Latest / Equip Podcast / Strategic Generosity 2: How much should I give?

Transcript

Strategic Generosity 2: How much should I give? · Equip Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 00: This is the Equip podcast from Cornerstone Church of Ames, a podcast designed to help you live a gospel-fueled and faithful life wherever Jesus has called you.
• 0:09
  Speaker 00: Well, welcome again to the Equip podcast from Cornerstone Church.
• 0:15
  Speaker 00: My name is Mark Vance.
• 0:16
  Speaker 00: I am so glad that you are listening to the Equip podcast today.
• 0:19
  Speaker 00: And today is part of a three-part series.
• 0:23
  Speaker 00: We started last week talking about strategic generosity and how it is that God has given us wealth and income in this world to make an impact on not just this world, but on his kingdom.
• 0:36
  Speaker 00: And so we're kind of going through three parts here.
• 0:38
  Speaker 00: Last week, part one, we said in strategic generosity we wanna understand the gospel motivations behind strategic generosity.
• 0:46
  Speaker 00: And so what we did was looked at Luke chapters nine to 19, this journey of Jesus toward Jerusalem.
• 0:52
  Speaker 00: And we saw multiple kind of key principles in that journey with Jesus about how a gospel mentality should shape our strategic generosity.
• 1:02
  Speaker 00: We saw that God's kingdom mission is funded through earthly generosity, that there's a temporary nature of worldly wealth.
• 1:09
  Speaker 00: You can't take it with you, But because of the eternal reward of giving, you can send it ahead.
• 1:15
  Speaker 00: You can store up treasure in the life to come.
• 1:18
  Speaker 00: You need to be careful though, because money, while it's a great blessing, can be a great danger.
• 1:23
  Speaker 00: You can't serve God and money.
• 1:25
  Speaker 00: But once we have understood the radical grace of God, it fuels radical generosity with our money, of which all of that, we will give an account to the master where it's really not our money, it's his anyways.
• 1:36
  Speaker 00: So that was all kind of foundational gospel generosity perspective.
• 1:41
  Speaker 00: But today, Today, I want to go a little bit past that.
• 1:43
  Speaker 00: From the foundations of gospel generosity, I want to begin to get in the next two podcasts here really, really practical.
• 1:51
  Speaker 00: First, I want to talk kind of today about this basics of what I'm going to call strategic generosity and how much I should give.
• 2:01
  Speaker 00: Like how much of the money that God entrusts to me does he mean for me to invest in kingdom purposes?
• 2:06
  Speaker 00: And I want to be very, very practical and try to consider based on the income God's given you, the sort of generosity that God is expecting of you.
• 2:15
  Speaker 00: But then part three, next week, I want to think about where I should give and how I should give to have the greatest kingdom impact.
• 2:22
  Speaker 00: And throughout all of this, if there's a big idea of this, what I'm trying to say is let's as Christians, not just spend our time and our energy figuring out how to multiply Let's as Christians put the best energy we have, the best thinking we have toward how we can steward what God has given to us so that we can advance the kingdom of God in the fullest possible way.
• 2:45
  Speaker 00: We should give strategic thought to this.
• 2:47
  Speaker 00: So in giving strategic thought today, I want to talk about some strategic thought about how much you should be giving.
• 2:54
  Speaker 00: And for that, I'm going to open us from 1 Timothy 6, three verses that are really critical here.
• 3:01
  Speaker 00: I've spoken on these in the past at Cornerstone in our stewardship series, and they're just so foundationally important.
• 3:06
  Speaker 00: I want to go back to them.
• 3:07
  Speaker 00: 1 Timothy 6, verse 17 to 19 says that we're to instruct those who are rich in this age.
• 3:14
  Speaker 00: That's a key phrase.
• 3:15
  Speaker 00: I'm going to come back to that.
• 3:16
  Speaker 00: Rich in this age, not to be arrogant or to set their hope on the uncertainty of wealth, but on God who richly provides us with all things to enjoy.
• 3:26
  Speaker 00: Instruct those who are rich to do what is good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and willing to share, to store up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the age to come so that they may take hold of what is truly life.
