How Do You Handle Giving in a Biblical House Church？
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Summary
In this episode, Dr. Jason Barker and Dr. Dale Partridge wrap up season one of How We Do House Church by asking the question, "How do you handle giving in the house church?" How do you give in a house church?
Transcript
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Welcome to the How We Do House Church podcast. My name is Dr. Jason Barker, and I serve as the
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academic dean of Reformation Seminary. And I'm joined as always by my friend and our seminary's
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founder and president, Dale Partridge. Dale, how you doing, man? We are on episode number 10.
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number 10, which is the wrap up episode for the season, season one of how we do house church. So
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this is, this is a good day. Yeah, it's absolutely a good day. And we've got a good question too.
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Now this is one, it doesn't really matter how you address this. You're going to step on someone's
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toes. There's just no way around this, whether you're handling it in your sermon on Sunday,
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whether you're doing it on a podcast, somebody is going to get mad at you. And our question for the
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day, is how do you handle giving in the house church? Yeah, it's a good question. Giving is
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obviously a touchier subject. And we have our preconceived ideas about giving because of the
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traditional model. Most giving for people has been the tithe, this 10% of their income.
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My argument is that tithing, while it's biblical, is not Christian, meaning that tithing was
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the Levitical structure for paying the priests and those civil servants of Israel who were
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serving the nation of Israel through their sacrificial works. And if you look at the
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historical tithe, it's actually made up of several different tithes. It's more like 23%
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of your income. And so the New Testament command is not tithing, but giving.
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Tithing, I would argue, with sacrifices and priests and all of that was nailed to the cross.
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And now giving has become our central way to support those in need and those who labor.
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And in a house church, again, it's a little bit more, it's just a different structure.
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Because in the traditional church, we can ask for giving because we have to support the building.
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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.
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And the pastor can essentially hide his salary in all of those things.
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Now, I know that's not what a pastor is doing, but a pastor is usually not stepping on stage
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And we know that the scripture says the laborer is worthy of his wages.
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And those who live by the gospel should get paid by the gospel and for their work in the
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And so a house church makes it a little bit more awkward, maybe for the pastor, because
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there's really no expenses except for his time right there yes there are some chairs and there
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are some hymnals and there's some one-time expenses but as for the local church expenses
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there's really just the pastor's time to labor in the word now that might be split between two elders
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but other than that there really is no expenses what you can do as a a pastor and you need to
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to teach faithfully on what the scriptures teach around giving and supporting those who labor.
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Now, a house church pastor, if you had 10 families who made $80,000 a year and they all gave 10%,
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that means you'd get paid 80 grand a year to prepare a sermon once a week. And you're really
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only laboring maybe say 10 to 15 hours, maybe 20 hours a week on a busy week.
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It's a little lopsided. So the reason is, is because when you give to a traditional model
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in the traditional church, that is really broken up into three categories. It's broken up into
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paying for the salaries and the expenses of the local church. It's given up to category number
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two, which would be giving to the needs of those individual members in the church. And then category
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three is supporting the Christian ministry that's coming out of the church, which is missionary work
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or taking care of the poor or whatever that may be. So in a house church model, essentially what
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you get to do is manage that distribution yourself. And so you can give to your pastor
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a portion of that income or that giving income that you're going to offer to the church.
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And then you're also going to give to those... I like setting aside a pot of money for when those
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times come up in the church that somebody's car breaks down or that there's a credit card debt
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that's overwhelming or somebody gets sick and they can't afford the medical bills or whatever
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it may be, having just the discipline to set some money aside for those moments.
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And the same thing is true with Christian ministries. There's opportunities for our
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house church to support the local pregnancy resource center. There's opportunities to support
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some missionary work through HeartCry ministry with Paul Washer. There's some opportunity to
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support our ministry at Mail the Gospel. And so there's a handful of things that our local
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church can support that way. And we get to redistribute some of those expenses that are
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often supported by giving, like the landscaping budget or the parking lot project or the electric
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bill. And we can actually redistribute those needs directly to individuals. And I think it's
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a more effective use of funds. But it is different. And so the way giving works,
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practically speaking, I've heard of some house churches that have a giving box.
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I've heard of some house churches that will pass around something. We don't do that.
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If a need is expressed, we encourage the body to cover that need. And maybe the deacons or
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an elder will kind of facilitate that discussion some more. And for those that want to support
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the elders that are teaching and laboring in the word, it's just an individual conversation.
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We've had people for us give us money through Venmo and give us cash or give us a check or
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have an automatic deposit for $50 a week or whatever it might be. And when I think about
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just a formula, which I don't think there is a formula here, but something that has been helpful
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to me and to some of the other pastors in the Reformation Fellowship is just thinking about
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what is the average hourly rate for a guy doing work in your neck of the woods? So it's going to
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be different for someone in New York City and San Francisco versus the middle of the Midwest.
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And say the average rate is $25 an hour for a man in his 40s. I think it's fair to calculate
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what should giving look like around that number. And so if a man's spending 10 hours a week
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studying and laboring in the word, and maybe another 15 or 10 hours doing other things,
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it's somewhere between maybe $1,000 to $2,000 a month of giving that is probably fair for
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for that individual pastor, which is radically different than an $80,000 salary.
