The NXR Podcast - March 25, 2023


QUESTIONS - Should I Financially Support Right Response Or My Local Church？


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

182.56596

Word count

1,672

Sentence count

90

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we discuss the concept of a 10% tithe to the church and other ministries within and outside of the church. How should families determine how much of their annual budget should be allocated to certain ministries?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 All right, listen, guys, I get it.
00:00:01.900 Many of you are unable to financially support this ministry because you're spending your
00:00:05.900 cash and your lives on raising young children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.
00:00:10.740 Praise God for you and that endeavor.
00:00:13.860 However, algorithms are a thing.
00:00:16.380 Shadow banning, sadly, is a thing.
00:00:19.000 And one major way that you can help to expand the reach and effectiveness of this ministry
00:00:24.160 that doesn't cost you a dime is by spending just a few moments leaving us a five-star review.
00:00:31.220 Also, perhaps even more effective than that, you can share our podcast with a friend.
00:00:36.560 We hope you'll take the time to do so.
00:00:38.480 Thank you so much.
00:00:39.760 God bless.
00:00:44.480 How should families determine a plan for giving financially to the church and other ministries?
00:00:49.820 Well, I mean, biblically, you would like to, you know, the goal is that you would give 10%.
00:00:54.940 The tithe is a biblical principle. It's still just as biblical in the New Testament as the old,
00:01:00.560 right? What's the general equity of 10%? It's 10%. So I believe that the New Testament church, 0.90
00:01:08.620 it should still be 10% tithe. Offerings would be above that. You can give above that,
00:01:14.380 but I think each Christian should seek to give 10% tithe to the church. And again, same back to 1.00
00:01:20.620 the chopping wood thing. It's not rocket science, but it's hard work. I know it's hard right now
00:01:24.980 when, you know, if the government's taking 30, 40, 50% of your money, then to give an additional 10%
00:01:31.240 to the church is difficult, but we don't want to rob God, right? Malachi talks about, you know,
00:01:36.900 why are you robbing God? And so 10% to the church. And then in terms of ministries within the church, 0.89
00:01:43.460 um our church we're congregational that's my conviction and so we're you know we adhere to
00:01:50.020 the second london baptist confession of faith the 1689 and uh and so when it comes to certain
00:01:55.780 things like ordination or church discipline we are congregational and the other item that the
00:02:02.360 1689 doesn't bind us to but we think it's prudent my fellow elder and i that we've given to the
00:02:06.860 congregation for a simple majority vote is our annual budget and so the congregation gives to
00:02:12.280 the church and the congregation also has not just a view, they don't just get to see what the money
00:02:18.340 is going towards, but they actually have a vote and get to determine and exercise ecclesiastical
00:02:22.820 power in regards to the church's budget and what we apportion for each thing, including my salary.
00:02:28.120 So all that being said, give 10% to the church. If you're in a congregational church, aka a biblical
00:02:37.520 church. Other churches are not saying that it's heretical. We can disagree on polity, but I do
00:02:42.480 think that's the biblical model. Go figure. I believe that the position I hold is the right
00:02:47.620 one. Crazy, I know. But if you belong to a church with congregational polity and that congregational
00:02:53.580 polity stretches and encompasses the annual budget of the church, then you can help determine
00:03:00.060 what amount of finances should go towards certain ministries. And then more to your question,
00:03:04.540 you're talking about ministries outside of the church, it would be, again, it would be beyond a
00:03:09.860 tithe. So that's an email that I've gotten from time to time from people saying, we can't find a
00:03:15.020 church. We want to support Right Response Ministries. We love what you're doing. You're the person who
00:03:20.000 the Lord is using you and other guys, like-minded guys, James White, you know, or Jeff Durbin or
00:03:25.100 Doug Wilson or Aidy Robles, you know, or John Harris or whatever. Like, these are the guys that
00:03:30.200 the Lord is using to teach me. You're the one that I'm being nourished from, from the Word of God.
00:03:37.380 And so I want to give towards your ministry. And to that, I respond by saying, thank you.
00:03:42.040 The Bible says that we should share all good things with those who share with us the Word of
00:03:46.360 God. And so I think that's a right instinct. That's a correct instinct to say, you're sharing
00:03:52.000 with me. I am benefiting spiritually, and therefore I want to share practically, financially,
00:03:59.160 physically with the one who is sharing with me spiritually that's certainly a biblical principle
00:04:04.160 but you don't want to do that at the expense of the local church and and then what i'll get
00:04:08.500 you know i'll say that with email so i'll say give 10 to your local church and if you can afford to