• 3:41
  Speaker 00: So, One of the key questions that we need to ask when we consider how much we are to give is to ask this question first.
• 3:50
  Speaker 00: Who is rich in this present age?
• 3:54
  Speaker 00: Timothy uses that phrase, and he uses the word rich often in 1 Timothy 6.
• 3:59
  Speaker 00: At one level, I've heard somebody say, basically, if you live in America and have a job by any global standard, you're pretty much rich.
• 4:07
  Speaker 00: And while I think that is probably true, it doesn't feel that way because the definition of rich has like a cultural contextual meaning.
• 4:17
  Speaker 00: So I don't know if that's the best way to define it.
• 4:19
  Speaker 00: I'm going to give you a biblical definition, I think, of what riches are.
• 4:23
  Speaker 00: 2 Corinthians 8, 14, Paul's talking to this church at Corinth and he says to them, at the present time, your surplus is available for their need.
• 4:34
  Speaker 00: And I think that word surplus helps to give some definition to what it means to be rich.
• 4:40
  Speaker 00: I think when we think of being rich in this world, what we are saying is we have a significant amount of surplus in either income or assets that goes well beyond the meeting of our basic needs.
• 4:53
  Speaker 00: So in a town like Ames, Iowa, a surplus of income would say, okay, if the average household income is $75,000 in Ames, well, if I'm making double that, then I, by definition, have an income surplus.
• 5:08
  Speaker 00: That is a surplus of available income to meet and exceed the basic needs that I would have.
• 5:14
  Speaker 00: You might not have a surplus of income, but some people are very rich in a surplus of assets.
• 5:19
  Speaker 00: You own things, a home or a business or a property or an investment.
• 5:23
  Speaker 00: You're part of a family that has generational wealth.
• 5:26
  Speaker 00: In that case, you have a surplus of what you need.
• 5:31
  Speaker 00: In either case, those who have a surplus are easily able to meet the basic needs that they have.
• 5:36
  Speaker 00: They're not fighting paycheck to paycheck.
• 5:39
  Speaker 00: They have excess.
• 5:40
  Speaker 00: Okay, now I'm going to pause here and say this.
• 5:43
  Speaker 00: In America, we have to be clear here.
• 5:46
  Speaker 00: What's happening with many Christians is that the excess that God has entrusted to us, we are eating up by consuming all that money to keep up with the Joneses who live next door.
• 5:57
  Speaker 00: If you are buying new cars every year, constantly going to the store to shop, if you are filling your Amazon cart every day, if you are spending money like everybody else next to you, you won't give money.
• 6:10
  Speaker 00: In other words, many people that God has given a surplus of income to so they could invest in the kingdom have wasted that surplus, spending it on themselves.
• 6:22
  Speaker 00: Now, Paul is clear here, and this is actually a really key point.
• 6:26
  Speaker 00: In 1 Corinthians 6, it says, God richly provides us with all things to enjoy.
• 6:31
  Speaker 00: There's nothing wrong with driving a nice car or having nice clothes.
• 6:35
  Speaker 00: The problem is, is if we are actually going beyond our means, we're eating up all of what we could be generous with, with consumption.
• 6:43
  Speaker 00: You need to ask this question.
• 6:45
  Speaker 00: Is my limited amount of generosity due to my excessive amount of spending?
• 6:50
  Speaker 00: I think that's a question everybody's got to ask.
• 6:53
  Speaker 00: But now, if we've said those who are rich in the world have a surplus, the question is, what does Paul tell those who have these surplus incomes?
• 7:02
  Speaker 00: What does he say to do with them?
• 7:04
  Speaker 00: Well, he gives you four commands.
• 7:05
  Speaker 00: He says, to do what is good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and willing to share.
• 7:11
  Speaker 00: Rich in good works, not just rich in this world.
• 7:15
  Speaker 00: Doing what is good, generous in your heart, willing to share.
• 7:19
  Speaker 00: But when we see that phrase, generous, that's what I want to unpack the rest of the time.
• 7:24
  Speaker 00: What does it mean to be generous?
• 7:27
  Speaker 00: What is generous giving?
• 7:29
  Speaker 00: Okay, I think again here, a bit of biblical context might help us to frame that out.
