[RMC News] From RMC Treasurer: Tithe Transitions Vol. 1, No. 19

[Roe, Ben]

Tithe Transitions
Mission and Money for The Rocky Mountain Conference
Vol. 1 No. 19					January 15, 2008
"...by the fifteenth of every month, each local church treasurer shall remit to the annual conference 10% (+1%) of the previous month's net contributions." 
5 Weeks Remaining to First Report!


Paul Dirdak, our interim treasurer until the first week of January, has left for another assignment (in Africa) but before he left, he finished writing the Tithe Transitions notes.  Here is this week's installment:

So, now we are half-way through January of 2008.  You are already keeping track of your receipts for each week of this month and you are ready to remit 11% of them all (less the excludable amounts we have discussed for weeks).  You all recall that yesterday was the deadline for sending the Conference all the remaining 2007 payments which you intended to make.  Hopefully we will have shared with one another enough of our substance to have paid our shared bills and we are starting 2008 without compromising past obligations.

This week I wanted to remind you of two important principles in the Church Tithe Apportionment of the Rocky Mountain United Methodists.

First, we voted on the rules together, and we expect each church to apply the rules to its own situation.  Are there grey areas of interpretation, where certain charges are excludable from tithing, or not, depending on some interpretation?  Of course there are.  But the principle here is that each family in each of our churches is also deciding how to tithe their income, too.  If you teach members to tithe their substance rather than their surplus, then you would want to be consistent and apply the same standard to the way your church tithes to the needs we all share together.

Second, is the matter of affordability.  When we had an apportionment formula which charged some churches twice the percentage of their income that it charged other churches, there was always a worthy argument that some of us simply could not afford to pay the cost to grow and pay the cost to be apportioned United Methodists.  This only became more and more difficult as time went on.  Now, with the Church Tithe Apportionment, it seems to me that the matter of affordability has been resolved.  Every pastor in our church has heard people say that they cannot afford to pay a tithe of their income to their church.  And all of us have cited the host of the poorest congregants we have ever known for whom tithing were simply a life-long matter of course.  Tithers know from experience that living on 90% of total income is as possible as living on 100% of income, except that when we spend all that we make on ourselves, the world is worse--which costs each of us more, anyway.

The question will not be, "Can our church afford to tithe?"  The question will be, "Can we order our lives so that we choose to tithe?"  Answering, "Yes" to that second question, will be just as difficult and just as easy for each of us as it is for all of us.

Best blessings, tithers.  Happy 2008.
(Written by Paul Dirdak, Interim Treasurer until January 7, 2008)

Please contact Wayne Bettendorf, Conferencer Treasurer, with questions or requests for more information (wayne at rmcumc.com, 800-536-3736 x 151, 303-325-7051)

Please see the December 20, 2007, e-mail from Skip Strickland, Director of Mission and Ministry, for introduction of Wayne as our new Treasurer.  You may also read about this on the RMCUMC.org web: http://www.rmcumc.org/News/Communications/news.htm#treas


We have been collecting e-mail addresses for local church finance chairs and treasurers so they might get these messages directly. If there are persons who need this information who may not have received it, please help us get it to them by: forwarding this e-mail to them, sharing their email address with us, or by printing it out and handing or mailing it to them.  Thank you for helping this new system to work!  This and previous editions  of T2 are on the web at rmcumc.org/CR/Finance/ (under Church Resources). The remittance form is the second link in the list at the top of the page.

Ben Roe
Information Administrator
Rocky Mountain Conference, The United Methodist Church
ben at rmcumc.com  303-325-7046  800-536-3736x146 
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