What counts as tithing?

The secular econcomist concludes that a logical giver should only give to a single charity after careful consideration of the options. This is because if the donations are small, the world hasn't changed after the first donation thus whatever reasons made the first donation valid still applies. Donations to a second charity means the giver is purchasing psychological benefits. (See "Giving your all" by Steven Landberg in Slate Magazine, Jan 11, 1997. Disclaimer: this is a secular article on charitable giving, not a Christian view.)

How does this apply to Christian giving? At the very least we need to carefully examine our motives. We need to answer the rational economist's analysis as well as to God. As an extreme application of this logic, most of us are already giving to our local church first thus we should only give to our local church. While I'm not advocating this extreme position, it certainly forces us to think.

We then looked at the view of churches and para-church organizations. Not surprisingly, churches take a firm stand that tithing is to the local church. (See for example Saddleback's view.) Parachurch organizations do not oppose the primacy of the local church but leave open the possibility of tithing to para-church groups. (See for example, Urbana.) Noted Christian finance author Larry Burkett acknowledges the importance of the local church but also leaves open the possibility of giving to other needs as counting towards tithing.

So a fair summary of the state of this internal Christian debate is that churches assert that only churches should be the recipients of tithing. Para-church groups acknowledge the importance of the church but leave open the possibility that giving to non-church groups may also be considered tithing. I'm not aware of any mainstream group that would give absolute liberty to the giver to pick and choose the recipient and still count that as giving to God. And that, I think, is the key message: if we define tithing as giving to God, we cannot insert ourselves and our motives into that and still claim it's all for God.

The key passages we looked at were Mal 3:10, Neh 10:35 and Deut 12:5,6.

DISCLAIMER: This is not a traditional pulpit view of this topic. Many Christians would only want a Bible-based discussion and rightly so. The economic view and looking at the view of various organizations are illustrations only and clearly should not be viewed as doctrinal statements.