• 7:34
  Speaker 00: So in the Bible, one of the ways that the Old Testament talks about giving is underneath the concept of a tithe.
• 7:42
  Speaker 00: I'm not going to get into that fully.
• 7:44
  Speaker 00: If you scroll through the past episodes of the Equip podcast, I have one all about what tithing is.
• 7:49
  Speaker 00: I don't want to use this particularly to say every Christian has to tithe.
• 7:54
  Speaker 00: I'm not going to go there.
• 7:55
  Speaker 00: But what I'm going to do is I want to use it as an illustration.
• 7:57
  Speaker 00: Because in the Old Testament, there's a principle of tithing.
• 8:01
  Speaker 00: And the word tithe, it just means a 10th part.
• 8:05
  Speaker 00: So if you made $2,000, a tithe would be 10%, a tenth of that $2,000.
• 8:12
  Speaker 00: $200 is a tithe.
• 8:15
  Speaker 00: So in other words, tithe or tithing is not a substitute word for giving.
• 8:21
  Speaker 00: It is a very specific way of giving, of giving of 10%.
• 8:25
  Speaker 00: And in the Old Testament economy, the tithe was not considered generosity.
• 8:30
  Speaker 00: The tithe was considered a basic requirement.
• 8:33
  Speaker 00: So here's the point that I'm making.
• 8:35
  Speaker 00: generosity would be beyond basic level.
• 8:39
  Speaker 00: So should Christians tithe today?
• 8:42
  Speaker 00: Is that required?
• 8:43
  Speaker 00: There's so much Bible debate there.
• 8:44
  Speaker 00: I'm not going to try to land that.
• 8:46
  Speaker 00: It's hard for me to decide.
• 8:48
  Speaker 00: But here's the point that I do make.
• 8:50
  Speaker 00: I think there's a wise pattern established of that tithe or sort of 10% target of giving that's a really helpful way to train us when we think about what it means to be strategically generous with what God has entrusted to us.
• 9:06
  Speaker 00: So what I would say is maybe something like this, a tithe or a 10% gift dominantly oriented toward your local church where you find your spiritual guidance, your roots in life.
• 9:19
  Speaker 00: That is like the training wheels.
• 9:22
  Speaker 00: It's the basic kind of general idea of giving.
• 9:27
  Speaker 00: It's the sort of thing that you should use to train your kids if you're a parent.
• 9:30
  Speaker 00: If you wanna train your kids to give, when they make their first $200, train them to give a 10th of that to the church.
• 9:37
  Speaker 00: That's just the basic training wheels.
• 9:40
  Speaker 00: Establishing that pattern early will help to guard them against spending in excess.
• 9:45
  Speaker 00: So use the training wheels, but if we're gonna consider for those who are rich in this world, who have surplus, Paul is gonna say, I think pretty clearly, generosity has to go beyond the training wheels, basics.
• 10:00
  Speaker 00: If you have a surplus, you need to be thinking, how do I invest that beyond the basics?
• 10:07
  Speaker 00: So giving the basic question we're asking today, how much money should I be giving away?
• 10:14
  Speaker 00: That's actually deeply related in the Bible to how much money you are making already.
• 10:19
  Speaker 00: Okay, so I'm going to use two tools that we've used at Cornerstone here, a giving ladder and a wealth pyramid.
• 10:25
  Speaker 00: For the giving ladder, simply imagine a ladder with rungs.
• 10:29
  Speaker 00: At the bottom rung, where honestly the majority of people in America are, would be the rung of a non-giver.
• 10:35
  Speaker 00: Most people don't give anything to anybody.
• 10:39
  Speaker 00: They spend all their money and more on themselves.
• 10:41
  Speaker 00: Maybe the next layer up is people, this is probably the majority of givers across North America, Christian or otherwise, they are what we would call a occasional giver.
• 10:51
  Speaker 00: You go from non-giver to occasional giver.
• 10:54
  Speaker 00: They give by impulse.
• 10:55
  Speaker 00: I saw the need on the TV.
• 10:57
  Speaker 00: Somebody asked me.
• 10:59
  Speaker 00: So I impulsively, yep, I'm willing to do it.
