GMBA Stewardship Testimonies Submittal Guidelines | About ...

 

Teaching Children to Give
• What Is Tithe? | Parents Train
• SubTopic 2		 Learning Stewardship
• Giving on Time
• SubTopic 2		 Topic C
• SubTopic 1
• SubTopic 2
Topic D
• SubTopic 1
• SubTopic 2		 Topic E
• SubTopic 1
• SubTopic 2		 Topic F
• SubTopic 1
• SubTopic 2

 

Teaching Children to Give

What Is Tithe?
Malachi 3:10

Parents Train
Proverb 22:6		 From Northern Vermont ...

My parents taught me to tithe as a child, but my mother didn't make it easy. Every week (in the early 1960s), I received a 25-cent allowance, and my mother asked how much I wanted to give to Jesus at church. She wanted to see how I would resolve the half penny —would I give two, or three cents? No, I couldn't alternate Sundays, because I would come up short on the two-cent Sunday! I wondered why Mom didn't make it simple and just raise my allowance to 30 cents.

Finally I decided to give three cents every Sunday from my 25-cent allowance. It was a valuable lesson, and I have never regretted that decision. My mother trained me well!

 

Learning Stewardship

Giving on Time
I Corinthians 16:2		 From Woodstock, Georgia ...

It was kind of easy to decide to give tithe from the profit of the sale of our home, but hard to execute. A year after our move, we had taken care of most of the tithe (7%).

We gave offerings to our new church from our paychecks from our new jobs. But then, an unexpected expense arose at our new church. The building funds they raised covered the much-needed renovations for their Sunday School building, but a local inspector pointed out that the building code now required a sprinkler system. Oops, that meant another $10,000 ... ouch!

Okay, that home sale profit by now had disappeared —you know, pay the movers, buy a new washer & dryer, etc. But at our budget desk, we knew we hadn't gone the whole ten points on tithing that cash we got from selling our home. Finally, we wrote a letter of commitment to pay our "owed tithe" within five months, AND we added interest.

We can count the blessings that followed. Our testimony here is that we learned to tithe on time. If your church has a building fund, don't be afraid to give too much, because surprise costs and overruns happen all the time.
At Work
Malachi 3:10-12
From Boston ...

God does not promise to eliminate all work hassles and turmoils for Christians if only they tithe. It would be faulty to believe that if you tithe, you will never get laid off at work. Early Christians gave sacrificially, yet suffered persecution.

I've certainly experienced my share of layoffs in the past 20 years, despite my faithfulness in giving tithes and offerings. However, I can look back and see that the Lord has given me steady increases in my professional wages; the overall increases have outpaced the 10-12 percent that I gave to church and missions. The Lord gives a bountiful harvest!

At Church
II Corinthians 9:12
Colossians 3:16
From Vermont ...

When I hear a beautiful organ prelude in church, my soul is made glad. I count this as one of the blessings God gives to me for giving to His church. We have this organ because many of our members brought offerings to God's house.

I have a CD of organ music I play at home, but it does not match the experience of sitting in a pew, seeing the morning sun shine through the stained glass, and listening to a quiet organ prelude.
What Portion to Give
Proverbs 3:9,10
From Vermont ...

I have learned over the years to give ten percent of my gross income, not my net income. If I take Proverbs 3:9,10 seriously, then honoring the Lord with the "first fruits" of my income means to give from the top of my wages; this means I am tithing the portion set aside for taxes. After all, I get government services for that part of my wage.

Now, if I follow the faulty concept of not tithing the tax portion of my wage, then I could talk myself into not tithing the portion I use for food, rent, and essentials. That means I would tithe on leftovers (about 1-2% of my total wage)!

If Christ came to my home, I would not serve Him leftovers. We would serve Him the first portions of our dinner!

Submittal Guidelines

Send your Stewardship Testimony to: Terry Dorsett.

About the Editors, Style of Document

Wayne and Darryl Lavitt serve as Lay Ministers in Montgomery Center, Vermont, at Community Baptist Church. Each have over 15 years of corporate documentation experiences, which includes the information mapping techniques you see applied in this document.

The testimonies are lightly edited and laid out topically. The topical tables will later be broken into smaller HTML pages as we receive more testimonies to post. Green Mountain Baptist Association gives final approval (ensuring consistency with mission, etc.) and then posts the HTML page(s) at their Web site.

© 2003 Green Mountain Baptist Association • 01-October-2003 Back to GMBA Home Page ...