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On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses why tithing and stewardship still matter for Christian leaders. He challenges pastors to teach biblical giving with clarity, confidence, and consistency, and shares practical ways to help people grow in generosity.
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Welcome to the Lead On Podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, continuing our ongoing conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. Ideas for the podcast come from lots of sources. Sometimes as the past two weeks, they come from my personal bible study disciplines. Sometimes they come from the teaching ministry that I have with pastors and others in different contexts.
Jeff Iorg:Sometimes they come from your emails that you send me. But today, the podcast is motivated by a recent article that I read. It's a report on a giving study done by Gray Matter Research Consulting that does annual research into the giving patterns of evangelical Christians. Ron Sellers is the president of the organization, and he was quoted in the article as saying that he finds it, quote, tragically funny that Christians debate about tithing. They debate whether it's giving to the church alone or to a church and secular concerns combined, or is tithing based on
Jeff Iorg:the net or the gross, that kind of discussion. But the quote from mister Sellers, which really caught my attention was when he said this, my point is stop the debate. It doesn't matter. Almost nobody is tithing. Now he bases that on their study which shows that the average evangelical Protestant last year gave 1.66% of their household income to their church.
Jeff Iorg:Now, I've been
Jeff Iorg:tracking this for some time in various studies in different organizations that do this kind of research, and typically, the number has been hovering between 23%. So this is actually a much lower number than I've seen in other reporting.
Jeff Iorg:But whether it's 1.66 or two or 2.5 or even three, the fact that evangelical Christians give away such a small percentage of their income is both startling and frustrating. Now, another trend line that's significant is what's happened in the last thirty years in giving to Southern Baptist churches. From 1990
Jeff Iorg:to 2008 when there was a pretty severe economic downturn in our country for that eighteen year window, giving to Southern Baptist churches increased from $3,700,000,000 to about $8,700,000,000, about a $5,000,000,000 increase in that eighteen year time frame.
Jeff Iorg:Now, from 2008 until now, 2026, we've got about another eighteen year time frame. Giving in that time period has increased from about 8.5 to 8,700,000,000 to just under 10,000,000,000. It went up to 10, dropped back down to 9.7. So the increase in the past eighteen years has been about $1,000,000,000. So when
Jeff Iorg:you think of all the Southern Baptist churches, from 1990 to 2008, the giving went up by $5,000,000,000. And in the same time number of years from 2008 to now,
Jeff Iorg:the giving has gone up by $1,000,000,000. Clearly, evangelical
Jeff Iorg:Christians and Southern Baptists are not giving
Jeff Iorg:to their churches at the level or even at the or at the level of increase or even at the maintaining the level that they were doing in past years. So I
Jeff Iorg:wanna talk today about addressing the issue of tithing and whether that's an appropriate issue that should be addressed by ministry leaders. And then I wanna lay out some strategies broader than that about what you can do to enhance stewardship development in your ministry. Let's talk just for a minute about this issue of tithing and is it biblical? Now, this is one of those issues that has, come to be discussed in my ministry lifetime that when I started out in ministry, no one would have even had this conversation. And now it seems like I'm looked at as sort of a dinosaur for even raising the issue.
Jeff Iorg:When I started out in ministry leadership, it was expected that ministry leaders would practice tithing and giving beyond the tithe and would challenge their followers, especially church members, to come up to the standard of biblical giving, which was the tithe, as
Jeff Iorg:quickly as possible, and then to start on
Jeff Iorg:the journey of giving even more as opportunity was available. Now that was the expectation when I started out in ministry. And frankly, it's been an expectation I've preserved throughout my life. If you've worked with me in a ministry organization, you know that I've asked you these questions as part of your hiring process. Tell me about your giving patterns.
Jeff Iorg:Do you give a tithe or more than a tithe? Do you give that through your church or to other organizations? This is an important part of establishing that you are fit to lead by establishing this pattern of giving. I questioned faculty members at Gateway Seminary about this, and certainly vice presidents who came to work for me in that context, and staff members at the Northwest Baptist Convention. And even going back to my pastoral days, people who joined me on the staff of a church, or in that context, even people who served as deacons or elders.
