Leftovers for Firstfruits, Charity for Hospitality

A brother at Missio Dei (Chris Brenna, who blogs here), recently wrote a good post about tithing: Firstfruits and Leftovers.  He and I are on the same page about the matter of tithing, which we believe to be a limiting practices which has no roots in the New Testament.  He writes:

…giving is discretionary in America.
Giving is not about firstfruits, it is about leftovers. I’m not
sickened by the low percentage of American income that goes to the
church. I’m sickened by the priorities of Americans that have been
developed through merchantilistic capitalism. Pastors can deliver
sermons on generosity from the pulpit until they are blue in the face,
organizations can ask for money all they want, and the average
Christian could start giving 10, 20 even 30 percent of his/her income
away, but it won’t make a shred of difference until Christians
restructure their economic life together in such a way that giving is
not part of the system of currency they use, but giving IS their
currency. Giving cannot be the discretionary, individual- or
family-based economic phenomenon it manifests itself as now in the
church. Giving must be the unit of exchange in a community-based
economy that negotiates sacrificial lifestyles for its members.

Chris has a number of good insights about Christian economics (search his archives sometime).  I long for the day when these insights give birth to praxis.  Though Chris and I don’t exactly fall out on the same place in our vision for what that would look like (Chris is what would happen if you poured another pint of idealism into my head), we are both committed to seeing churches become communities of radical allegiance to Christ.

Here’s part of my response to Chris’ blog:

Great post, Chris.  I’ve always been a fan of a more "hospitality" approach to how we support one another and support the work of Christ in the world.  Of course, giving money is a big part of that. 

Hospitality causes me to share "all good things" with others.  It means letting even the stranger come in and share in my bounty.  Americans live in a culture of charity, not of hospitality. We are fragmented folks…we don’t remember how to share our lives with each other, since the West moved away from narratives of hospitality and community a long time ago.  We are fragmented folks longing for community, longing for hospitality.  But the best approximation of it we can find within our Western set of tools is "charity"…

The problem is, I suspect that when churches start preaching the non-tithe, giving goes down without a strong increase of hospitality.  It is so much easier to give 10% than to be truly hospitible.  The shift required for a church to be a people of hospitality is incredible. 

I, for one, am willing to go deep in a search for radical hospitality (and am trying to move in that direction), but it gets frustrating when I see all of Christendom around me running off of a charity model, building systems around our fragmentation rather than challenging it. 

for further reading . . .

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