Changing with the Times

When I was a youngster, it was common for the person setting up for the communion service to place a collection box, bag or plate side by side with the cup and loaf on the table. At the appropriate time near the end of the hour, an usher or other member of the congregation would circulate first the broken bread, then the cup, and finally the designated mode of offering collection to the congregation, after which we would have a few announcements, close in prayer and head downstairs for coffee.

With minor variations, such was the norm in all the local churches in Ontario that I visited with my father as a boy. It struck me the other day that I don’t see this arrangement anymore, and I don’t miss it one bit.

E-Transfers to Gmail

The reasons for the change are obvious. Like most other Canadians, churchgoers were already moving away from carrying cash pre-2020, but the lockdowns associated with COVID accelerated the process. Almost nobody carries it today, rendering physical collection of offerings all but superfluous. The other week I sent an e-transfer to our treasurer’s Gmail account. That’s how it’s mostly done these days: online, in one form or another.

Many churches have a tab for donations on their website. We don’t. There is still a collection box somewhere in the bowels of our local church building, but it would probably take an archeological team and most of a Saturday morning to locate it if you didn’t get a prompt response from the treasurer to your texts. That local churches require regular injections of donations to operate or that giving is a normal part of life in the Body of Christ are no longer glaringly obvious facts to the uninitiated. You could visit our local church for months without being reminded of the basic Christian responsibility not to muzzle the ox when it treads out the grain.

Spiritual and Pragmatic

On one level, this is great. I wish we had stopped associating the remembrance of the Lord with the collection of cash for spiritual reasons rather than merely pragmatic ones, but I’m happy with the outcome regardless. As I got older and less inclined to accept the status quo without question, I found staring at a moneybag while trying to worship the Lord increasingly distasteful. One of the three things in front of us was not like the others. If it was necessary to circulate a means of collection, I felt we would have been better to do it more discreetly. Conscious of some similar impulse, some congregations had always placed the bag or plate on the platform or front pew rather than on the table with the bread and wine. Still, it was always within view, and taking up the collection an obvious part of the regular service. Now it’s not, and I’m entirely fine with that.

I’m also happy we have removed a potential stumbling block for visitors. Churches are often accused of being after everyone’s money. Many, perhaps most, are not, but the public image is what it is, and TV evangelists have not helped us much with their transparent appeals for money and propensity for living the lifestyles of the rich and famous off the proceeds. Christians got used to seeing a plate side by side with the ‘emblems’, so much so that as a child I could not have imagined it any other way. I’m fairly sure cynical visitors on a Sunday morning did not.

The Bad with the Good

Still, change brings the bad with the good. Two potential negatives have arisen from this largely unintentional evolution in church practice. The obvious concern — apparent, I’m sure, to church treasurers in every corner of the Western world — is that the absence of a weekly reminder that giving is important will lead to a failure to maximize revenues. If the cost of operating the building is relatively low and the congregation medium-sized to large, that may not be a problem. If the church is carrying a large mortgage or has taken on other regular obligations it now cannot meet, it may be. We can make the case that perhaps church leadership should not assume significant ongoing financial obligations on behalf of their congregants, especially in an age where congregations are fluid and churn (or worse, steady decline) is common. That’s actually a good argument, but making it doesn’t help pay bills that are already owing.

Moreover, giving generously and regularly is an important part of a mature Christian faith. It is not going too far to say the apostles and other writers of New Testament scripture pushed it relentlessly. Between the gospels and the epistles, we find over forty references to the subject, many in the form of the imperative. That does not mean all giving should be going straight into the bank accounts of local churches — I find that prospect rather alarming, actually — but it’s not unreasonable to expect that along with giving to the poor and to the promotion of gospel preaching and other Christian work, we all have some spiritual obligation to help defray the costs we incur in meeting together and in maintaining a corporate testimony to the world. Those who do not participate in sharing with their fellow believers and meeting the needs they create are not living the complete Christian life. They are missing out on the benefits that come with generosity — it genuinely IS more blessed to give than to receive — but also, potentially, on the eternal reward that comes with good stewardship of what God has generously given each of us.

Solutions Worse Than the Problems

As unfortunate as a decrease in Christian generosity may be, the “solutions” to which some congregations are now stooping trouble me more. The aforementioned tab for donations on a church website facilitates gift-giving, but it’s usually one tab of many. Blink and you may miss it. That’s no good if you’re running a megachurch with weekly bills in the thousands, so some larger church websites pull little tricks like this one for emphasis:

That highlighted circle doesn’t travel with the tab you pick; it sticks to the word “Give” like glue no matter which page you choose. Wouldn’t want to you to miss the most important feature of our website, would we?

Other websites load up their “Giving” tab with videos promoting donations to their church and handy answers to questions like: “What should I do if I forgot my username or password?”; “Can I make one account for my spouse and me?”; “Where can I view my giving history?”; “Do I have to text a code every time I want to sign in?”; “Will my credit card information be saved?”; and, for the more desperate, “I need help. How can I connect with someone?”

That would be me, right there. The more complicated the system, the more answers are required for the average would-be-giver to use it, and the more cynical it all appears to me and probably to any unsaved who happen to come across it.

My Favorite Approach

This one is my favorite:

I love the inclusion of stocks and crypto-currency in the pitch. Give it a few years, and they may decide to include a section for “firstborn son”.

You know, there’s changing with the times, then there is letting the times change us. As much as I wasn’t keen on an offering plate staring me in the face for an hour, I’m less thrilled to watch this sort of thing become the standard modus operandi of local churches.

Your mileage may vary, especially if you’re a church treasurer.