Most pastors don’t think Christians should give 10% tithe of their income to the church

According to a research, the majority of pastors disagree that Christians should give 10% of their income to charity.

Many Christian churches teach that tithing, or giving 10% of one’s income to the church, is a biblical commandment. However, a new Barna study shows that only a small number of pastors agree with this traditional view.

The information in Revisiting the Tithe and Offering, the newest book in Barna’s The State of American Religion series, is about how people feel about giving 10% of their income to the church.
Researchers who worked on the Generosity series with Generis and Gloo found that only a small number of Americans who say they are Christian actually give 10% of their income to the church.

Researchers polled 2,016 U.S. adults from November 12th to November 19th, 2021, to come to the most recent conclusion that pastors don’t agree on the practice that high-profile pastors like televangelist Creflo Dollar have given up on in recent months.

Most of the pastors in the study didn’t think that giving outside of the church was tithing, but 70% of them said that tithing doesn’t have to be limited to money. And when it comes to how much money should be given as a tithe, only 33% agree that 10% is the right amount.

Another 21% of pastors didn’t say how much Christians should give, but they said it should be “enough to be considered a sacrifice.” 20% of pastors said Christians should give as much as they can.

The study also showed that neither U.S. adults nor Christians in particular had a good grasp of the idea of tithing.

In the study, only about two out of five U.S. adults said they knew what the word “tithe” meant and could explain it. A similar number said they knew what the term meant, but 22% said that even though they knew what it meant, they couldn’t define it.

Less than half of Christians in general could say for sure what the tithe is. More than half of Christians who practiced their faith, or 59%, knew more about the tithe and what it means, while 99% of pastors understood the traditional idea.

The study also found that only 21% of Christians gave 10% of their income to their local church and that 25% of Christians didn’t give anything to their church at all. The study found that 42% of Christians who went to church regularly gave at least 10% to their church.

“Church leaders and Christians may wonder if it makes a difference if the tithe falls out of favor. “After all, church giving shouldn’t be reduced to a math problem, and reverent, heartfelt generosity can be done with or without a deep understanding of the tithe,” Barna said. “Still, when a basic idea from the Bible about Christian stewardship becomes unclear, it’s a good time to ask questions about how modern ministries handle money and resources and, more importantly, about how Christians are building a culture of giving.”

A recent study showed that traditional tithing is done by only about 13% of Evangelicals, and that half of them give less than 1% of their income each year. The study “The Generosity Factor: Evangelicals and Giving” from Grey Matter Research and Infinity Concepts, a brand communication agency, shows that the average Evangelical gave $1,923 to the church and $622 to charity over the past 12 months, for a total of $2,545. At the middle point, though, Evangelicals only gave $340 to the church and $50 to charity, for a total of $390.

People who were more involved with their church and faith tended to give more to their church, and the same was true for those who were less involved.

In July, controversial televangelist Creflo Dollar, who was one of the most outspoken supporters of the prosperity gospel in the United States, said that tithing and everything he had ever said about it were “not correct.”

He also told those who followed him to “I want you to throw away every book, tape, and video you have.
ever did about giving money to God “He said that he will not say sorry for his mistake, though.

In a sermon called “The Great Misunderstanding,” the senior pastor and founder of
The World Changers Church International, which has almost 30,000 members and is based in
College Park, Georgia, said he knew that by making his statement, he would have to
You might lose friends and chances to speak at other churches.

In an opinion piece for The Gospel Coalition in 2017, James
Buchanan Harrison is a professor of interpreting the New Testament and an assistant dean.
at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, for Bible study and interpretation.
Louisville, Kentucky, gave several reasons why Christians don’t have to give tithes.

“The rules in the Mosaic covenant don’t apply to us anymore.
Some use the difference between the civil, ceremonial, and moral law
Paul doesn’t use these divisions, I would say, to explain why we should give 10%.
“when talking about how the law affects us now,” Schreiner said, “we have to take into account the past.”

“Even if we take these differences into account, it’s clear that tithing is not part of the moral law.
It’s true that the moral rules of the Old Testament still apply today, and we should follow them.
You can find them in the New Testament’s law of Christ, but tithing is not one of them “