Giving Without a Middleman

One of the quiet worries that keeps people tied to a church is the question of giving. “If I leave, how will I obey God with my money? Where will my offering go?” It is a sincere concern — and the answer in Scripture is liberating. The earliest believers did not funnel their generosity through an institution and a building budget. They gave directly, and personally, to the people who needed it.

Generosity that went straight to need

When famine threatened the believers in Judaea, the disciples elsewhere did not start a capital campaign. They simply sent help to their brothers and sisters:

“Then the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send relief unto the brethren which dwelt in Judaea.” — Acts 11:29

Within the Jerusalem community the same instinct was at work: “distribution was made unto every man according as he had need” (Acts 4:35). The flow of money was toward people in hardship, not toward maintaining an organization.

Where God says to direct it

Scripture is remarkably consistent about who the proper objects of generosity are — and it is almost never “the institution”:

“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” — James 1:27

When the apostles affirmed Paul’s ministry, the one charge they added was simply “that we should remember the poor” (Galatians 2:10). And Jesus tied our treatment of the needy directly to Himself:

“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” — Matthew 25:40

Giving as a matter of the heart

Notice, too, that biblical giving is personal and freely chosen — not a percentage extracted by an organization. “Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7). Jesus even urged a kind of secrecy: “let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth” (Matthew 6:3). That is hard to reconcile with public pledge drives and giving statements, and easy to reconcile with quietly meeting a real need.

Practical, direct generosity

Freed from the middleman, your giving can go exactly where Scripture points it:

• To people you personally know who are struggling — a bill quietly paid, groceries delivered, rent covered.
• To widows, single parents, and the elderly in your circle.
• To the poor and hungry, directly or through trustworthy hands that put nearly all of it into actual relief.
• To missionaries and works you have examined and believe in, rather than an undesignated general fund.

The warning of John still lands: “whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” (1 John 3:17). Leaving an institution does not end your call to be generous. If anything, it returns that generosity to its original, personal form — given freely, given directly, and given to the very people God said to remember. (See also our article, Do Churches Help The Poor?)