00:04:13.060 give more uh then yeah we'd be on it um but but don't rob your local church and the response i
00:04:19.920 often get is yeah but um my pastor's not really feeding me my pastor like we have a diversity
00:04:25.340 council at the church, and it's woke, and the pastor, you know, didn't say anything about Roe
00:04:30.660 being overturned, and he closed the church for, you know, seven months with COVID, and, you know,
00:04:35.940 was talking about how we should love our neighbor by getting the vax. Our pastor, you know, likes
00:04:40.560 Russell more. Our pastor, you know, this and that and the other. In which case, I would say, still,
00:04:46.960 don't rob God. So, what you need to do is stop going to that church.
00:04:52.780 so so no you don't need to stop tithing there and give it to right response ministries
00:04:59.080 you need to stop going there and in between for the record in between as you're you need to
00:05:05.260 actively pursue membership in another church whether it means finding another one where you
00:05:09.620 are or moving if you have to you do whatever it takes to be in a good biblical church if it means
00:05:15.140 moving to find a church we've got people who have moved from canada multiple people who are part of
00:05:20.020 our church and they're a blessing and we're so glad they're here. And they were willing not just
00:05:23.540 to move across the country, but to move across the continent because they know that they didn't
00:05:28.740 have a good church and they know, or they did, but they wanted to get out of Canada for other
00:05:33.380 reasons, which who can blame them. But the point is they recognize the importance of a local church,
00:05:38.120 a good, solid biblical church. So if your church is lousy, don't give them your tithe, but also
00:05:44.420 don't be a member there. So find another church where you are or move and find another church,
00:05:49.700 even though that may be difficult. Do what you got to do. Or the only other option is you can
00:05:54.860 plant a church. So you can find a church, you can move to a church, or you can plant a church.
00:05:59.480 But you got to be in a church, and you got to be giving to that church. Now, during that
00:06:03.920 intermediate season where you're in between churches, I'm trying to find a church, Joel,
00:06:08.400 or we are moving, but we can't move until a little bit later this year. Or I'm going to
00:06:14.280 plant a church, but I'm not ready yet, and I'm doing some training. Okay, then fine. Then find
00:06:18.980 apologia or right response ministries or somebody that's faithful like that. And sure, during that
00:06:27.860 intermediate season, I think that it's permissible that you could give to a parachurch ministry
00:06:34.260 that's faithful in the Word like ours. But ideally, ordinarily, you should be in a church.
00:06:42.460 There are extenuating circumstances, especially right now when so many churches have discredited
00:06:46.440 themselves and compromised. A lot of people are churchless with good reason, but ordinarily you
00:06:52.500 should be in a good church. You should be giving 10% to that good church. And if you can afford
00:06:57.200 and are able to give more, you can consider giving more even above 10% to that church,
00:07:01.800 or you can consider giving above the tithe to another faithful ministry that shares with you
00:07:06.600 the word of God. And if you feel like, well, this ministry shares with me the word of God
00:07:10.900 more than my own pastor, then leave that church. And yeah, give some money to our ministry if God
00:07:17.880 puts that on your heart. But also be looking as fast as you can for another church because you
00:07:24.900 can't just sit on your couch and watch Joel with Right Response Ministries on the Lord's Day on
00:07:29.920 YouTube. You got to be in a church. Can I be frank with you for just a second right here at the end?
00:07:35.420 Look, some of you guys, you're financially supporting this ministry. And from the bottom
00:07:39.620 of my heart, I say thank you. I cannot thank you enough. However, some of you, you just,
00:07:46.420 you can't afford it. In fact, some of you, you shouldn't afford it. Let's be honest. I mean,
00:07:52.780 we're living in Joe Biden's ridiculous economy. Our nation and our totalitarian political elites 0.98
00:08:00.900 lost their minds over the last three years due to COVID. We have written checks that we simply
00:08:08.380 cannot cash. It doesn't matter if people change the definition of a recession. We are living in
00:08:14.960 a recession right now regardless. Some of you are struggling to afford a carton of eggs at the
00:08:21.840 grocery store. You cannot support financially this ministry at this time nor should you but you could
00:08:29.380 still help us tremendously. I am asking you please if you're willing to do so take one minute of your
00:08:36.820 time. Leave us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform, iTunes, Spotify, whatever that
00:08:44.020 might be. This is the way the system works. We want to be innocent as doves, but shrewd as vipers.
00:08:50.900 We need to be strategic. You leave us a five-star review, and our podcast shows up for more people.
00:08:58.120 And the Word of God and courageous theology applied in practical ways to every realm of life
00:09:05.260 gets out there.
00:09:06.820 Help us get it out there. Thanks for tuning in.