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Posted by Kate on 11/26/2008, 4:02 pm, in reply to "tongues of men and of angels"
When you start going to a brand new church, one that is just starting up, you become one of the 'core' members. They tend to rely on you for a lot of things -- cleaning the church, mowing the church lawn, teaching Sunday School, working at the church food closet, attending women's (or men's) prayer breakfasts every other week, Sunday service morning and evening, participating in church potlucks, teaching Vacation Bible School, Wednesday night home meetings...
It gets so your whole life can revolve around church. It can be...stifling. And if you are a stay at home mother, there is this assumption that you have a lot of time on your hands. I didn't. I was homeschooling two boys with ADD and had a toddler as well. I was co-leading our local homeschool support group, writing a newsletter for them, writing magazine articles for homeschooling magazines, teaching a multi-grade level algebra class and tutoring English. I was attending college at night (while my husband was home to watch the children) to get my degree in Journalism. I was dealing with a husband who was clinically depressed but would not seek medical help because the well-meaning people in our church told us that it was wrong to go to a secular psychiatrist, and that he just needed prayer. I was volunteering at a ministry for unwed moms and leading a weekly Bible study for women who were having mental and emotional problems because of past abortions. We were witnessing to Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons who came to our door, meeting with both on a weekly basis. Then I began having serious 'female problems' and was on heavy duty pain killers for almost two weeks every month.
Things were not going well. Kind of like when you have a teaspoon of peanut butter, and a big piece of bread, and you try to spread it all around, but it gets thinner and thinner and thinner until the bread tears and crumbles. That slice of bread was my life.
Our pastor had several informal 'talks' with us regarding the fact that we did not tithe. Now...we certainly gave of ourselves to this church, gave of our time and our abilities. We were supporting a family of five on one income, which was not a very good income. Then my husband became disabled and was off work for a year, being retrained for a different occupation that he could do. We were barely paying our bills, and trying to be frugal and good stewards of our money. We gave offerings, but no, not a tithe. One of our main hesitations was what our pastor chose to do with that money. Our church was an offshoot of the Shepherding Movement (look that up, it's pretty creepy). Our pastor tithed to his pastor, who tithed to his pastor, and it seemed like a big pyramid scheme to us. Our pastor, his wife, the elders and their wives, all used church funds to go to Pensacola, Florida to experience the 'outpouring of the Holy Spirit' that was supposedly going on, and they came back, eyes shining, with tales of people laughing hysterically, barking like dogs, or acting flipping crazy. We did not feel in our spirits that this was of God, but then again, we weren't there. But then our pastor starting giving money to Benny Hinn's ministry, and we knew for a fact he is a charlatan and a fake, and he's been caught at it. We were not happy campers, and our pastor was not pleased with us when we told him we were not going to tithe, especially not for those kinds of things. It became sort of a stand off...and a sore spot.
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