FINANCING THE END-TIME CHURCH

FINANCING THE END-TIME CHURCH

 “REPLACE LEVITICAL TITHING WITH FREEWILL, PURPOSEFUL GIVING.”

This is one of the recommendations in the book TITHES & OFFERINGS: Storing Treasures In Heaven by Collins Enyeribe published by EFI Publications in 2012.

Fourteen things will happen when Levitical tithing is replaced with purposeful freewill giving to finance the church of Jesus Christ.

1. With freewill giving, more funds will become available to churches to carry the specific aspects of the mandate of Jesus assigned to them.
2. Divinely-assigned projects in the Body of Christ will not suffer execution for lack of funds as Christians will begin to see the larger field beyond their denominational confines.
3. Full-time ministers in the five-fold ministry, not pastors alone, will be better remunerated and released from the burden of family survival to focus on the call of God on their lives for the entire Body of Christ to benefit from.
4. There will be less mushrooming of churches by ministers called to perform duties other than in the pastoral area.
5. Church splits engineered by the need to control tithes and offerings and other selfish needs will diminish in number.
6. False doctrines associated with material prosperity gospel will abet.
7. The goal of growing in grace will take the centre-stage in doctrinal impartation.
8. The great commission with focus on reaching the unreached will be revived.
9. Rural evangelism will no longer be stigmatized as unattractive, and as an environment where church planting is presumed to be ‘unviable.’
10. Ministers will realize that succeeding in ministry is not a function of ‘things’ but of souls which is what God counts as success.
11. There will be greater desire to obey the command to be one another’s keeper.
12. The phenomenon in the early church of believers being separate and doing things in common will return to this end-time church.
13. It will become clear that church growth is not by believers drifting from one church to another in search of miracles and breakthroughs but through soul-winning evangelism and genuine conversions.
14. Apostolic signs and wonders will return in a vibrant way to usher in the return of Jesus for His Body.

Human nature resists change. Freewill giving must be fertilized with strong faith accompanied with appropriate impartation of doctrine. If a church stops collecting Levitical tithe, the income in that church will nose-dive to a very low level. As the church reinvigorates teaching on the doctrines of Christ with strong emphasis on Christ’s second coming, freewill contribution will begin to flow in again, and in no time exceed what used to come in as Levitical tithes.  Teach the people to give purposefully with a cheerful and willing heart, not grudgingly with unuttered complaining and murmuring as hitherto. I am persuaded that freewill giving will bring a positive impact in the faith level of worshippers and cause a massive end-time revival in the church.