Is weekly contribution biblical?

What the teaching gets right

Some of this is true, and it should be said first. God loves generosity. Jesus said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35). Paul told the Corinthians to "excel in this grace of giving" (2 Corinthians 8:7). Scripture also says that those who teach the word may be supported by those they teach (Galatians 6:6; 1 Timothy 5:17-18). A church that pays its staff is not doing anything wrong, and a believer who gives regularly to a church they trust is doing something good.

So the question is not whether Christians should give. They should. The questions are who decides how much, how often, and what happens to the person who doesn't.

1 Corinthians 16: one collection for a famine

When the teaching on weekly contribution comes up in those studies, it usually stops in the middle of verse 2. Read the whole sentence and the passage changes.

Paul is talking about "the collection for the Lord's people," a specific gift he was gathering from the Gentile churches for poor believers in Jerusalem (Romans 15:25-27; Galatians 2:10). Years earlier, the church in Antioch had sent relief to Judea during a famine (Acts 11:27-30), and the believers in Jerusalem remained poor. Paul spent years on this one project, and he wrote about it in three letters.

Look at what he asks. Each person sets money aside "in keeping with your income," so the amount is theirs to decide. They are to save it "so that when I come no collections will have to be made." The weekly setting aside was a way to have the gift ready when Paul arrived. The goal was one finished collection, carried to Jerusalem by people the church itself chose (16:3).

The Greek phrase translated "set aside" (par' heautō tithetō) literally means "put by himself." New Testament scholar Gordon Fee, in his major commentary on 1 Corinthians, and many other commentators read it as setting money aside at home, not paying it into a church fund each Sunday. Whichever way that detail is read, the passage describes a relief offering for a famine. It is not a standing command that every Christian pay the church weekly, and it says nothing about membership depending on it.

Malachi 3: a tithe under the Law of Moses

"Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me," God says through Malachi. "In tithes and offerings" (Malachi 3:8). Malachi was written to Israel under the Law of Moses. The tithe in the Law was part of a whole system: it supported the Levites, who had no land of their own (Numbers 18:21-24), and it fed the poor, the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow (Deuteronomy 14:28-29). In one form, families even ate their tithe together at a festival before the Lord (Deuteronomy 14:22-26). "The storehouse" in Malachi 3:10 was a real storeroom at the temple where that food was kept (Nehemiah 13:10-12). And Malachi spoke just as sharply to the priests, who were corrupting their own service (Malachi 1:6-2:9).

New Testament scholars Andreas Köstenberger and David Croteau studied every biblical passage on tithing in a two-part article for the Bulletin for Biblical Research (2006). They concluded that no Old or New Testament text can legitimately be used to require a tithe of Christians in the new covenant. They did not conclude that Christians should give less. They concluded that the New Testament teaches a different pattern of giving.

The New Testament never commands Christians to tithe. Jesus mentioned tithing only when he spoke to the Pharisees, who were still under the Law, and he rebuked them for tithing their spices while neglecting "justice, mercy and faithfulness" (Matthew 23:23). No apostle told a church to give 10%. No New Testament letter calls a believer a thief for giving less.

The widow: praise, or a warning?

Mark 12:41-44 is sometimes added to the teaching to show what "sacrificial" giving looks like. A poor widow puts two small coins into the temple treasury, "all she had to live on."

Read the verses just before it. Jesus has just warned about religious leaders who "devour widows' houses" and make long prayers for show (Mark 12:38-40). Right after it, he says the temple those coins went into will be torn down, stone by stone (Mark 13:1-2). Bible scholar Addison Wright, in a well-known 1982 article titled "The Widow's Mites: Praise or Lament?", argued that Jesus is not holding her up as a model to copy so much as lamenting a religious system that took the last coins of a poor widow. Not every scholar accepts that reading, but the setting is impossible to miss.

At the very least, Jesus honors her heart. He does not tell anyone to collect from widows, and he does not set a percentage. Using her story to press people for a higher weekly pledge, whether a struggling college student, a single mother, someone working two jobs or anyone barely making ends meet, turns the passage nearly upside down.

1 Corinthians 9: a right Paul chose not to use

The fourth passage is used to teach that supporting the full-time staff is a biblical duty. Paul does argue here that ministers may be supported. He cites the ox that is not muzzled (Deuteronomy 25:4), the priests who ate from the temple, and Jesus' own words: "those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel" (1 Corinthians 9:9-14; Luke 10:7).

Then comes the point of the whole chapter: "But I have not used any of these rights" (9:15). "We did not use this right... we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ" (9:12). Paul's reason for raising the right was to explain why he set it aside.

