Dogma questioned

One of my dogmas has been to "leave as much money in the local church as possible." As an organization we've worked to become as lean and efficient as possible. Over the past 12 years some pretty serious downsizing has been made in Indianapolis and at conference levels: eliminating departments, cutting staff, pushing ministries down to local levels, outsourcing publishing and marketing, superintendents on razor-edge budgets, to list a few. This wasn't only driven by the desire to "leave as much money in the local church as possible," it was also an adjustment away from an institutional mindset of command and control to an entrepreneurial mindset of distributed leadership.

The latter dogma I love, the former, I have doubts about. I mean, isn't trying to leave as much money in the local church as possible basically a self-centered dogma? Shouldn't the desire be for the local church to "give away as much money as possible?" Shouldn't the local church want to participate in ministry outside of its area of immediate influence? In addition, the dogma fosters a sense of "it's our money," that defiles the beauty of what an offering is...it's a gift, it's something we've really given, not something we've symbolically given.

Now here's where I agree with this dogma: if the local church is using its money to reach and disciple broken-hearted people, who aren't "in" the church, then I'm all for it, because it's not self-centered. At that point, the local church has the best knowledge of how to invest the Lord's money in Kingdom ways right around them. There's no way that an off-site office could better use that money. In that case, yes, leave the money in the local church.

Like most dogmas, this one starts with a great desire; to enable those nearest to the need to creatively deploy resources, but can easily play into our carnal desire to turn around and use our tithe for ourselves. For a gift to be real, it has to leave our hands and go to someone else. Let's adopt another dogma, from our brother John W.: "Give all you can."
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Comments

[Tim Shumaker]

Small churches cannot have an international ministry (foreign missions) unless they can participate in the denominational program. So they need an agency to send their money to who will combine it with other small church money and do big things.

[Arron Swenson]

To "leave as much money in the local church as possible" is a great conference/denomination dogma. To challange the local church to voluntarily "give all they can" is essential. Do we trust "distributed leadersip" or do we have to control their purse strings?
The local church needs the choice to put its funds where its people and mission is. It should not be acceptable for any local chruch (large or small) to keeps its funds for itself. If a church is self-centered and self-serving it should be shut down not taxed!
Small churches are not exempt from having a local AND international kingdom impact. It is easier today than any other time in history.
If local churches and pastors are not following conference/denominational mision/vision it is a leadership issue not a financial issue.