Jeff Iorg:It is an expected standard of leadership and of ministry to be giving at the tithe or beyond the
Jeff Iorg:tithe. Well, why do I
Jeff Iorg:feel so strongly about this? Why did I feel that way? And why am I sad that this seems to have gone away in some way in our expectation today? Well, the the book of Malachi, God says, honor me with your tithes and offerings, and test me now in this, and see if I will not open the floodgates of heaven and pour out blessing until there's no more need. So I believe the tithe is appropriate, and we should be teaching it as a standard of Christian giving because it's biblical.
Jeff Iorg:It's an Old Testament pattern that was accentuated in the New Testament, and I'll talk more about that in just a moment. I believe it's a biblical pattern of giving. I believe that God has always based his expectations of giving on proportional giving, not amount giving, and we give a proportion of what we have, not just an amount, and in in order to honor him. A tithe means that those who have the most give the most, and those who have the least give the least. But all of us share in the responsibility of being obedient to God because we give proportionately and the sacrifices then shared among us as we make our tithes and offerings to God.
Jeff Iorg:So I believe the tithe is God's basic standard of giving. I also believe beyond that, it assures us of God's provision and God's protection. In that Malachi passage, God says he will open the windows of heaven and pour out blessing until there's no more need. This is biblical imagery of how God blesses those who honor him with a tithe. Then he says in that same passage that he will rebuke the devourer.
Jeff Iorg:And in that agricultural context in which this text was first given, he's saying, I will I will stop the devourer. I will stop the the pestilence that eats your crops and that damages what you're growing. I'll keep you safe as you produce something that you can use in the future. So the tithe assures us of God's provision and God's protection. But the other reason that I like to teach about tithing and believe it's still applicable for today is because Jesus accentuated this in his understanding of how he fulfilled the law.
Jeff Iorg:Now this strikes at the modern understanding of what's often called grace giving. People who tell me I'm wrong about the tithes say, you know, the Bible doesn't teach tithing any longer. Tithing is an old testament concept. The old testament was taken away by grace, now we give out of grace. And when Paul writes about giving, he wants us to give with hilarity, with joy, and it's more the attitude than the amount.
Jeff Iorg:Okay. I hear all that. I think you're wrong, but I hear all that. Why do I think you're wrong when you say that? Because you're missing this key principle.
Jeff Iorg:When Jesus fulfilled the law, he did not satisfy it and set it aside.
Jeff Iorg:He filled it full and exceeded it.
Jeff Iorg:When Jesus fulfilled the law, he didn't satisfy it and set it aside. He filled it full and then exceeded it.
Jeff Iorg:And in Matthew five, Jesus gives us a series of illustrations about this, which definitely apply in this area of giving. Jesus said, you've heard it said, do not commit murder. I tell you, don't even express angry words to other believers. Jesus said, you've
Jeff Iorg:heard it said, don't commit adultery. I say to you, don't lust after someone in your heart. Jesus said, you've heard it said, don't break your oath. I say, don't even give an oath. Just let your yes be yes and your no be no.
Jeff Iorg:Jesus said, you've heard it said an eye for an eye, or it was written an eye for an eye, but Jesus said, I tell you, turn the other cheek, go the extra mile. Jesus said, you're told love your neighbor, but I tell you love your enemy. Jesus provides a litany of examples of how he filled the law full and exceeded it by his demands and expectations. This same pattern applies in the area of giving and in the area of stewardship development and in the area of managing resource.
Jeff Iorg:I also believe that God expects
Jeff Iorg:the tithe to be fulfilled, but because we're grace givers, we go beyond the tithe. Just like grace always goes beyond law in all these illustrations Jesus gave, so does grace go beyond law in giving. Now, was taught this principle as a teenager and as a young adult. And as I've shared with you and maybe other times in my testimony, when Anne and I met, we, as a part of our premarital conversations, talked a lot about our perspectives on money and stewardship and what that meant in our lives. Now Anne had a perspective because her father had died and she had really been depending on God at that point in her life for five or six years to just sustain her on a daily basis.
