A few months ago I shared the following in my sermon, “What Do You Keep?”
“God’s blessings are abundant, but they are meant to be shared.
Here is where it gets tough for us. Many of us are not sharing our financial blessings as well as we could be. Only 5% of Americans give at least 10% of their incomes to churches or charitable groups. And this is declining. It has never been great, but in 1968 church-attenders gave an average of 3.11 percent of their income to their church. Now congregants give an average of 2.58%. We are going the wrong way.
Let me be clear about this. I am not giving you these numbers because I want you to give Riverside more money. I am not telling you this because we need more money. We are doing fine. I am telling you this because the Bible and the God of the universe tell us that how we handle our money matters deeply to him and says a great deal about the condition of our hearts.”
Use this chart to spend some time reviewing how you did with your giving this past year and set goals for 2011.
Leave a Reply