Dale Partridge - How Do You Handle Giving in a Biblical House Church？

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the How We Do House Church podcast. My name is Dr. Jason Barker, and I serve as the

00:00:13.200 academic dean of Reformation Seminary. And I'm joined as always by my friend and our seminary's

00:00:17.820 founder and president, Dale Partridge. Dale, how you doing, man? We are on episode number 10.

00:00:23.660 number 10, which is the wrap up episode for the season, season one of how we do house church. So

00:00:30.300 this is, this is a good day. Yeah, it's absolutely a good day. And we've got a good question too.

00:00:35.560 Now this is one, it doesn't really matter how you address this. You're going to step on someone's

00:00:39.660 toes. There's just no way around this, whether you're handling it in your sermon on Sunday,

00:00:43.680 whether you're doing it on a podcast, somebody is going to get mad at you. And our question for the

00:00:48.160 day, is how do you handle giving in the house church? Yeah, it's a good question. Giving is

00:00:55.940 obviously a touchier subject. And we have our preconceived ideas about giving because of the

00:01:01.700 traditional model. Most giving for people has been the tithe, this 10% of their income.

00:01:10.220 My argument is that tithing, while it's biblical, is not Christian, meaning that tithing was

00:01:17.060 the Levitical structure for paying the priests and those civil servants of Israel who were

00:01:26.560 serving the nation of Israel through their sacrificial works. And if you look at the

00:01:33.960 historical tithe, it's actually made up of several different tithes. It's more like 23%

00:01:38.400 of your income. And so the New Testament command is not tithing, but giving.

00:01:43.300 Tithing, I would argue, with sacrifices and priests and all of that was nailed to the cross.

00:01:49.480 And now giving has become our central way to support those in need and those who labor.

00:01:56.420 And in a house church, again, it's a little bit more, it's just a different structure.

00:02:01.760 Because in the traditional church, we can ask for giving because we have to support the building.

00:02:06.860 We have to support the parking lots getting paved, the youth ministry needs X, Y, and Z, all of the realities of the electric bill and the plumbing and the new building projects that you might be having on, or this ministry needs these expenses covered, whatever it may be.

00:02:28.820 And the pastor can essentially hide his salary in all of those things.

00:02:34.260 Now, I know that's not what a pastor is doing, but a pastor is usually not stepping on stage

00:02:38.660 going, can you guys give to my salary?

00:02:41.900 However, the salary is included in that.

00:02:44.460 And we know that the scripture says the laborer is worthy of his wages.

00:02:49.480 And it teaches that in the New Testament.

00:02:51.280 And those who live by the gospel should get paid by the gospel and for their work in the

00:02:55.800 gospel ministry.

00:02:56.660 And so a house church makes it a little bit more awkward, maybe for the pastor, because

00:03:03.180 there's really no expenses except for his time right there yes there are some chairs and there

00:03:10.220 are some hymnals and there's some one-time expenses but as for the local church expenses

00:03:15.340 there's really just the pastor's time to labor in the word now that might be split between two elders

00:03:22.060 but other than that there really is no expenses what you can do as a a pastor and you need to

00:03:30.380 to teach faithfully on what the scriptures teach around giving and supporting those who labor.

00:03:35.960 Now, a house church pastor, if you had 10 families who made $80,000 a year and they all gave 10%,

00:03:42.440 that means you'd get paid 80 grand a year to prepare a sermon once a week. And you're really

00:03:48.620 only laboring maybe say 10 to 15 hours, maybe 20 hours a week on a busy week.

00:03:52.700 It's a little lopsided.

00:03:53.600 It's a little lopsided. So the reason is, is because when you give to a traditional model

00:03:57.560 in the traditional church, that is really broken up into three categories. It's broken up into

00:04:02.800 paying for the salaries and the expenses of the local church. It's given up to category number

00:04:07.740 two, which would be giving to the needs of those individual members in the church. And then category

00:04:12.200 three is supporting the Christian ministry that's coming out of the church, which is missionary work

00:04:17.680 or taking care of the poor or whatever that may be. So in a house church model, essentially what

00:04:23.860 you get to do is manage that distribution yourself. And so you can give to your pastor

00:04:30.000 a portion of that income or that giving income that you're going to offer to the church.

00:04:37.380 And then you're also going to give to those... I like setting aside a pot of money for when those

00:04:46.940 times come up in the church that somebody's car breaks down or that there's a credit card debt

00:04:53.160 that's overwhelming or somebody gets sick and they can't afford the medical bills or whatever

00:04:57.740 it may be, having just the discipline to set some money aside for those moments.

