- Topic
Since this situation comes up, I will put forth a scenario. If a member had a good job, and tithed well over 10% for a long time, if he/she loses that job would he/she be allowed not to tithe, since 10% of 0 = 0? Or would that person be allowed to tithe less if he/she eventually got a job that paid less? Does anybody know or have an idea of how that is handled? Does a person lose status somewhat if they are not tithing, or not tithing as much as they once were?
I am just wondering because it seems as though they have no choice. I know of a person who tried to pull back on tithes because the spouse talked about it with him/her and they together agreed it had to be less. The pastor met with that person, and the member was told the tithe had to go back up to the original level "for spiritual growth." This caused so much stress and trouble in that marriage. It was as if the non-member had no say in about financial issues in his/her own marriage.
I believe Simon was in a situation where it was 10% of 0. But in his case there was no reduction of tithe as far as I know. I think he will answer this one.
This straight depends on whether the person(s) you're talking about are earners or not. If they're earners, ie: Good Recruiter(s) they can be as broke as they wanna be, but if they're broke and can't recruit, or have no other commodity to "give" they'll boot your a/s/s like a Dallas Cowboy at a Pittsburgh Steeler Convention.
TL/DR
You should tithe at least once a month. If you get money from unemployment, tithe from unemployment. If you don’t, then find money, but at least have to tithe once a month.
Based on my experience, let me explain about the tithes and offerings.
There are three envelopes: The blue envelope, the tithe envelope and the brown envelope.
The Blue Envelope (Regular Offerings): These you give in every service on the Sabbath and on the Main Feast days. You don't give offerings on Third Day services or in any of the other minor feast days (Father's coming day, Heavenly Parents day, etc…). If you plan to give 20 dollars in offerings, they recommend you to give 10 in the first service and 5 in the other services; the reason is because God likes "firsts", like "first fruits", "first born", "first service", etc… This envelope doesn't have your name.
The Green Envelope (Tithes Envelope): This one has your name. You give one every time you get paid. If you get paid weekly, you tithe weekly; if you get paid biweekly then you tithe biweekly. You are usually taught that you can tithe before taxes and then don’t have to tithe from your tax return, or you can tithe after taxes and then tithe from your tax return. Most people I know, would tithe before tax, and would tithe from their tax return as well. That is a “personal choice” (I put it in quotes because I don’t think anything there is really personal choice)
If you don’t have a job but you get unemployment benefits, you tithe from your unemployment benefits. If you don’t have a job and don’t get unemployment benefits then you need to find money somehow and tithe at least once a month. If you don’t tithe at least once a month, you are considered a non-tithing member, which is not good.
The Brown Envelope (Zion Offering): This envelope is for an extra offering. You ask for this envelope if you want to do it. This envelope has different options inside of where you want to put your money towards: “Zion Offering”, “Thanks Offering” and “Offering for Overseas Churches”
This one, as with the tithes, you should do at least once a month. This envelope has your name.
Some parents are recommended, if they want blessings for their children (like if any parent wouldn’t want), for their children to tithe. They don’t have jobs, so they can’t tithe you would say. What parents are told is, if it’s a baby, to calculate how much they give them in a week (food, clothes, pampers, etc…) and calculate the 10% of that. If the child gets money for lunch, then he should set 10% apart from that.
If you don't make much money, and don't have the skills to get a very good job, you would just be recommended to preach to somebody that has money, because "through your fruit, you can get that blessing".
Let me say that tithes and offerings are not the weird part of the WMSCOG. Many other protestant churches ask for tithes and offerings and I think I can say that most of the money that you give to the church is not in the tithes and offerings.
I think most of the money given to the church is in the money for mortgage, utilities, food, “missions”, money you spend preaching every day (in gas or bus, food, etc) and money for any special occasion, event or community service.
I noticed that the WMS is very careful about “asking” for money. The say many times that they don’t care about money, and when I was a member, our pastor never gave a service just about tithes and offerings.
I feel that what they do is guilt you into giving money, so they don’t have to ask for it. They talk about how Ahnsahnghong and Zahng Gil Jah, being God, gave everything up in heaven to come to the earth to one of the poorest countries in the world. How Ahnsahnghong and Zahng Gil Jah didn’t have anything but all the money that they got they just gave it to the church, them being God gave up everything… what about us sinners?
If the world is going to end soon, why have a 401k? Why have life insurance? Why have a savings account? If the world is going to end soon, what makes sense, and what is right, is to give all your money to the church, so that the gospel can be spread.
Of course… the world is not ending, Father is not coming, Mother is just getting older. New prophecies are appearing all of the sudden, old prophecies are being forgotten because they weren’t fulfilled and people’s bank accounts are just getting smaller and smaller.
