Tithing

Doug and I have been on a journey of giving for the past 6 years. We joined Northshore United Church of Christ when Wilbur was 6 months old. We started to talk together about our financial support of the church and what our intentions were.

My grandparents always tithed 10% of the gross. That seemed almost impossible. Not only did we make more money each year, but our expenses went up as the children got older.

We decided to start slowly at 2% and build up. We didn't even know at the beginning that we were shooting for 10% (net or gross). But slowly, each year, we gave a greater percentage of the gross.

In 2010 we estimate that we will achieve the goal. 10% of the gross. 10 in 10. We are really proud of ourselves.

I don't know if we should be so proud. 10% sounds like very little when you say what you are giving back to God, to your community, or to represent all that you've been blessed with... It sounds like very little when I think about how lucky I am and how neither I nor God did that - just being born in the US, being white, raised in a fairly affluent family, going to good schools, having parents who told me all of my life that I was college-bound: that is all just luck. To think that God had anything to do with that means that people born with the opposite of my fortune are also hand-picked for their fate.

Conversely, 10% sounds like a lot when you start looking at your bottom line.

So, taking that all into consideration, we have a measured sense of pride at our accomplishment.

And, now it seems, we might keep raising the bar. Maybe we'll give 12% or 15% in a few years. It seems that, and I know this can't always be true for everyone, but it seems that the more we have given the more we have received, intangibly but tangibly as well. We really have experienced that often, when we have given money at a time when it was difficult to do so, we have gotten that money back very unexpectedly.

It's been a fruitful enterprise for us. And we continue to experience abundance as we travel this road.