Jeff Iorg:She had deep and profound convictions about giving. I had them because of my teaching and understanding of what I'd been modeled for me at my church and how that had come to impact me, and we simply came to marriage with a commitment. We we'll never give a tithe. We would be embarrassed to give so little. So we started out in our first month of marriage, and we gave a tithe and just a little bit more.
Jeff Iorg:Now, I'm gonna be honest with you. It was a little bit more, just a very little bit more. But from the very beginning, we wanted to exceed the law, give out of grace, go beyond what was expected in the Old Testament, and live out the freedom in Jesus we have in the new. And so we gave a little more. Forty six years later, we're still doing that.
Jeff Iorg:And as the years have gone by and our faith has grown and our resources have have increased, we've moved that percentage up year by year to now it's a place of what we consider real
Jeff Iorg:generosity. So yes, I believe in tithing. I believe in tithing because it's biblical, because it establishes God's protection and provision in our lives, and because it's the foundation from which we start to then practice grace giving. So just as Jesus fulfilled the law and went beyond it in every area of life, so we also do financially. We start with that foundational giving of the tithe and then we move on beyond that.
Jeff Iorg:Now, there are some reasons why leaders resist what I'm talking about right now. But the first one is the most painful one to address, but the
Jeff Iorg:one that must be addressed most directly. The reason that some leaders don't believe what I'm saying and don't wanna practice it or teach it is because they're not doing it themselves. And I wanna challenge you today. If you're listening to this podcast and you are not tithing and going beyond the tithe in your regular consistent giving,
Jeff Iorg:Fix that. Whatever that means. Get some help, some financial counsel, some spiritual direction, get a new plan, whatever it means, but get this fixed in your life.
Jeff Iorg:Because just like you cannot teach people how to share their faith if you're not sharing your faith, you cannot teach people how to pray if you're not praying, you cannot teach people how to forgive if you're not practicing forgiveness. You cannot lead people where you are not yourself already moving and striving and growing and obeying. It's the same way about stewardship. You're never going to lead people to do what they are responsible to do with their resources unless you are setting the pace yourself. Now second reason why some leaders are reluctant to talk about this is you've never been trained in these issues.
Jeff Iorg:And I respect that, and I and I I'm sorry for you, but you can get the training that you need. There are good there are good books. There are good conferences. There's good materials. Go out and get the training you need.
Jeff Iorg:You say, well, I I don't know if I should do that. Yes, you should. You went out and got training in evangelism. You went out and got training in Bible study methodology. You went out and got training in prayer.
Jeff Iorg:Went You out and got some help in training in your marriage and in your parenting. There's nothing wrong with you admitting, I never got really trained in stewardship development or never got really trained in stewardship practices, and I never got really trained in in ministry finance or ministry finance management. I need
Jeff Iorg:help. Get the training you need. A third reason that that leaders are reluctant to talk about these issues is they feel intimidated by what people may think or say about them. They'll say things like, well, all
Jeff Iorg:you ever talk about is money, or you just want to try to get our money, or you're just trying to raise money for the church, or you're you're just being greedy or selfish about what you want for the ministry. You're just trying to build your empire. You're just trying to
Jeff Iorg:make something nicer for yourself or for your family. You say, well, if people are gonna talk about me that way, I'm just not gonna talk about money. Well, why are you that way only about money? You take
Jeff Iorg:a stand for Jesus as the only way of salvation, people are gonna talk about you. If you take a stand for morality and say marriage is
Jeff Iorg:a man and a woman for life, people are gonna talk about you. You say racism is wrong and you stand up for
Jeff Iorg:it in your against it in your community, people are gonna talk about that. Listen, when you take a stand on anything consequential, you can expect some pushback from both the culture and sometimes even
Jeff Iorg:from fellow believers. So if you're using, I'm not gonna talk about money because I don't wanna offend people. I don't want people upset with me. I don't want people talking about what I'm saying. You need to check yourself because you're saying that you'll only do
Jeff Iorg:that about money when on every other area you know you have to take a stand and bear whatever consequences come your way. And then the last reason that some leaders are reluctant to talk about this is because they believe a myth about what lost people think about money. They say, well, I don't want to ever talk about this at church because there's lost people present, and I don't want lost people thinking about, you know, that we're only about the money and all of this. You know, I planted a church and all the people I could reach were lost people. And so when I planted the church in Oregon and we started having new member training, we decided that we would do one hour of our three or four hour new member training.