No Emil I was told 10% of 0 is zero as were other members
And technically we couldn’t not tithe we tithed $0.00 since that was the tithe
But that’s my zion can’t speak for others
ExMembers experience is drastically different from my own in more than that regard
Yet I never said ExMember was inaccurate in fact I was fairly clearly saying the opposite
thanks exmember for the explanation about offering and the tithes. The most stricking and also dangerous part of the WMSCOG, that they don't ask for money, but make the members feel so guilty that they gave money "freely". They say they do the things they do, 'out of free will', no way…They do it because there is a reward, what ever that reward is.
"if he/she loses that job would he/she be allowed not to tithe" ~MountainMom
I will answer your question with a question; how difficult is it to pick up even a penny from the ground?
The types of things that people make issues about reveals their nature. Many times I have tithed with mere change.
"if they're broke and can't recruit, or have no other commodity to "give" they'll boot you" ~Stained
I and 62 other poor brothers and sisters I know were (and maybe still are) living proof that such a statement is false. We all had poor faith, poor pockets, no recruitment no nothing. Some of us survived on the church food. Truley the WMSCOG possessed infinite patience, and waited for each of us in our own time (weeks, months, or even years) to get our acts together.
Any ideas to the contrary are misunderstood and few.
"That is a “personal choice” (I put it in quotes because I don’t think anything there is really personal choice)" exmember
And all we who make different choices in the WMSCOG according to our personal situations beg to differ with your undertones.
"All parts of the tithing to the wmscog disturb me" ~MountainMom
All parts of your misunderstanding disturb me. You bring up babies just to start an argument and strike an emotional chord, blinding people to the true situation. Even though baby tithes are generally a mere dollar and/or taken out of the head of household's tithe instead (such a head of household tithes less in accordance with the wealth split among family members who tithe individually instead)
Exagerrations still abound I see.
I and 62 other poor brothers and sisters I know were (and maybe still are) living proof that such a statement is false. We all had poor faith, poor pockets, no recruitment no nothing. Some of us survived on the church food. Truley the WMSCOG possessed infinite patience, and waited for each of us in our own time (weeks, months, or even years) to get our acts together.
Any ideas to the contrary are misunderstood and few.
That's very interesting. You must be from a poor country. I'm sorry about your situation, but my experience is that if a member had to survive on church food they would be asked to go "fix" their life first and then after to come back to church. Many times I heard the phrases "this is not a homeless shelter" or "if you are coming to Zion only to eat, then don't come". But 144000 I agree with you, things are different in poor countries, so what you are saying might be true, but I can tell you in other countries, the opposite is true. Also, you never know, maybe you have a very good pastor who doesn't follow General Assembly's rule.
And all we who make different choices in the WMSCOG according to our personal situations beg to differ with your undertones.
If you are able to make your personal choices, then coungratulations. If you are able to live your life, and the WMS nor your pastor controls your life, then coungratulations. Don't listen to what the people in this forum are talking about, you are in a good church. Now, I can tell you, when I was a member, I couldn't make personal choices, everything had to go through my team leader and group leader, I had to let them know even when I wanted to visit family, I would be looked down upon if I didn't go preaching or go to a church activity. I guess the Zion I was in wasn't a good and modern one, yours sounds very different, you are very lucky!
"That's very interesting. You must be from a poor country." exmember
Nope, it was one of the more proliferous big-city USA Zions.
"my experience is that if a member had to survive on church food they would be asked to go."
In my years and variety of Zions, this is a very rare exception. I regularly brought poorer members from a few places, and they were all accepted and welcomed, fed, and studied. One was actually bon-a-fide homeless. However certain people at that point DO need to spend their time rebuilding thier life as promptly as possible, for their own good and for a couple bible verses that condone both answers for different reasons.
"everything had to go through my team leader and group leader"
The short answer is: No, everything does not have to.
The long answer is: Yes, everything should. I'll omit typing paragraphs and hope you understand my emphasis.
MountainMom~
"(and yet sad because the parents fall for this additional ploy to bleed more money out of them)"
I think you deliberately ignore the parts where we say "you don't have to tithe extra" or "you can take this out of your regular tithe" just to state confrontational emotional plots like this one.
"I personally know a person"
That sounds pretty isolated. I wonder if there isn't more to this story perhaps? Or, God forbid, a failure to math correctly and a failure to communicate that lead to a much more exagerrated problem than it needed to be?
"I noticed you haven't been on the site for a very long time."
Assuming my posts aren't buried under pages of rhetoric, I hope they can persuade people to open their eyes and see how eagerly you twist the truth, with little gems like this:
"the issue of tithing comes up as a post, and here you are!"