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Well, there's something worth mentioning here as well. And for Reformation Fellowship Network
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churches, we recommend that they do not go secure a 501c3 nonprofit license or sort of whatever it
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is that you call that. And so that does impact giving in some ways because a lot of people give
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to churches because they know they're going to get a tax write-off at the end of the year. That's
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not the same in the house church, is it? No, you don't get a tax write-off and you give because
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you want to give, not because you receive something in return. And yeah, you get to
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facilitate that gift to somebody. In the United States, we have house churches all around the
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world. But in the United States, you actually can have, you can gift a certain amount of money per
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individual family per year without a tax liability from that. But yeah, we don't have
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government oversight, which is wonderful. We don't have any rules or regulations on the house church.
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We are a private group of civilians that are gathering together. And that's one of the
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strengths of the house church model. But yeah, we don't have this 501c3 write-off tax exemption
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that you would have. And so giving is a little bit more organic, but it is something that we
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want to encourage families to do and to give in all three of those dimensions and to get churches
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to really focus on all three of those dimensions because it really does create a fruitful and
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faithful church supporting each other's needs. Yeah. And I think one of the things we have to
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be mindful of is that God does love a cheerful giver, right? And so there's an attitude element
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that's involved in this. And when you strip away some of the things that are present in a
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traditional church model, and you're giving directly to the need of the pastor who you see
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every Sunday, who you have dinner with, who you talk to when you're essentially rewarding the
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effort that he has put into Shepherd that week. When you see the need of the person that you see
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every Sunday and that you have lunch with every Sunday, and as a church, you come alongside and
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you help pay down their medical debt, or you help repair their car, or whatever it is, or as a small
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church, a house church, you decide we're going to support Operation Christmas Child, or we're going
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to give money to Compassion International, or we're going to support the Pregnancy Resource
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center there's there's no delay really between when you give the money and when you see it go
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and be effective right and that that's a beautiful thing right it's it's not going into a mysterious
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budget and you don't know where it goes if it's going to pay a salary if it's going to
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send a child to youth camp or if it's going to put grass on the third ball field you don't know
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sometimes in a traditional church model here you do and that's a really like i said that's just a
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beautiful thing. Yeah. I actually think that it's what the scriptures intended. We have systematized
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and corporatized the church in so many areas that little things like this, we just totally forget
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that we've lost the direct correlation between giving and blessing and watching the blessing
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of giving unfold before our eyes. And giving really does bind and weave people together
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in a way that when you put an institution as the middleman, you lose that.
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And so again, the house church just finds itself in a unique spot where it facilitates
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an environment that I believe is closer to the New Testament. Again, we love the traditional church,
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but I just think there's some benefits, and this is one of them, that it's real biblical
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Christianity. You look at the New Testament, and then you look at your experience, and you
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actually start to see correlation. And you feel like, wow, this is wonderful, especially when
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you're getting a chance to be the giver and the receiver. We've seen families over the years
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in the house church, because they're such close relationships, we've seen families buy people
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cars. We've seen families cover, pay off credit cards or pay for groceries for two months straight.
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We've seen one family give another family $100,000 to get them out of a debacle with the IRS.
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us. There is just a powerful thing when families are together that love one another and they're
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in fellowship and bearing the name of Christ and giving to the needs of each other. It's just a
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wonderful thing. That's awesome. So we have pretty much, I think, gone through this entire topic,
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but I know, Dale, that there's still a lot of questions that people have. This is our 10th
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episode, the final episode of season one. Pretty soon here, we're going to start putting together
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season two. But how do people get questions to us, those hot questions that they need answered
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about House Church? Yeah. You can follow Reformation Seminary on Instagram. You can
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follow us. Give us your email if you go to reformationseminary.com. You can find us at
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different places on social media if you look for us. If you also want to get the How We Do House
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church book, which Jason will hold up if you're watching this on the video. This is a book that
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I've written and really put together. I was kind of like the general editor. But this basically
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shows the entire workflow, outline, doctrines, convictions of what we do as a house church.
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This will give you a lot more information. But the big thing is we want to get men to plant
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house churches, because we have inquiries all over the world, and especially all over the United
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States, asking if they have a house church in their area. And we have to say no, because we
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need more men who are called, who are qualified, who are ready to be trained to step up, get trained
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at Reformation Seminary and plant a house church in the Reformation Fellowship Network.
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That's right. So men, if you would like more information, or if you just want to start the
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discussion about getting trained to plant a biblical house church head to reformationseminary.com
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and fill out the enrollment inquiry form that email is going to go basically it's going to go
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straight to you and me yeah and uh we're going to get you connected for a candidate interview
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and and dale will have some questions for you and you'll have plenty of time to ask questions of him
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that's really your first step and so we want to encourage you if god has laid this on your heart
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if you're sensing a call to ministry but you and you just have questions reach out we we are here
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We have both gone through those questions before
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Just as a reminder, these episodes are available in both audio and video form across all platforms.
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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.