Being Rich Towards God

As I've been contemplating being "rich towards God" these last few days, thoughts about things like hospitality, worship, bible reading, prayer and all manner of things that make up Christian living have been swirling around in my head. It almost seemed to me like being generous with our money was too much of a gimme to dwell on. Today I followed a link from LivingRoom to an article in Books & Culture Magazine on ChristianityToday.com: The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: Why don't Christians live what they preach? By Ronald J. Sider, and found an interesting quote about Christian giving.

John and Sylvia Ronsvalle have been carefully analyzing the giving patterns of American Christians for well over a decade. Their annual The State of Christian Giving is the most accurate report for learning how much Christians in the richest nation in human history actually give. In their most recent edition, they provide detailed information about per-member giving patterns of U.S. church members from 1968 to 2001. Over those thirty-plus years, of course, the average income of U.S. Christians has increased enormously. But that did not carry over into their giving. The report showed that the richer we become, the less we give in proportion to our incomes.

In 1968, the average church member gave 3.1 percent of their income—less than a third of a tithe. That figure dropped every year through 1990 and then recovered slightly to 2.66 percent—about one quarter of a tithe.

I found that to be very interesting. So, while I do think that there is more to "being rich towards God" than just giving money, perhaps being generous with our money is a place that we need to start. It could possibly even be safe to say that we can not live richly towards God in all areas until we have mastered our "building of extra barns". Jesus' reminder that life does not consist of possessions continues to be very timely.