Financing the Local Church

Abstract

The social heritage of the Christian church derives from Judaism, and methods of financing today's local churches can be traced from the pre-Christian era. Many leaders insist that the Jewish tithe of the Old Testament should be the basis of church support today. The process of local church finance in the earliest days is described in this paper and compared with the new, complex methods which are practiced by contemporary churches. Churches have grown—in numbers and wealth—with the changing society. There is a great difference between the "collections" of two generations ago and the budgeting and accounting principles of the successful churches of today. With some of the larger churches operating on annual budgets of three quarters of a million dollars, and with sixty to eighty persons on their payrolls, a serious consideration of business methods in church finance is clearly warranted.