my witness we have no debt aside from expenses, insurance, salaries, benevolence, mission giving, etc...When there was a time of need by a member we were prepared because we know each individual of our church family.
In your remark, "the New Testament contains no evidence that obedient Christians ever decided they “didn’t like church” and refused to participate." I agree with you and well, in my experience when Christians decided they didn't like church refused to participate also included their lack of giving their personal time serving or monetary back to the Lord. Either the pastor or church leadership isn't ministering to the individual for fear of sustaining numbers or offering to pray and encourage them to ask the Lord to guide them to the church where they can participate and serve. This does not replace the place of worship to our God.
Hello, Musicmaster;
Let's both observe, brother. In my post I feel what I shared aligns with your post of the widow, the two coins, the corruption of the temple leaders, perhaps in different views, but overall I feel we are in alignment with each other and I agree with you. If you meant that the widow was buying her way into heaven, then Jesus would have seen right through her. What He did see was her sacrificial giving, which was more than all of them put together, that was the point of the widow's giving. Now, if what you meant was the leader's message to her then this is false teaching and it's sinfully wrong. Once again, this is what Jesus was pointing out, how the leaders manipulate the weak and vulnerable.
As far as the giving of church goers an average of 1%, this is correct and it's also intentional. How many chose to purchase something on timely payments and pay more each month, yet, what measly little is left in their pocket when they give their 1% back to God? In both cases, the individual made a choice. I have heard Christians too many times say, "well, I needed this material thing to live." Don't we need God even more?
I'll take a look at John MacArthur's video while studying Luke, Matthew, Mark. What's beautiful is how God's Word constantly shows us/me something new to learn.
Musicmaster, let's continue this discussion but at some point we need to arrive at a going forward solution, prompted by God, and will we give heed to Him?
God bless you, Major and Musicmaster and for sharing in this topic.
Hello, Bob.
I fully agree with forging a path forward for a solution to the many, many dilemmas created by way of centuries worth of bad theology and bad practices, and just downright false teaching that has mostly dominated the thinking of so many for so long.
I visited a church organization once that had a very novel approach to this topic, but will talk about that later since I'm sure there are a number of methodologies that can be patterned in such was as to be consistent with the word of God.
MM