I quit Going to Church

By Joel Atwell

“… you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood … you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God …”

Dear church,

I’ve mentioned it numerous times, but I’m going to do it again. Richard Stearns’ book The Hole in Our Gospel is a MUST READ! I’m force-feeding it to our church board at GC. We’re working our way through it 2-3 chapters at a time at each monthly board meeting during this fiscal year. Last night we discussed chs. 19-22. Can you say “challenging?”

Listen to this passage:

Let me start with this good news. You’re rich, we’re rich and the church in America is rich. And now I’m sure you are thinking that I’m wrong, that you’re not rich, and neither is your church. But bear with me, because wealth is always measured in relative terms. Brace yourselves for this good news! If your income is $25,000 per year, you’re wealthier than approximately 90% of the world’s population! If you make $50,000 per year, you’re wealthier than 99% of the world. Does this shock you? Remember, of the 6.7 billion people on earth, almost half of them live on less than two dollars a day … 93% of the world’s people don’t own a car … Our difficulty is that we see our American lifestyles as normative, when in fact they are grossly distorted compared to the rest of the world …

It’s important to put the American church into perspective. Simply stated, it is the wealthiest community of Christians in the history of Christendom. How wealthy? The total income of American church-goers is $5.2 trillion. It would take just a little over 1 percent of the income of American Christians to lift the poorest one billion people in the world out of extreme poverty. Said another way, American Christians, who make up about 5% of the Church worldwide, control about half of the global Christian wealth; a lack of money is not our problem.

So, as the wealthiest nation of Christians in the world, how do we do on tithing our income? Here’s the bad news. If we define tithing as giving 10% or more of our pretax income to the church or non-profit ministries, only about 5% of American households tithe … Listen to the words of James used to address wealthy first-century Christians who hoarded their money to spend on themselves:

“Listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days … You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. (Jms. 5:1-5)

… But this is just the first part of the equation. If we look at where the money goes after it is received by the churches, we find that just about 2% of it goes to overseas missions of any kind, whether evangelistic or to assist the poor … that amounts to about six pennies per person per day that we give through our churches to the rest of the world – six cents! (pp. 215-217)

So, why do I share all of this? Four reasons: (1) To say thank you to all of those who are, as an act of obedience, faith and worship, honoring God with the first-fruits of your finances. That’s one important expression of truly BEING the church. (2) To say thank you to all who, this past Sunday, helped GC pledge in excess of 10% of this next year’s income to be invested in the work of the Gospel in other parts of the world. That’s called BEING the church. (3) To encourage all of us who are a part of Christ’s church not to get seduced into lifestyles of tight-fisted, self-centered, self-indulgence, but to live simply and generously for the sake of Christ and his Kingdom! And, (4), to remind us – all of us who have been given so much – to live with gratitude in our hearts and on our lips for God’s lavish provision! That’s how those who are genuinely BEING the church live.

Praying for God’s empowering grace to BE the church,

Joel