Jeff Iorg:One hour would be focused on this theme, how God finances his work. And I would lay out in that one hour the basics of Christian stewardship, the challenge of Christian giving, and the methodologies our church used to account for and to share about our financial decision making. I'll never forget early on, maybe the second or third time I did this, a guy named Steve, who was not yet a Christian, came to the class. And he'd been to church a few times. He was checking us out, but he definitely wasn't a Christian and had no reference to God or the gospel or any kind of church involvement in his background at all.
Jeff Iorg:So after I taught this lesson on the financial stewardship, general lessons on stewardship, specific challenge to give to our church, and then an explanation of how our church accounted for its money and an explanation of how our church accounted for its money and how we shared that information among our church members. I was prepared because I thought, well, you know, here's a lost man in my class, and I don't know what he's gonna think about all this. So he walks up to me after and said, hey, I really appreciated that presentational money.
Jeff Iorg:And I said, okay, thank you. And he said, you know, ever since I've been
Jeff Iorg:coming to this church, I've been wondering, who's paying for all this?
Jeff Iorg:How does the finances this thing work? You really helped me tonight to get a picture for that, and I appreciate it. I realized, here's a lost man who runs a small business, who has a family, who deals with money all the time,
Jeff Iorg:and it would be only natural for him to come
Jeff Iorg:to church and say, how's this thing getting paid for? And in doing so, my explanation connected well with him.
Jeff Iorg:So today on the podcast, we've talked about reasons why I think tithing is a foundational level of Christian giving and why we ought to be teaching it and then beyond the tithe as a fulfillment of grace giving. And we talked about some reasons why this is difficult. But now, more proactively, let me give you three big suggestions about what you can do to help turn this percentage back toward a much healthier or more positive percentage of giving. No more 1.66 or two or whatever it is of evangelical Christians in terms of the percentage of their giving to their churches.
Jeff Iorg:The first key practice, especially for you pastors, is to preach on this theme. Now, when I say to preach on this theme,
Jeff Iorg:what I mean is anytime the biblical pattern of tithes or offerings is mentioned in a passage of scripture, preach about it. And you're going to find that the Bible has a lot to say about money, and possessions, and finances, and gifts, and giving. And if you're preaching through a book of the bible and you come to that, just preach on it and you'll find that it's well received from people because they see it in the word of God. They know it's a part of the preaching ministry that you've taken and it's information that they know they need to hear because it's something coming from the Bible. So don't skip it.
Jeff Iorg:Don't minimize it. Don't work around it. When you come to something in the Bible about money, possessions, giving, stewardship, preach it. Second, even when you're not preaching on these themes, don't be afraid to use money related illustrations in your messages. Now when I say money related, again, mean money, finances, stewardship, possessions, generosity, these kinds of illustrations.
Jeff Iorg:So if you're preaching on obedience, give an illustration about being obedient with your money. If you're preaching on a theme that connects with this in terms of an illustration, don't be afraid to use an illustration that brings the idea into a text or into a message even though that may not be the main focal point
Jeff Iorg:of that passage. Another thing you can do as a part
Jeff Iorg:of this is to use financial related testimonies as a part of your preaching
Jeff Iorg:ministry. But the main thing is, in preaching, is don't compromise the biblical standard and the responsibility of every believer to give.
Jeff Iorg:There's no other standard other than the tithe and beyond. That's the New Testament standard. Don't compromise that. Don't be shy about it. Don't be hesitant about it.
Jeff Iorg:Don't be weak kneed or weak minded about it. Just declare it as the truth of God when you come to it in the scripture.
