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The joy of obedience

Jackie Schmidt

Who would have thought that being church treasurer would be a spiritually uplifting experience? That is certainly not what I expected when I agreed to be treasurer at my church, but I am closer to God now than ever before and feel so honoured that I have been allowed to serve Him. I am excited about where He will lead me next, and have no fear of failure with Him by my side.

I agreed to be treasurer for all the wrong reasons. The previous treasurer had been in the position for several years and needed a break. There didn’t seem to be anyone else to take it over, and I had the necessary accounting skills. I prayed about it some, but not enough to get a clear leading from God. It seemed like a good way to serve the church, so I agreed to take the job.

The first year was pretty humdrum. I didn’t enjoy it. It was just a chore that needed to be done. The church’s finances were terrible. There was never enough money to pay all the bills. I was always picking and choosing which ones were the highest priority and which ones could wait. We had paid the telephone bill late so often that the telephone company would automatically issue a suspension notice if we were more than a couple of weeks behind. Pastor’s expenses were often six months behind. It was not uncommon to have $10,000 in bills we could not pay at any one time. It was very embarrassing to be treasurer. A church should have integrity and pay its bills on time, but these were just our very basic expenses, and we could not keep up. It had been like this for years.

Then it came time to prepare the next year’s budget. We asked all the leaders what their needs for the year were, compiled all the numbers and then started slashing. The biggest area we slashed was missions and Mennonite Brethren Conference support. In previous years, a substantial amount of money had been budgeted in this area, but it was never paid out because of our continual cash shortages. We wanted to be practical, so we cut it.

When we took our “practical” budget to the congregation, however, they were not happy about our cuts to missions and Conference support. The issue was raised that the church should be tithing. This was new to me. I understood that I tithed to the church, but it never occurred to me that the church should tithe. One remark that really stuck in my head from that meeting came from our pastor. He said the church needed to take a step of faith in order to start tithing. However, nobody suggested we start tithing 10% of our offerings right then because, as it was, we had a stack of bills we couldn’t pay. The budget was passed, and we carried on.

But God would not let me forget this issue of tithing. I learned later that a prayer group within our church had prayed just a few months before that our church would begin tithing. Over the next few weeks, God brought the matter to my attention again and again, most notably in a hard-nosed editorial in the MB Herald (May 26, 2000). It was about churches not supporting the Conference, and came down especially hard on those churches who gave nothing to the Conferences, let alone a token amount. I knew that was us, and I was very embarrassed.

A plan started to form in my head. We needed to start tithing now, and not a portion of our tithe, but our whole 10%. Each week we needed to write a cheque in the amount of 10% of that Sunday’s offering and send it to one of the missions or Conferences we were supporting. We needed to do this despite the pile of bills we could not pay.

I was very nervous to approach the management team with this idea. The budget had just been passed, and I was going to ask them to ignore it, but God went before me and cleared the way. There was no dissent to at least tithing until we reached the budgeted amounts, and I resolved to cross the bridge of continuing to tithe beyond the budgeted amounts once we got there.

I prayed and asked God to take care of the bills we could not pay and help us to keep up in the future. I did not want to look like a fool and have to go to the congregation in a few months with the news that, while we were tithing, we now were even farther behind in paying our bills.

God honoured my prayer and much more. We started tithing in June with our senior pastor off on leave and attendance down due to summer holidays, but the offerings grew and grew. By September, we were caught up with the bills, and a surplus of money was starting to accumulate.

There is nothing more exhilarating than to watch our great God at work and to be so honoured as to be able to join with Him. I have come to understand how important obedience is to God, especially in the area of money. What else takes up so much of our time? We spend most of our waking hours trying to earn enough of it so we can live comfortably. We leave our children so we can go to work and earn more of it. It is the greatest idol in our society, and no one is immune from the temptation to worship it. If we do not put God in charge of this area of our lives, are we really surrendering anything to Him?

When we give God control of our finances and show our commitment to Him by tithing, He can do amazing things in our life beyond taking care of our financial needs. That is nothing for Him. What He really wants is for us to know Him and “love Him with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind and with all our strength” (Mark 12:30). To have that kind of deeply intimate relationship, we need to submit our will and our life to Him, and our finances are a great place to start.

It is amazing to see how God has cared for our church since we began obeying Him with our tithe. When our senior pastor, who was much loved and respected, left, God comforted us, and brought us an equally great pastor to replace him. We lost some people, but God brought us new families who have a strong love for Him and want to help our church grow. We have started plans to construct a church building, and have found an abundance of skill and expertise within our body to get it done. There seems to be a passion for God and an intimacy within our group I have not seen before. Did this all happen because we started tithing? Maybe, maybe not, but when we trust God with our finances, it is much easier to trust Him with everything else, too.

Jackie Schmidt is a member of River West Christian Church in Edmonton.

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Last modified October 9, 2002.

© 2002 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
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