• 11:01
  Speaker 00: They have a generous heart, but they don't have generous patterns.
• 11:05
  Speaker 00: They're impulsive.
• 11:06
  Speaker 00: The next step then is what we would call a regular giver.
• 11:10
  Speaker 00: That means they have set aside an intentional dollar or intentional percentage of their overall income that they want to begin to give.
• 11:18
  Speaker 00: And this is the start of what I would call intentional giving.
• 11:21
  Speaker 00: Now, The tithe is one step beyond that.
• 11:26
  Speaker 00: So here again, imagine the latter.
• 11:28
  Speaker 00: Non-giver to occasional to regular to a tithing giver.
• 11:31
  Speaker 00: Tithing, I think, is a target.
• 11:33
  Speaker 00: A target.
• 11:34
  Speaker 00: And I just want to say this.
• 11:36
  Speaker 00: I've said this before at Cornerstone.
• 11:37
  Speaker 00: It's so crazy for me to think about this.
• 11:39
  Speaker 00: It's estimated that if Western Christians, Christians in America and Europe, simply practice tithing, we would easily be able to fund tithing.
• 11:50
  Speaker 00: all the dollars we need for the entirety of the task of world evangelism and feeding the hungry.
• 11:56
  Speaker 00: I mean, I just want you to think about that.
• 11:59
  Speaker 00: You could basically eliminate world poverty if Christians just tithed.
• 12:04
  Speaker 00: That's a fantastic thing.
• 12:07
  Speaker 00: So I want to say this.
• 12:08
  Speaker 00: That is a powerful way to give.
• 12:10
  Speaker 00: That 10% target is a powerful target.
• 12:13
  Speaker 00: Okay, so non-giver, occasional, regular, stepping up the ladder to tithing.
• 12:18
  Speaker 00: Now, the next level is generous giver.
• 12:21
  Speaker 00: That's a tithe plus way of giving.
• 12:24
  Speaker 00: It's saying, because I have a surplus of income, I need to build on the basics.
• 12:30
  Speaker 00: Above a generous giver, maybe at the top of the ladder, is a sacrificial giver.
• 12:35
  Speaker 00: Here's what a sacrificial giver is.
• 12:37
  Speaker 00: My style and mode of living has been significantly changed.
• 12:42
  Speaker 00: by my manner of giving.
• 12:43
  Speaker 00: I have so fully embraced that it is more blessed to give than to receive that I am absolutely and sacrificially committed to giving.
• 12:51
  Speaker 00: All right, so let's go the ladder again.
• 12:53
  Speaker 00: Non-giver, occasional giver, regular giver, tithing giver, generous giver, sacrificial giver.
• 12:59
  Speaker 00: Here's what I want you to do with the ladder.
• 13:01
  Speaker 00: Simply ask yourself the question, where are you at today and are you satisfied with that?
• 13:07
  Speaker 00: Where are you at in your giving today?
• 13:11
  Speaker 00: Maybe you'd say, Mark, I'm kind of impulsive.
• 13:13
  Speaker 00: I don't really have a regular pattern.
• 13:15
  Speaker 00: I want to be generous, but I just, I don't have that established as a pattern in my life.
• 13:20
  Speaker 00: Well, here's the admonition I'd have for you.
• 13:23
  Speaker 00: Take the next step on the ladder, okay?
• 13:26
  Speaker 00: Just go one step higher.
• 13:28
  Speaker 00: I'm not asking you to go from occasional to sacrificial.
• 13:31
  Speaker 00: I'm saying go from occasional to regular.
• 13:33
  Speaker 00: Maybe you're regular.
• 13:34
  Speaker 00: You're currently giving a percentage, but as you look back at it at the end of year with taxes, you go, I actually only gave like 4%.
• 13:41
  Speaker 00: Well, okay, let's step the percentage forward.
• 13:44
  Speaker 00: Let's go from four to six.
• 13:45
  Speaker 00: Or you know what?
• 13:46
  Speaker 00: Why don't you just take the leap?
• 13:48
  Speaker 00: Go from four to 10.
• 13:49
  Speaker 00: You're like, man, that'd be crazy.