Jeff Iorg:So number one, preach and don't be afraid to do so. Second, inform. Inform people in your church family about money related matters. Now, there are lots of different ways to do this, but let
Jeff Iorg:me just give you some suggestions. First of all, I'm not suggesting that you do this on Sunday morning, in every sermon or anything like that. I do think that you need to inform people about financial matters in the proper setting. And I've already alluded to one of these, and that was new member training for us at our church in that we planted in Oregon. We didn't talk about money every Sunday or preach about it every week.
Jeff Iorg:Nothing like that. I handled it every time it came up in the scriptures. We also though, in new member orientation, every month or every other month, we would have that section in the class about the financial issues and financial matters related to our church. They need to hear this information in the proper setting. Another part of informing is to hear it from the right person.
Jeff Iorg:You know, this was always such an important issue that I I never delegated this part of new member training out. I wanted people to hear from me, from the pastor, someone they respected and who would whose spiritual judgment they they trusted, to hear me talking about money and about what it meant to our church and why. So as a part of informing, you inform in the proper setting with the proper person, and then the third thing is with the proper attitude. We talked about money in my churches where I was matter of factly. We talked about money just like we talked about baptism or we talked about the Lord's Supper or we talked about worship services or we talked about Bible study.
Jeff Iorg:We talked about obedience to God with our finances like we talked about obedience to God in our sexuality or in our morality or in our attitudes, in our words. We talked about it with the proper attitude, a quiet confidence that it's one of
Jeff Iorg:the things the Bible teaches, and we handle it just like we handle every other issue. I'm
Jeff Iorg:always saddened when I'm in a service and a leader is talking about finances, and I can tell that they're anxious or they're unsettled or they they don't have confidence or they wanna rush through it. They feel like it's something that's kind of either beneath them or something they're distracted by or something they don't really want to deal with because it's distasteful in some way. What's wrong with us?
Jeff Iorg:Listen, financial issues are at the core of life. Everyone has to deal with them, including churches and ministry organizations,
Jeff Iorg:and there's nothing wrong with talking about them with the proper attitude of quiet confidence and quiet certainty, just like we do about anything else that we talk about when we're talking about the perspective on it from God's word. And then another way to inform I said proper setting, proper attitude, and and and proper person, but another way to do it is to share success stories, share victory stories, share testimony stories of people who God is working in this area of their lives and what that means. Now, we do this in other areas in church ministry. We say, you know, tell us your story of how you led your friend to faith in Jesus. Tell us your story of how God answered your prayers and what you learned about your prayer life.
Jeff Iorg:Tell your testimony of how God healed your marriage. Tell your testimony of how God brought your wayward child back into your family. Tell your testimony of how God, used you to, lead a bible study ministry that reached a significant number of new people for Christ in our community. We love testimonies. How about having someone stand up and give their testimony about how God has worked in their lives financially?
Jeff Iorg:You say, well, I don't know. That's awfully personal. It's no more personal than any of
Jeff Iorg:these other issues I've talked about. I'll just
Jeff Iorg:give you one example. A number of years ago, had a couple come into our church. They came to faith in Jesus. He was a mid level manager in a trucking company. She was a public school teacher.
Jeff Iorg:They surrendered their lives to the Lord. They got baptized. They started growing in their faith,
Jeff Iorg:and they came to the new member class. And they realized that one of the great stressors in their marriage was their debt and their incredible financial irresponsibility. So we
Jeff Iorg:worked with them to set them up on a class on stewardship and financial management and budgeting, that was a, you know, six or eight week process they went through, but they came out of that with an entirely new perspective on their personal finances. Now at the time, and this was back probably twenty five, thirty years ago, they were about 25,000 in debt, which would
Jeff Iorg:have been a lot more even than today's in today's dollars. But they said, Lord, we're gonna start tithing and giving a little more than the tithe, and we're gonna start living on a disciplined budget. And that's gonna
Jeff Iorg:be hard for us because we're spend thrift people who just spend impulsively, but we're gonna do it. And we're gonna start trusting you to get us out of this mess.