The book of Acts shows what that looked like. In Corinth, Paul worked as a tentmaker, and when Silas and Timothy arrived (bringing a gift from the churches of Macedonia, 2 Corinthians 11:9), he "devoted himself exclusively to preaching" (Acts 18:3-5). He told the Ephesian elders, "these hands of mine have supplied my own needs" (Acts 20:34). He worked "night and day" so as not to be a burden (2 Thessalonians 3:8). When he received support, it came as gifts, "once and again" (Philippians 4:15-16). When it didn't, he went back to work. He did not ask the churches to raise their pledges.

Look at the heart behind that choice. The church could have supported Paul freely, and he would have been within his rights to accept it. Instead he worked with his own hands so that he would not be a burden and would put no obstacle in anyone's way (1 Corinthians 9:12; 2 Corinthians 11:9). "I will not be a burden to you," he told the Corinthians, "because what I want is not your possessions but you" (2 Corinthians 12:14).

Two things follow. First, no passage says that a minister's support must be ongoing, like the salary of a traditional job. A church may choose to pay its staff, and how much is a fair question for each church to settle. But Scripture does not command it, and it never turns a minister's right to support into a weekly obligation enforced on every member.

Second, set Paul's heart beside what former members of the RCW and ICC report. They describe hard and sometimes harsh messages about money, fear used to move people to give, and, in some cases, members who did not give being told they were cursed. Often no scripture is offered for that claim at all, or a passage is stretched to fit giving. Yet Scripture says the opposite about those who belong to Christ: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13). Paul gave up what he was owed so that no one would stumble. A system in which leaders press members for the money that pays their own salaries, at the cost of members' consciences, rent and trust, runs in the opposite direction. That is the leader's need placed ahead of the church's good, and it is the reverse of the heart God shows in these letters.

If you are still in the RCW or ICC and that troubles you, it is not a lack of faith. It is a red flag worth taking seriously, and it is the kind of question Paul himself would want you to ask. You do not need to feel guilty for asking it.

What the New Testament actually teaches about giving

The longest passage on giving in the New Testament is 2 Corinthians 8-9, written about the same Jerusalem collection. Read it straight through, and you find a clear pattern.

The giver decides. "Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver" (2 Corinthians 9:7). Not what a leader decides. Not what is expected of your class or ministry.

It is not commanded. "I am not commanding you," Paul writes about the very collection he cared most about (2 Corinthians 8:8). He calls it a test of sincere love, not a rule.

It is measured by what you have. "The gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have" (2 Corinthians 8:12). "Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed" (8:13).

It is freely given. The Macedonian churches gave "entirely on their own" (8:3). When Ananias lied about his gift, Peter's words make clear that the money was his to keep: "Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal?" (Acts 5:4). The sin was the lie, not the amount.

It is handled openly. Paul did not carry the money alone. He sent trusted brothers, one chosen by the churches themselves, "to avoid any criticism of the way we administer this liberal gift. For we are taking pains to do what is right, not only in the eyes of the Lord but also in the eyes of man" (2 Corinthians 8:19-21).

It goes first to real needs. The collections in the New Testament fed the poor (Acts 4:34-35; 11:29; Romans 15:26). Scripture also says that a believer who does not provide for their own household "has denied the faith" (1 Timothy 5:8), and that we should "let no debt remain outstanding" (Romans 13:8).

Jesus warned about a religious tradition that let people "give to God" what should have cared for their own parents, and in doing so "nullify the word of God" (Mark 7:9-13). The warning applies whenever a church's expectations about money crowd out what God actually asks.

How the early church gave

The first Christians after the apostles described their giving in almost the same words.

Around AD 150, the Christian teacher Justin Martyr explained Christian Sunday worship to the Roman emperor. After the meeting, he wrote, "they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit," and the gift was used for orphans, widows, the sick, prisoners and strangers (First Apology 67).

About fifty years later, the theologian Tertullian described his church in North Africa: once a month, each person may give "a small donation; but only if it be his pleasure, and only if he be able: for there is no compulsion; all is voluntary." The money went to feed and bury the poor, and to care for orphans, the elderly and the shipwrecked (Apology 39).

Those who were willing. What each thinks fit. Only if able. No compulsion. That was the church's own description of itself.

When a gift becomes a requirement

Former members describe a very different experience in the RCW and ICC. These are the things they tell us they saw, heard and were taught.

