The Lightfoot Lane Blog

I am always worried that churches exercise control and don’t release people into true freedom in God. The worst thing this does is create an impression that as long as we do certain things and believe certain things - in the case of tithing, as long as we give enough - we are O.K.  This is not grace!

Take tithing. It makes great sense for a church to teach tithing because by it we truly honour God with our bank balances, we throw down the god of money and demonstrate how spiritual we are. OR do we? By the way we also keep the church ticking over financially which is very handy for people like me - a full time pastor - who needs paying!

Why did no one ever tell me that in the “Law,”  the Old Testament part of the Bible, I got to eat all my tithe at a feast to celebrate God’s goodness? Why did they tell me I had to give 10% of my income when a simple Bible study reveals that you only gave ten percent every three years? Why did no one ever point out that most of the giving mentioned in the New Testament is based on the principle of “giving in keeping with your income” which releases us from the legalism of tithing into the personal free responsibility to find out from God if and what we should give? Why did no one dare to say that in the New Testament most of the giving spoken and taught about is actually giving to poor people and not to sustain the church? Why did no one ever paint such a brilliant picture of church that I wanted to give my all, including my money, to help paint that picture into being?

(Update: Listen to Andrew’s Sunday Talk on The Truth About Tithing)

It’s been a while since I last posted here on this subject - but my thoughts are still bubbling around the verses I wrote on last time from Mark, and how farmers intentionally sow and nurture their crops rather than trying to harvest what grows by itself. This is drawing me back again to encouraging us each to think intentionally again who we might reach.

Something that we have been encouraging for a while is the idea of 5 in focus - praying regularly for 5 people who we would like to see share our relationship with God. But maybe 5 seems too many - how about starting with one? If you could reach one person, who would it be?

As the summer is starting early and promises to be a good one, we dusted off our barbecue at the weekend for the first time. It reminded me of what a fantastic opportunity it is to invite friends/neighbours round to spend time with us - and I always intend to invite them round.  But like me and washing up, there’s nothing wrong with intending to do it, it’s the lack of action that’s a problem!!! Since people often need to belong before they want to believe, how about intentionally setting a date in the next two months to finally invite those people round you’ve been meaning to invite for sometime?

With Hope 08 coming up, if we really want to see our friends and family becoming Christians next year, then I guess we need to start further back and begin clearing the ground in readiness now.

Thank you for your continued prayers for us, and your encouragement - it means a lot to us.

For those of you who have been following our blog, you might be interested to know that as part of the seeker service here at FFMC on Saturday May 5th, Linda will be sharing some of her experiences, thoughts and story. We just pray that something of her experiences and circumstances will help others to be able to trust God in whatever they are facing.

This week the Lunchtme Fellowship (and a few extras) took a coach trip as part of our Easter Activity Week. First we went to Skipton for a bit of shopping and a trip down the canal. It was then off to Clapham for a wonderful tea.

It was a beautiful day so I thought I would show you some pictures.