• 13:51
  Speaker 00: Well, yeah, it would be.
• 13:52
  Speaker 00: It'd be great.
• 13:53
  Speaker 00: It'd be a great sort of crazy.
• 13:55
  Speaker 00: There's good crazy stuff, you know?
• 13:56
  Speaker 00: So my point with the giving ladder, the image I'm giving you is consider whether you should go the next rung.
• 14:03
  Speaker 00: But now I want to pair that giving ladder up beside what I would call a wealth pyramid, right?
• 14:09
  Speaker 00: Again, 2 Corinthians 8 is helpful.
• 14:13
  Speaker 00: The gift is acceptable according to what a person has.
• 14:16
  Speaker 00: God has given you, 2 Corinthians 8, 14, a surplus for their need.
• 14:20
  Speaker 00: So that means giving in God's economy is based in part on blessing.
• 14:27
  Speaker 00: God does not have the same expectation for what every person gives.
• 14:31
  Speaker 00: In fact, I think I could go so far as to say this.
• 14:34
  Speaker 00: If you are a person with very, very little income, in fact, you have no excess income to give.
• 14:40
  Speaker 00: Simply making the step of being a regular tithing giver is all God would ever be asking.
• 14:46
  Speaker 00: To give beyond that would actually in many ways be unwise.
• 14:51
  Speaker 00: However, there are some who are operating with incredible financial surplus who are only giving as an occasional giver, and I want to say occasionally.
• 15:00
  Speaker 00: why do you think God entrusted you with that wealth?
• 15:03
  Speaker 00: He didn't do it for you, right?
• 15:05
  Speaker 00: So what I wanna say is, let's think of categories of wealth, like a wealth pyramid.
• 15:11
  Speaker 00: At the base here, I'm gonna be honest.
• 15:13
  Speaker 00: For many in America, they're at the basic level of what I would call struggle.
• 15:17
  Speaker 00: The base of this pyramid, for these at the struggle, they are struggling to make their basic needs, their basic food, shelter.
• 15:26
  Speaker 00: They don't have enough money.
• 15:27
  Speaker 00: And for those people, I'd say if you're at a struggle level, your basic financial goal should be to master financial basics.
• 15:35
  Speaker 00: Give first, save second, live on what's left over, don't get into bad debt, to begin to build some sort of emergency savings.
• 15:42
  Speaker 00: And to get there, I think the struggle level, if you're there, one of the most helpful things to get you out is to begin to give regularly.
• 15:51
  Speaker 00: Notice I didn't say tithe.
• 15:53
  Speaker 00: Now, if you are tithing at a struggle level, God bless you.
• 15:57
  Speaker 00: I think that's great.
• 15:58
  Speaker 00: I think you should stay there.
• 16:00
  Speaker 00: But what I want to say is for most people at struggle level, they aren't giving anything.
• 16:04
  Speaker 00: So beginning to give something, even if you don't have a lot of something to give, will release the hold that money and things have on your heart.
• 16:14
  Speaker 00: I take that even just the example of the widow giving that Jesus refers to in the New Testament.
• 16:21
  Speaker 00: It's just regularly saying God's heart is to give.
• 16:24
  Speaker 00: So while I might not have much, I want to do something with what I have.
• 16:28
  Speaker 00: That's giving something.
• 16:29
  Speaker 00: at a regular level for those who might struggle.
• 16:32
  Speaker 00: Okay, one step above the struggle level.
• 16:34
  Speaker 00: Imagine this next step up the pyramid as the solid level, the stable level.
• 16:39
  Speaker 00: We have solid income.
• 16:40
  Speaker 00: We actually have a surplus that's going beyond our extra needs now.
• 16:44
  Speaker 00: Your goals at this level should be things like home ownership, solid savings.
• 16:49
  Speaker 00: Things of that nature would be wise, but you will have to begin at the solid level to resist for the first time the lure to take all of your surplus and radically expand your style of living before you first expand your patterns of giving.
• 17:06
  Speaker 00: This is a really big question if you live at the solid level, is does your level of giving match up to your standard of living?
• 17:16
  Speaker 00: And here should be the target.