You'll notice I posted on a few other threads, not just this one. I can see your chomping at the bit to fabricate assumptions about me (maybe this time I can be a Korean spy? you were pretty hot on me being a deacon or group leader last time).
Anyways, this is done for new readers not your old and recycled "revelations", so you'll forgive me if I don't spend my whole day answering every question across the forums, suffice to say that I did post in more than one. You'll also forgive me for ommiting things better learnt in a longer sit-down study.
God Bless You~
I would have to say 144000 matches my perception of their actions in this thread
ExMember wrote:
TL/DR
You should tithe at least once a month. If you get money from unemployment, tithe from unemployment. If you don’t, then find money, but at least have to tithe once a month.
Based on my experience, let me explain about the tithes and offerings.
There are three envelopes: The blue envelope, the tithe envelope and the brown envelope.
The Blue Envelope (Regular Offerings): These you give in every service on the Sabbath and on the Main Feast days. You don't give offerings on Third Day services or in any of the other minor feast days (Father's coming day, Heavenly Parents day, etc…). If you plan to give 20 dollars in offerings, they recommend you to give 10 in the first service and 5 in the other services; the reason is because God likes "firsts", like "first fruits", "first born", "first service", etc… This envelope doesn't have your name.
The Green Envelope (Tithes Envelope): This one has your name. You give one every time you get paid. If you get paid weekly, you tithe weekly; if you get paid biweekly then you tithe biweekly. You are usually taught that you can tithe before taxes and then don’t have to tithe from your tax return, or you can tithe after taxes and then tithe from your tax return. Most people I know, would tithe before tax, and would tithe from their tax return as well. That is a “personal choice” (I put it in quotes because I don’t think anything there is really personal choice)
If you don’t have a job but you get unemployment benefits, you tithe from your unemployment benefits. If you don’t have a job and don’t get unemployment benefits then you need to find money somehow and tithe at least once a month. If you don’t tithe at least once a month, you are considered a non-tithing member, which is not good.
The Brown Envelope (Zion Offering): This envelope is for an extra offering. You ask for this envelope if you want to do it. This envelope has different options inside of where you want to put your money towards: “Zion Offering”, “Thanks Offering” and “Offering for Overseas Churches”
This one, as with the tithes, you should do at least once a month. This envelope has your name.
Some parents are recommended, if they want blessings for their children (like if any parent wouldn’t want), for their children to tithe. They don’t have jobs, so they can’t tithe you would say. What parents are told is, if it’s a baby, to calculate how much they give them in a week (food, clothes, pampers, etc…) and calculate the 10% of that. If the child gets money for lunch, then he should set 10% apart from that.
If you don't make much money, and don't have the skills to get a very good job, you would just be recommended to preach to somebody that has money, because "through your fruit, you can get that blessing".
Let me say that tithes and offerings are not the weird part of the WMSCOG. Many other protestant churches ask for tithes and offerings and I think I can say that most of the money that you give to the church is not in the tithes and offerings.
I think most of the money given to the church is in the money for mortgage, utilities, food, “missions”, money you spend preaching every day (in gas or bus, food, etc) and money for any special occasion, event or community service.
I noticed that the WMS is very careful about “asking” for money. The say many times that they don’t care about money, and when I was a member, our pastor never gave a service just about tithes and offerings.
I feel that what they do is guilt you into giving money, so they don’t have to ask for it. They talk about how Ahnsahnghong and Zahng Gil Jah, being God, gave everything up in heaven to come to the earth to one of the poorest countries in the world. How Ahnsahnghong and Zahng Gil Jah didn’t have anything but all the money that they got they just gave it to the church, them being God gave up everything… what about us sinners?
If the world is going to end soon, why have a 401k? Why have life insurance? Why have a savings account? If the world is going to end soon, what makes sense, and what is right, is to give all your money to the church, so that the gospel can be spread.
Of course… the world is not ending, Father is not coming, Mother is just getting older. New prophecies are appearing all of the sudden, old prophecies are being forgotten because they weren’t fulfilled and people’s bank accounts are just getting smaller and smaller.
The green envelopes also have your life number on them don't forget the life number. Also, i'm told the envelopes are kept at the "building" you know i won't call it a church. You take your envelope home with you before the service that you will fill it up in. We have our green envelope and i'm going to frame it and hang it on the wall in our trophy room right next to the picture of DANO!
10% of 0 mean to go wash the dishes before next service.
Exactly…hehe,,,I miss postin here…I havent posted since january of last year as a more discreet user name …but all of a sudden I became employed agaiin, moved from NM to WA and got so busy I forgot to reflect back to this site to see whats new and see if my words can help others make up there mind.
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