Most people don’t give very much.

Last fall, I read an article about the giving patterns revealed in the tax returns of Joe Biden, the vice president elect. The article found that in the last 10 years, he’s never exceeded giving away even one half of one percent of his income.

That was striking to me; more striking, however, was the following quote by Arthur Brooks, a Syracuse University scholar who has done extensive research on American giving. He said, “The average American household gives about two percent of adjusted gross income.”

It started changing my perspective. I’ve grown up hearing the church talk about giving 10% of your pretax income to your local church, and then give to other ministries on top of that. That is significantly more than the average 2% of after tax dollars quoted by Brooks.

Surely Christians do better, don’t they?

Yes, but not by much. The December issue of Christianity Today had an article called “Scrooge Lives!”, taking a look at the giving patterns of Christians. Evangelical Christians are the most generous of all Protestants, which is encouraging. I think our commitment to the bible helps us do a better job of taking what the bible teaches about giving to heart.

But even among Evangelical Christians, 36 percent report that they give away less than two percent of their income…church and everything else combined. There are 10% who give nothing away at all.

It’s only about 27% of Evangelical Christians who actually give away 10% of their income.

So it’s important and worthwhile to talk about why giving regularly is a good idea.

I’m sure you can fill in the blanks why it’s not that easy for me to talk about. Pastors asking for money is a pretty bad stereotype in our country.

And perhaps you start thinking like I do, that there is a tricky road to walk here. Talking about giving 10% of pretax dollars to the local church and then to other organizations on top of that runs the risk of seeming hopelessly impossible for the majority of people sitting here today. And NOT talking about that standard runs the risk of causing others to think we aren’t holding up a high enough standard.

Let me jump ahead a minute before I dive into a foundational passage on giving from Deuteronomy.

A major reason many don’t give more is because they can’t. I want to say that out loud. Many can’t give more than they do. Changing our giving patterns often means major changes that take sacrifice and sweat and determination.

In the early 1970’s, fixed costs in a household budget were 54 percent. Now, they are 75 percent. What that means, says Michael Emerson, is this: “A mere two buying decisions–the purchases of homes and cars–are enough to lock household budgets into tight budgetary situations for decades.”

Today, I don’t want to cause guilt for things you can do nothing about. I believe everyone can make choices to give more than we currently are giving; however, our past choices also set some limits about just how much more we can choose to give.

I’ll be honest. We had ulterior motives that the Advent Conspiracy might become a way of life. My goal today is for each and every person at NFC to give more of your income away in 2009 than you did in 2008. I won’t define how much more, but I bluntly think it is right, it is healthy, it is biblical, it is a responsibility, and it is joyful to give! It’s a significant and important way that we can act just like God is, because God is by nature a giver.

So you may be one who has a budget that is not flexible at all, and giving more means finding ten more dollars a month. That’s a success! You may find you can increase your giving significantly more than that…that’s a success! You may even find yourself on a long range plan of reducing those “major fixed costs” of house and car so that you are in a better position to give later. And that’s success, too.

Let’s turn to Deuteronomy 26.

All of the best things I’ve been taught and believe about giving are here in this passage. I think it’s really important for us to root what we believe in the bible’s teaching…or, put differently, to not let things we teach come from “out of nowhere”, but rather out of how God has spoken to his people in the past. Look at verse one: [READ 26:1-2a]

Right off the bat, some of the key things the church has always taught are front and center in Deut. 26. God is the one who has given everything! Everything we have is from God. This is where our practice of giving begins, in the giving nature of God.

Why do we give? We give because God has first given everything we have to us, and our giving is a way to show our thanks. We also give, because it is a way for us to be like God himself, to model his character.

Next, our giving is meant to come from the first and best parts of what God has given to us, and it’s a percentage of everything we receive.

Do you have a garden? Every year, when we have our first dinner salad with lettuce from our garden, or when we pick the first ripe tomato off the vine, it’s a sort of celebration to eat it and enjoy it. That first fruit, that first harvest, is joyful!

And this is what the people of Israel gave to God. It’s honoring to be the one to eat the first fruit; that’s an honor given in thanks to God.

There aren’t many of us anymore who have a “farming culture” mindset, so we have to translate a little bit. We understand some of that celebration with the first paycheck of a new job, but that wears off and doesn’t cycle through each year, like a farm’s harvest does.

Choosing to make giving a priority, rather than giving with what’s left over in our discretionary dollars, is one important way we can “translate” this first fruits idea to our world.

And even at the risk of sounding self-serving as a pastor, the act of giving to God through the church is an act that has a lot of history it. Being a part of a believing community, where God is present; giving publicly, as the Israelites did by giving to the priest…this is good for us!

God had something in mind when he set giving up to be in community.

He could have had people offer the firstfruits right on their own property, right? God is everywhere.

Instead, God had his gift be given to people, and he had it done in a public worship ceremony where people were to say out loud the memories of everything God had done for the whole community. [READ 26:2b-11]

I’ll be the first to admit that we don’t capture this well each week when we take an offering. Perhaps we can help each other do a better job of making our giving each week worship; perhaps we can come up together with ways to remember what God has done for our church, our community, and celebrate it as we give.

