On Stewardship & Generosity

Evangelical churches remain deeply conflicted about money. The tithing debate—whether the 10% obligation of the Old Testament law applies to New Testament Christians—reveals fault lines about grace, obligation, and the gospel's power to transform our relationship with possessions. Many evangelical pastors teach the tithe as a baseline, a floor below which giving becomes stingy. Yet the data tell a sobering story: fewer than 5% of churchgoers actually tithe, and the average evangelical gives only around 2% of income. Meanwhile, the prosperity gospel has convinced millions that generosity is an investment that guarantees divine return. The American church has inherited a consumeristic approach to faith that treats giving as a transaction rather than a transformation.

A growing chorus of evangelical leaders—Randy Alcorn, David Platt, John Piper, Tim Keller—are making a counterintuitive case: the problem is not that we expect too much generosity from Christians, but too little. They argue that the New Testament doesn't reduce giving to a percentage but calls believers to radical, sacrificial generosity rooted in the gospel itself. When Jesus demands that we "take up [our] cross" and follow him, when Paul celebrates the Macedonian churches who gave "beyond their means," when Acts depicts a community that sold possessions to meet needs—the New Testament is not setting a ceiling at 10% but inviting us into a freedom that makes generosity inevitable. This vision offers an escape from both the legalism of tithing and the materialism of consumer Christianity.