How some Pastors Exploit Church Members through Tithes, Seed sowing, Offerings, First Fruits by Nestor Dahni

Nestor Dahni

A pastor wants you to pay tithe for 12 months if you are a salary earner. In between, you are expected to give prophetic offerings, sacrificial offerings, building offerings and all kinds of special seeds. Then, at the beginning of the year, you are told to surrender your entire January salary or income as first fruit. They tell you to do all these things faithfully so that you can prosper.

But when you ask for the New Testament verses that demand all these countless payments, they will take you back to the Old Testament because that is where they believe they can justify their demands. You are a Christian, yet you are being subjected to a financial system of the old testament, which are mostly Jewish practices instead of new testament financial system. 

The question is, if all these payments are compulsory requirements for Christians to prosper, where exactly did Jesus or the apostles command believers to pay all these different offerings as a condition for receiving God's blessings? Why must every month come with another financial obligation to prove your faithfulness to God? And why is it that when it comes to giving money, the Old Testament is the standard, but when you remind them that the New Testament teaches cheerful and willing giving, they become uncomfortable?

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9:7 that each person should give what they have decided in their heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, because God loves a CHEERFUL GIVER. But some of you are being made to believe that if you don't pay every offering announced from the pulpit, you are inviting financial hardship into your life.

You are told to give your tithe, your prophetic offering, your sacrificial offering, your building offering and your first fruit, yet you may have a struggling family at home, unpaid bills and children whose school fees you cannot afford, and if you dare to question the system, you are accused of being stingy or lacking faith.

Read your Bible. Study the context. Don't surrender your financial judgment simply because someone stands behind a pulpit.

God does not need to be bribed with your January salary before He can bless you for the rest of the year. Giving should be an expression of faith, love and generosity—not a never-ending cycle of fear, pressure and promises of prosperity.