The power play to no longer allow church members to designate where they want their tithes and offerings applied strips the congregation of its control over the church finances. The corporate church model opens the purse strings to potentially allow leadership to use funding in ways the church body may not support. The switch of church governance in my former church was followed by donation promotions outside the traditional season for tithe pledges. We no longer had the ability to give specifically to a favored mission or even to help pay down the mortgage on the expanded worship center. Spending became dictated by the senior minister. Leadership forgot that the biblical model was for them to serve the body and not vice versa.
“[SW] announced from the pulpit that the ability to designate where donations would be applied was going away. There would be only one pot of money for all church business. Members could no longer designate certain amounts to missions or certain ministries within the church or to pay down the mortgage. With one well from which to dip and a CEO type of leadership, priorities within the church’s finances changed.” (Taylor, Joy S., A View from the Pews — The Inside Story of a Broken Church, 2022, Lily of the Valley Publishing, Santa Claus IN, p. 32.)
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