• Before baptism, the incoming member is asked to name a weekly amount, and leaders are trained not to accept an amount they consider too low.
• After that, they learn about Special Missions Contributions, three times a year, often 10, 15 or 20 times the weekly pledge.
• Leaders track who missed giving each week. Members who miss may get a text that Sunday night asking why and asking them to still give.
• A member who misses repeatedly is sat down to "reinforce the scriptures," or "called to be sold out." It is reported again and again that, in some cases, a member who missed four weeks in a row and would not change their mind was removed from membership and considered a fall-away.
• At year end, a pledge drive asks every member to raise their weekly amount, with leaders following up personally on whether, and by how much.
• Members, many of them students, are encouraged to work part-time around the ministry schedule. Some deplete their savings or take on debt.
• Former members report that missionaries are still expected to give their own Special Missions Contribution for the very mission they are being sent on, and sometimes pay their own travel. Members sent out may get help with a rent deposit, but little more.
• Former members also report that only a small share of what is given to "missions" reaches missionaries. Most, they say, goes to the lead couple's salary and housing and to church facilities.
• Members receive a general summary of spending, such as a pie chart, rather than a line-by-line account of where the money goes.

These accounts are consistent with a federal lawsuit filed by former members on December 30, 2022, which alleges that members were pressured to give 10% of their income plus repeated special contributions. Those claims have not been proven in court. You can read the reporting in our On the Record section, including what the Los Angeles Times reported and what former London ICC members told BBC News.

Put the studied verses next to this practice. Scripture says each one decides; here, the amount is negotiated with a leader. Scripture says not under compulsion; here, missing a week brings a text that night. Scripture says "I am not commanding you"; here, not giving can cost you your standing as a disciple. Scripture says the gift is measured by what you have; here, a student with no savings is asked to give first and figure out rent later. Scripture says to handle money so carefully that no one can question it; here, members are asked to trust and not ask.

The system often adds its own words to close the gap: "How could we not meet the need?" "We must put the kingdom first." "How would we not give to the family of God?" Those phrases sound like Scripture. But Scripture never makes generosity the price of belonging, and it never asks anyone to give from fear. Giving "under compulsion" is exactly what Paul said God does not want (2 Corinthians 9:7). The church leaders who are warned in the New Testament are those who use their position for "dishonest gain" (1 Peter 5:2; Titus 1:11) or think "godliness is a means to financial gain" (1 Timothy 6:5).

This is not a story about weekly contribution alone. Weekly contribution, tithing and special missions giving are traditions carried from the International Churches of Christ (ICOC) to the ICC and now the RCW. They may be presented with the weight of the gospel, but they are traditions. A tradition can be fine to keep. It becomes a problem when it is taught as God's command, and people who question it are told they are questioning God.

Giving in freedom

If you gave in the RCW or ICC, you did not waste your faith. Many people gave sincerely, out of real love for God, often at real cost. God saw that.

And if you stopped, or gave less, or left because the pressure became too much, you are not selfish and you have not "gone back to the world." The New Testament never measured a disciple by a giving record.

Healthy giving looks like this: you decide in your own heart what to give. You give from what you have, not from what you don't. You provide for your family and pay what you owe. You give to people and causes you trust, and you are free to ask where the money goes. You give because Christ "though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich" (2 Corinthians 8:9). Not because someone is keeping count.

"Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!" (2 Corinthians 9:15).

Common questions

Is weekly contribution biblical? No passage commands Christians to give to their church every week. 1 Corinthians 16:1-2 asked believers to set money aside weekly for one relief collection for poor believers in Jerusalem, so it would be ready when Paul arrived. Giving regularly can be good, but Scripture leaves the amount and frequency to the giver (2 Corinthians 9:7).

Do Christians have to tithe 10%? The tithe was part of the Law of Moses, supporting the Levites and the poor. The New Testament never commands Christians to tithe. It calls them to give generously, freely and according to what they have (2 Corinthians 8:12; 9:7).

Is Malachi 3:8 about Christians robbing God? Malachi 3 was written to Israel under the Law, about the tithes that stocked the temple storehouse. It is not a New Testament command, and no apostle used it to tell Christians they were robbing God.

Is it wrong for a church to pay its ministers? No. Scripture allows those who teach to be supported (1 Corinthians 9:14; 1 Timothy 5:17-18). But Paul often chose not to use that right, and he never made support of ministers a weekly requirement for church membership.

What does the Restored Church Worldwide (RCW) teach about giving? Former members of the RCW and the International Christian Church (ICC) describe a weekly contribution expected of every member, often beginning at 10% of income, plus Special Missions Contributions three times a year and an annual pledge drive. Members who don't give consistently may be questioned about their commitment. This article compares that teaching with what Scripture says about giving.