Dear Bill

Chapter fourteen

My third assignment (which I share chronologically) was my second book, “Financing the Great Commission” as mentioned in chapter seven.

Before going further, I don’t want you to get the impression I was a loudmouth. I wasn’t. I was not a troublemaker. I was the quiet introvert content to be unnoticed in a small group. My ‘sin’ was twofold: I was determined to 1) abide in Christ and 2) obey the leading of the Holy Spirit. This is my story….

A small group of us put together about 5,000 copies of this book, a booklet really, at an elderly couple’s covered sundeck. One person aggregated the pages, complete with cover, another stapled, another trimmed, another boxed, etcetera. I was quite impressed at how fast we did this menial job.

Kelowna Christian Center, the church we attended at that time, was unusually pushy with tithing, what I now call the ‘awful evangelical tithe’. Financing the Great Commission challenged the evangelical tithe as illegitimate and somehow the book found its way into that church. Oh-oh!

Soon the assistant pastor confronted the elderly couple in their home, warning them to have nothing to do with the book they helped finance and produce. It shook them up. Fortunately their son had read Financing the Great Commission by this time, was thoroughly impressed, and encouraged his parents to hang in there.

Soon after I happened to bump into that assistant pastor exiting a grocery store. He was livid and I was silent. Without any provocation he defended his calling ‘into the ministry’ many years ago. Had I ever said otherwise? I meekly suggested we meet for a coffee sometime, “a friendly coffee”, but that never happened.

I was particularly naive. I assumed those in leadership, though certainly flawed, were honest and reasonable and mature men, Christ was their Lord and Example, the bible their code. When one ‘misbehaved’ I considered him to be unusual or just having a bad day.

I am no longer naive. Pastor Whoevers are not followers of Jesus Christ, but followers of each other. The way it is, not the bible, is their code and standard. Long ago they have given themselves over to another way. Long ago they stopped preaching “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” and took up the banner of evangelicalism. They are not humble and honourable men laying prostrate before “the Lord of lords and King of kings” but rather defenders of various wayward religions that challenge – quite successfully, it must be said – the lordship of Jesus Christ.

Why was that assistant Pastor Whoever so outraged? If there was an objection to something I wrote why didn’t he ask to discuss the matter? Isn’t that normal, mature behaviour? I helped pay his salary; didn’t he owe me common courtesy? That salaried brother was not only angered because of what I wrote, but that I wrote. Had I not learned ‘my place’?

Many of my questions are answered in Johnson’s and VanVonderen’s “The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse: Recognizing and Escaping Spiritual Manipulation and False Spiritual Authority Within the Church”.

They write of the “can’t talk” rule. The what? The can’t talk rule is one of many decrees that is relayed to the congregation in code. In code? Well, pastors can’t say directly, “No one is allowed to say something I disagree with” because that’s so preposterous. So they get the message across obscurely, in hints, innuendos, body language or by what is not said. The congregation must learn to decipher coded messages or risk offending Pastor Whoever…. which can thoroughly upset everything.

I trespassed against the ‘can’t write’ rule I never knew existed, a much more severe transgression than merely vocalizing a contrary opinion. And yes, I most certainly offended Pastor Whoever. And yes, church life was thoroughly upset.

Financing the Great Commission exposes the awful evangelical tithe as contrary to the words and heart of Lord Jesus. I call it the evangelical tithe because it is evangelicals who created it and propagate it. (Incidentally, in all my years as a hostage of catholicism I never heard the word tithe mentioned.)

These are my grievances against the evangelical tithe….

…. There is no precedent – not the slightest hint – in the New Testament regarding a new covenant person being required or encouraged to tithe.

…. There is no precedent in the Old Testament for the tithing of one’s income.

…. There is no reason to think that Jesus the carpenter tithed. His tithe would not be acceptable as only the tithe of the land was accepted.

…. Likewise the fishermen Peter, Andrew, James and John, as well as Matthew the tax collector, did not/could not tithe.

…. The Mosaic tithe was applied to the Israelites only.

…. The awful evangelical tithe promotes the Jesus-and-us narrative which in turn depreciates the Christ-christian relationship.

…. The awful evangelical tithe is contrary to the life in the Spirit, which includes conferring with the Holy Spirit as to how much to give and where to direct one’s giving.

…. The awful evangelical tithe is used to build unsanctioned buildings.

…. The awful evangelical tithe is used to subsidize unsanctioned salaries.

…. The awful evangelical tithe is used to undergird evangelicalism.

…. The awful evangelical tithe is contrary to “Cursed is the man who trusts in man” because one entrusts others to invest his/her money wisely.

…. The awful evangelical tithe robs from Christ’s Great Commission; this theft is why, at this very moment, millions of people are in severe unending anguish.

My brother, doesn’t it make you suspicious that?….

…. there is robust contention between evangelical churches on many (most?) issues but agreement on the issue of the tithing of income.

…. the lucrative tithe is the only Old Testament mandate evangelicals have dragged over into the new covenant era.

…. it is self-serving for the salaried to promote tithing.

…. there is no commonality between the Mosaic tithe God imposed upon the Israelites and the evangelical tithe the salaried impose upon their congregations.

Pastors have a responsibility to teach their congregations the two sides of the tithe issue. They must know there is a strong argument against christians surrendering ten percent of their income to christians. They must know that the awful evangelical tithe is not bible but bible-plus.