[QUOTE=Belrix]
Every Christian church I’ve attended as an adult had voluntary giving.
Yes, the Bible says you should tithe, 10%, your income (debatable on gross or net income). My churches have always allowed that you, according to your wishes (and the leading of the Holy Spirit), give a “gift” of higher or lower than that.
My old church used to announce the ushers would coming around to collect our “Tithes and Offerings”. We, as a family, gave an “offering”, not a “tithe”. 10% was just too much out-go for our finances.
We “pledged” at the beginning of the year what we expected we would give through the year. It was for planning purposes for the church, to set budget, but you weren’t billed for it. There were no Guido’s in the lobby breaking knee-caps of those who didn’t achieve their pledge amounts.
In that church and now in my current church, every week in the bulletin there is a three-line summary of the budget: Amounted spent, amount needed to make budget, amount given last week. If I see the budget for the church isn’t being met, I try to find an extra $20 or so to include the next week.
Daycare during services is provided by church volunteers. Classes are lead by volunteers. Lots of maintenance is done by Volunteers. We just had “church maintenance day” a couple weekends ago where lots of members showed up to fix a rather long “honey-do” list that was accumulating.
Yes, there are paid office staff & the pastoral staff is, of course, paid. It’s their profession, after all. But their pay and all other expenses comes out of the budget based off the pledges for the year.
A church should be a community of people trying to help each other, not a business, IMO.
Sure, there are people that use the services and never once volunteer in return. In every volunteer organization, the 80/20 rule applies. 20% of the people do 80% of the work.
Never once, though, would I suggest that some church service be held back from any member that didn’t meet some sort of “fair share” amount. That just seems too ridiculous to even contemplate.
All this, by the way, is based on three congregationally-lead, churches (One Covenant, one Baptist, one Friends/Quaker). One of those three probably qualifies as approaching mega-church status while the others (including my current one) are not nearly that large. These are not the top-down Catholic/Episcopal/Lutheran variety that receive money from some large pot gathered from all and then redistributed.
[/QUOTE]
Seems to me somewhat naive to expect the same level of services from an “all voluntary giving” organization, even one fleshed out with lots of volunteer work, as from one with an admittedly onerous and mandatory set of dues.
It is a simple matter of mathematics. How many members are going to “voluntarily” donate more than $3,000 in either money or time? No doubt some do - but will they donate so much more as to make up for all those who donate nothing?
Take your 80/20 rule. Assume 100 members in each congregation. The one requiring dues will accumulate $300,000 - $3,000 per member. The one using “voluntary donations” can only rely on 20% of members to contribute. In order to reach the same level, each one of those 20 members would have to voluntarily contribute $15,000 worth of either cash or volunteer time. And that of course assumes that no-one in the first group does any volunteer work at all.
That being said, naturally one may not want so many services from one’s organized religion. Which is fair enough. But there is nothing stopping anyone from either joining another congregation, or forming one’s own - all that is needed is 10 like-minded souls.
BTW, it isn’t as if a synagogue sends “Guidos” around to break kneecaps - any more that an “all volunteer” church holds shake-downs during services. They are merely different ways of achieving the same ends. Some find being importuned for donations all the time “crass” and would simply prefer to give a regular lump sum; others prefer it otherwise … but one thing is sure: in no case does the money appear miraculously.