00:05:04.080 And the same thing is true with Christian ministries. There's opportunities for our

00:05:09.440 house church to support the local pregnancy resource center. There's opportunities to support

00:05:14.560 some missionary work through HeartCry ministry with Paul Washer. There's some opportunity to

00:05:19.980 support our ministry at Mail the Gospel. And so there's a handful of things that our local

00:05:26.180 church can support that way. And we get to redistribute some of those expenses that are

00:05:31.660 often supported by giving, like the landscaping budget or the parking lot project or the electric

00:05:36.560 bill. And we can actually redistribute those needs directly to individuals. And I think it's

00:05:42.040 a more effective use of funds. But it is different. And so the way giving works,

00:05:49.500 practically speaking, I've heard of some house churches that have a giving box.

00:05:54.240 I've heard of some house churches that will pass around something. We don't do that.

00:06:00.100 If a need is expressed, we encourage the body to cover that need. And maybe the deacons or

00:06:06.280 an elder will kind of facilitate that discussion some more. And for those that want to support

00:06:13.040 the elders that are teaching and laboring in the word, it's just an individual conversation.

00:06:18.960 We've had people for us give us money through Venmo and give us cash or give us a check or

00:06:24.600 have an automatic deposit for $50 a week or whatever it might be. And when I think about

00:06:32.780 just a formula, which I don't think there is a formula here, but something that has been helpful

00:06:37.500 to me and to some of the other pastors in the Reformation Fellowship is just thinking about

00:06:42.020 what is the average hourly rate for a guy doing work in your neck of the woods? So it's going to

00:06:49.940 be different for someone in New York City and San Francisco versus the middle of the Midwest.

00:06:55.760 And say the average rate is $25 an hour for a man in his 40s. I think it's fair to calculate

00:07:06.740 what should giving look like around that number. And so if a man's spending 10 hours a week

00:07:14.560 studying and laboring in the word, and maybe another 15 or 10 hours doing other things,

00:07:20.540 it's somewhere between maybe $1,000 to $2,000 a month of giving that is probably fair for

00:07:25.760 for that individual pastor, which is radically different than an $80,000 salary.

00:07:30.420 Well, there's something worth mentioning here as well. And for Reformation Fellowship Network

00:07:34.820 churches, we recommend that they do not go secure a 501c3 nonprofit license or sort of whatever it

00:07:43.380 is that you call that. And so that does impact giving in some ways because a lot of people give

00:07:48.700 to churches because they know they're going to get a tax write-off at the end of the year. That's

00:07:52.520 not the same in the house church, is it? No, you don't get a tax write-off and you give because

00:07:58.920 you want to give, not because you receive something in return. And yeah, you get to

00:08:04.660 facilitate that gift to somebody. In the United States, we have house churches all around the

00:08:09.620 world. But in the United States, you actually can have, you can gift a certain amount of money per

00:08:16.860 individual family per year without a tax liability from that. But yeah, we don't have

00:08:23.540 government oversight, which is wonderful. We don't have any rules or regulations on the house church.

00:08:32.280 We are a private group of civilians that are gathering together. And that's one of the

00:08:37.300 strengths of the house church model. But yeah, we don't have this 501c3 write-off tax exemption

00:08:45.120 that you would have. And so giving is a little bit more organic, but it is something that we

00:08:50.560 want to encourage families to do and to give in all three of those dimensions and to get churches

00:08:56.940 to really focus on all three of those dimensions because it really does create a fruitful and

00:09:02.620 faithful church supporting each other's needs. Yeah. And I think one of the things we have to

00:09:08.300 be mindful of is that God does love a cheerful giver, right? And so there's an attitude element

00:09:15.640 that's involved in this. And when you strip away some of the things that are present in a

00:09:22.600 traditional church model, and you're giving directly to the need of the pastor who you see

00:09:28.440 every Sunday, who you have dinner with, who you talk to when you're essentially rewarding the

00:09:35.260 effort that he has put into Shepherd that week. When you see the need of the person that you see

00:09:40.220 every Sunday and that you have lunch with every Sunday, and as a church, you come alongside and

00:09:44.780 you help pay down their medical debt, or you help repair their car, or whatever it is, or as a small

00:09:50.520 church, a house church, you decide we're going to support Operation Christmas Child, or we're going

00:09:54.820 to give money to Compassion International, or we're going to support the Pregnancy Resource

00:10:00.880 center there's there's no delay really between when you give the money and when you see it go

00:10:07.140 and be effective right and that that's a beautiful thing right it's it's not going into a mysterious

00:10:12.360 budget and you don't know where it goes if it's going to pay a salary if it's going to

00:10:17.660 send a child to youth camp or if it's going to put grass on the third ball field you don't know

00:10:24.900 sometimes in a traditional church model here you do and that's a really like i said that's just a

00:10:30.380 beautiful thing. Yeah. I actually think that it's what the scriptures intended. We have systematized

00:10:37.660 and corporatized the church in so many areas that little things like this, we just totally forget

00:10:46.380 that we've lost the direct correlation between giving and blessing and watching the blessing

00:10:53.860 of giving unfold before our eyes. And giving really does bind and weave people together

00:11:02.880 in a way that when you put an institution as the middleman, you lose that.