• 17:18
  Speaker 00: If you're at a solid income level, you absolutely need to be hitting a tithe or a tithe plus level as Christian.
• 17:24
  Speaker 00: This is what generosity would look like.
• 17:27
  Speaker 00: So get to that target level.
• 17:29
  Speaker 00: And it And just, this is worth it.
• 17:32
  Speaker 00: If you will not reorient how you give, money will have a hold on your heart.
• 17:36
  Speaker 00: It's just going to.
• 17:37
  Speaker 00: Now I want to get to this, that final level.
• 17:39
  Speaker 00: So we said there's a people who struggle and at the struggle financial level, I want your target to be moving toward giving regularly.
• 17:47
  Speaker 00: Once you're at the solid level, I want your target to be moving toward tithing or tithe plus sort of giving as a pattern.
• 17:54
  Speaker 00: But now let's go up to that final level, the surplus level.
• 17:57
  Speaker 00: At this point, there's excessive amounts of income.
• 18:01
  Speaker 00: You have high prosperity.
• 18:03
  Speaker 00: You have far more income and assets than you need to fund any sort of style of living that you would enjoy.
• 18:10
  Speaker 00: And now at this point, we must be incredibly clear that riches are going to be a powerful temptation for you.
• 18:19
  Speaker 00: Riches are not bad, but riches biblically are a bit like dynamite.
• 18:25
  Speaker 00: They can do incredible good or incredible damage depending on how they're handled.
• 18:30
  Speaker 00: And so for those who are rich, that's why Paul says, now you must warn those who are rich.
• 18:36
  Speaker 00: I have to, at this level, when I talk about surplus level giving, I'm giving a warning to say, if you don't give your money, your money is going to end up owning you.
• 18:45
  Speaker 00: It will.
• 18:46
  Speaker 00: And so for those that are surplus, a tithe plus level of generosity.
• 18:51
  Speaker 00: where you are giving well beyond that 10% target of overall income, I think it's a necessary thing for you to guard your heart against the deceitfulness of wealth.
• 19:04
  Speaker 00: In other words, I'm not just talking about this because as a Christian pastor, I want something from you.
• 19:09
  Speaker 00: I'm talking about this because I want something for you so desperately.
• 19:13
  Speaker 00: I want you to know the freedom of living beyond the love of money.
• 19:16
  Speaker 00: And so the only thing I know that can really help your heart here is giving cheerfully above and beyond that 10% tithe level.
• 19:26
  Speaker 00: If you are living with a surplus of income, let's start to step forward intentionally the surplus of giving.
• 19:33
  Speaker 00: Take an honest look and say, how much did I give last year?
• 19:37
  Speaker 00: And you need to be stepping the dollars and percentages forward significantly once you're in that surplus target.
• 19:42
  Speaker 00: How much should I give?
• 19:45
  Speaker 00: Well, What I'm saying today is it's not an immediately simple question.
• 19:49
  Speaker 00: It's not just a standard percentage or standard dollar for everyone.
• 19:53
  Speaker 00: Instead, we give in proportion with the blessing that God has given.
• 19:57
  Speaker 00: So maybe the better question to ask is not how much should I give, but does my style of giving match and exceed my style of living?
• 20:08
  Speaker 00: Does my giving match God's blessing?
• 20:11
  Speaker 00: That's the question as we consider strategic generosity and we think about how much to give.
• 20:15
  Speaker 00: So now next week, we're going to consider really simply the final question, which is if we're thinking about strategic generosity, where should I invest?
• 20:25
  Speaker 00: We're thinking about this like gospel investors.
• 20:28
  Speaker 00: If we're just putting our money into the stock market, you know, there's a difference in the effectiveness of types of investments.
• 20:34
  Speaker 00: And I think the same is true when it comes to the kingdom of God.
• 20:37
  Speaker 00: So next week, we'll dive in a little further on this kind of idea of strategic generosity and ask not just what should I give and how should I give, but where should I give it to make the greatest impact for the sake of the kingdom?
• 20:48
  Speaker 00: I hope you'll join us again for the conclusion of that series.
• 20:51
  Speaker 00: I hope you'll continue to consider how is it that my giving is is lined up with what God has given to me.