"The discouraging thing is giving us a book to motivate us to tithe is going a little far and to get the it preached at us each week is very up setting. I don't like it at all either. I realize that it would be great is everyone gives as we should. I give when I can but right now it is a widows pence compared to what it was when we both where working and earning so much more. We try to help in other ways when we fall short. But to be reminded that we are not fallowing through as much as they want and get told each week is hard to swallow please keep reminding us that we aren't working, or making as much, don't have insurance , and barley enough to put food on the table, have to ask for family to help and then want to make us feel bad for not giving a larger amount of the little we have. It is enough to make you not want to go to the church we love so much."
I cried when I read this. This woman's family is clearly in financial distress and the one thing that should be her comfort, her joy, her place of fellowship and peace, her church only makes her feel worse.
What are we missing out on? It occurred to me that in the first century church, someone else in the church would have sold a field or done something to give her and her family so that none of them were wanting. Instead we have a building that cost millions of dollars. Seems to me like we are doing church instead of being church.
My family has gone through a bankruptcy, following a month of NICU when my youngest child was born the bills had mounted beyond what we could ever replay. Our church knew about our distress but nobody offered any help. Would this have happened to us if our church was a first century church?