Deuteronomy is a great model: give to God because he first gave to us. Give him the first and best of what we have. Give to real, tangible people in community in whom God is alive and active. Publicly remind each other of God’s many blessings, and have our giving be a sign of thanks and a sign of how good our giving God is, a sign to each other and to the world!

When it came to the ancient Jews, this system was everything.

Reading in other places in Deuteronomy, you can piece together that these gifts of the firstfruits and of the 10% tithe supported everything in their culture. They had no taxes. No insurance. No social security. Everything was in this one system of giving, giving that was worship: the religious establishment of the priests and Levites, their system for social welfare that cared for foreigners, orphans, and widows…it all came from the gifts of the Israelites.

Isn’t that beautiful? God takes care of his people through his people, and God does it with his own rightful gifts!

And there was enough for great celebrations and festivals and parties, too!

The translation to our world is a little more complicated, but not impossible. We have public taxes and social security that the Israelites didn’t. But our gifts to Newberg Friends do the same things that the Israelites’ gifts did in ancient Israel.

Our financial gifts support our church structure and staff. Our gifts support FISH and Love INC for social welfare in our town. Our gifts go around the world to help those Deuteronomy calls “foreigners”. All of this is intentional, to model how our church dollars are used after God’s priorities revealed in the bible.

Our giving is important to our relationship with God, and it is important to our community.

We’re a culture that keeps money pretty private. We’ve perhaps overemphasized Jesus’ words about not letting your right hand know what the left hand is doing, so much so that we don’t share with each other the importance of giving.

Giving demonstrates our thanks to God and reminds us that everything we have is his. In verse 16, giving is a part of the covenant promise we make with God.

God’s idea of our community and our responsibility to our community is quite a bit wider than my comfort zone. Verses 12 through 15 describe a special gift that happened every three years, a gift that shows God loves and cares for the outcasts in society and expects that we will be a channel for his love and care to flow through.

Every three years, the gifts didn’t go centrally to Jerusalem; they stayed locally, to provide for the needy. It’s still an act of worship. It’s still a sign of obedience and agreement with God.

Translating that to our own day and age, we have a responsibility to give to those who have needs. We read that earlier from 1 John, and we read it all through the bible. Patrick Miller writes,

[A fundamental theme of Deuteronomy is] “the importance of making available the goods of God’s blessing to all members of the community. No member of the community was ever free to ignore those persons who lacked the necessities of life. All members were expected to provide a portion of their income to provide for such sisters and brothers.”

So how do we make all this a part of our lives today?

Let me give some basic, broad suggestions.

First, the reality is each one of us needs to make a plan for our giving. The article from Christianity Today says:

“…a steady, habitual, even automatic approach to giving can do more to form us spiritually than the give-only-out-of-joy approach. The decision to give a percentage of our income automatically and "off the top" can affect everything from the house we live in to the groceries we buy to a pizza delivery. When we pass on a purchase because we know the check to church or a sponsored child is going out that week, it forces us to prioritize. It places supremacy with someone or something other than us. Most importantly, and formatively, it reorients our life.”

Planning to give…and following through on it…becomes a tangible thing we do that reorients our lives with God at the center. Of course, there are many other kinds of choices we can and must make to put God at the center. But the bible and thousands of years of Christian experience make it clear that giving is one of those key choices.

So figure out what you are currently giving away.

What’s going to the church, what’s going to service organizations, what’s going to missionaries, what’s going to help individuals that you care for? Celebrate what you are already doing! Tell yourself and tell God that you are doing this because he’s provided and you are thankful.

Figure out what you are giving and where it’s going, and match it up with the pattern in Deuteronomy. Are you giving to support the church? Are you giving to support those called “foreigners”? Are you giving to support the needy?

Then, ask God for help to give more, and the wisdom to know where to give it. Maybe it’s giving regularly to NFC, to support the ministry we do together. Maybe it’s to Global Outreach, to support God’s work overseas…we’ll talk more about that next week.

Maybe it’s buying sandwich supplies to keep in your car to give to the homeless, or giving to local school fundraisers, or to individuals you know who need it.

Elaine and I made the choice years ago to be more intentional about what we give to the church, and I’m grateful we did. Now, I think I’m being prodded to be more intentional about other kinds of giving.

I want to share one last beautiful and challenging thing from the article in Christianity Today.

The beautiful thing is that those who have the least seem to be ones who take after God’s generous heart the most.

“Households of committed Christians making less than $12,500 per year give away roughly 7 percent of their income, a figure no other income bracket beats until incomes rise above $90,000 (they give away 8.8 percent).

In fact, in absolute terms, the poorest Christians give away more dollars than all but the wealthiest Christians. We see the pattern in recent history as well: When Americans earned less money following the Great Depression, they gave more. When income went up, they began to give less of it away.”

When we don’t have it…or, when we’re in recession like we are now…we are very aware of our own needs, which makes us more sympathetic to the needs of others.

Our chance to be people after God’s own heart…to be people who give, intentionally and thankfully…that chance is before us each and every day. So make a plan! Write those checks the week you get your paycheck, or set up those automatic withdrawals. Join what God is doing in our community, and in our world.