00:11:09.660 And so again, the house church just finds itself in a unique spot where it facilitates

00:11:15.120 an environment that I believe is closer to the New Testament. Again, we love the traditional church,

00:11:21.480 but I just think there's some benefits, and this is one of them, that it's real biblical

00:11:27.600 Christianity. You look at the New Testament, and then you look at your experience, and you

00:11:31.780 actually start to see correlation. And you feel like, wow, this is wonderful, especially when

00:11:38.140 you're getting a chance to be the giver and the receiver. We've seen families over the years

00:11:44.660 in the house church, because they're such close relationships, we've seen families buy people

00:11:50.100 cars. We've seen families cover, pay off credit cards or pay for groceries for two months straight.

00:11:59.520 We've seen one family give another family $100,000 to get them out of a debacle with the IRS.

00:12:09.740 us. There is just a powerful thing when families are together that love one another and they're

00:12:19.680 in fellowship and bearing the name of Christ and giving to the needs of each other. It's just a

00:12:25.060 wonderful thing. That's awesome. So we have pretty much, I think, gone through this entire topic,

00:12:30.620 but I know, Dale, that there's still a lot of questions that people have. This is our 10th

00:12:36.060 episode, the final episode of season one. Pretty soon here, we're going to start putting together

00:12:40.660 season two. But how do people get questions to us, those hot questions that they need answered

00:12:45.520 about House Church? Yeah. You can follow Reformation Seminary on Instagram. You can

00:12:49.240 follow us. Give us your email if you go to reformationseminary.com. You can find us at

00:12:56.620 different places on social media if you look for us. If you also want to get the How We Do House

00:13:03.340 church book, which Jason will hold up if you're watching this on the video. This is a book that

00:13:07.900 I've written and really put together. I was kind of like the general editor. But this basically

00:13:14.860 shows the entire workflow, outline, doctrines, convictions of what we do as a house church.

00:13:24.080 This will give you a lot more information. But the big thing is we want to get men to plant

00:13:30.400 house churches, because we have inquiries all over the world, and especially all over the United

00:13:37.160 States, asking if they have a house church in their area. And we have to say no, because we

00:13:43.740 need more men who are called, who are qualified, who are ready to be trained to step up, get trained

00:13:51.820 at Reformation Seminary and plant a house church in the Reformation Fellowship Network.

00:13:55.460 That's right. So men, if you would like more information, or if you just want to start the

00:13:59.380 discussion about getting trained to plant a biblical house church head to reformationseminary.com

00:14:04.660 and fill out the enrollment inquiry form that email is going to go basically it's going to go

00:14:09.900 straight to you and me yeah and uh we're going to get you connected for a candidate interview

00:14:13.720 and and dale will have some questions for you and you'll have plenty of time to ask questions of him

00:14:17.580 that's really your first step and so we want to encourage you if god has laid this on your heart

00:14:23.080 if you're sensing a call to ministry but you and you just have questions reach out we we are here

00:14:28.640 to help you navigate those questions.

00:14:31.180 We have both gone through those questions before

00:14:33.360 and been serving in ministry for years now.

00:14:35.800 And so we'd love to share with you

00:14:38.160 just from our experience,

00:14:39.820 share with you from God's word

00:14:40.880 and help you navigate that

00:14:42.920 because that is a big decision.

00:14:45.060 And it's not one that you make lightly

00:14:47.140 because it's God's call on you.

00:14:48.840 It's really not even a decision that you make.

00:14:51.360 So anyway, head to reformationseminary.com,

00:14:53.680 fill out the enrollment inquiry

00:14:54.740 and we'll be back in touch with you soon.

00:14:56.480 And Dale, that is a wrap on season one.

00:15:00.400 Friends, thank you so much for tuning in.

00:15:01.940 Just as a reminder, these episodes are available in both audio and video form across all platforms.

00:15:09.060 Check them out, forward them on to your friends, and we'll see you next time for season two of How We Do House Church.

00:15:26.480 Thank you.

Dale Partridge - November 01, 2022

How Do You Handle Giving in a Biblical House Church？

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