Jeff Iorg:Now they went to work on that, and immediately, they start coming
Jeff Iorg:to me on Sundays and saying, God is at work in our lives. We got this unexpected financial blessing. We got this correction on a bill that we received. We we got this raise at work that we weren't anticipating. We got this money that came to us that we'd forgotten that we were even owed by a person from years ago.
Jeff Iorg:They started telling me these stories over a period of several months, and within eighteen months, they had paid off all their debt. When they came to me with that story, said, Hey, listen. I know this is kind of personal, but would you mind telling that story? You can leave out the numbers and the final amounts and those kind
Jeff Iorg:of things if you want to, but it would be
Jeff Iorg:a a really encouraging testimony to our church if you'd tell those stories. And they did. And it was one of the most powerful testimonies in our church because it was a testimony of God's faithfulness in the area of stewardship. Man, it was so good. So I want you to preach and inform, and then third, train.
Jeff Iorg:Training just means that you have an ongoing method to get this done in your church family or in your ministry. Training and stewardship is more than about giving. It's about spending. It's about saving. It's about investing.
Jeff Iorg:It's about the full panorama of what it means to manage your money well. And a good church ministry training on stewardship touches on all these areas. And I'm not gonna highlight any one today. There's several out there. They're usually video driven courses.
Jeff Iorg:They're taught in small groups, but they're designed to help people really get a grip on their stewardship of their financial resources. And of course, one component of that is giving, it's broader than giving. It's helping people get the full picture just like this couple that I just described. They went through the course. They put it all into place.
Jeff Iorg:And their giving was a key part of that, but it wasn't the only part of it that was instrumental in getting them back on a better place. So stewardship development involves a course like this, an ongoing comprehensive approach, a repeated approach. You can't do this one time and call it good. This is something that when I was a pastor, we taught every year at least once, sometimes twice a year. We would have this financial stewardship class.
Jeff Iorg:Back then, we called it financial freedom. Now it's called other things, but we would do it in the spring and always in the spring, but usually in the spring or the fall and help people to think about this. And you say, well, can't you just do it once and get everybody in the church to go through it? No, it doesn't work that way because people will go to this kind of class when they have learning readiness and when they want to have the training and the need for it. So you wanna keep the menu out there.
Jeff Iorg:Even if you only have a few people doing it each time, that's worth it because you're really not trying to change things all at once. You're trying to change a direction of a church maybe over a decade. And that's why a prescribed program of stewardship development is so essential. And then as a part also of this idea of training, I think you can do simple things on a regular basis that help with this. And I'll just give you one example.
Jeff Iorg:This was in a church recently. It was really well done. When it came time for the offering, the pastor came to the microphone and said, as we pray today, I want you to once again consider your generosity journey. And there was a slide that came up on the screen that said generosity journey and had five circles. And the first one was not giving, and then the next one was giving occasionally and the next one was giving regularly and the next one was giving a tithe and the next one was going beyond the tithe.
Jeff Iorg:And he said, every one of us in this service today is on this generosity journey. It doesn't really matter to me today where you are, it matters to me that you're moving toward giving a tithe and more as an evidence of your incredible generosity based on the grace of God in your life. So think about where you are on the journey and take a step today in the right direction. Let's pray together. I asked him later, said, do you put that up every Sunday?
Jeff Iorg:He said, no, not every Sunday. But fairly regularly through the year, we remind people of this generosity journey and challenging them to keep moving forward on it and it recognizes that it's a journey and that we're all going in the same direction toward a really beautiful and achievable goal. That's what I mean when I say train. A systematic program going on all the time and occasional moments like this where you bring a focus to this issue in people's lives. Well, this podcast today got started with an article which reminded me that evangelical Christians have a long way to go in honoring God with the incredible wealth he's given us as American Christians.
Jeff Iorg:You can help turn the tide on this. It's your responsibility to disciple people in the area of stewardship. It comes with the territory of being a Christian leader. We have to influence others on this important issue. Put it into practice as you lead on.