At the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Dallas, Texas, more and more parishioners have signed up to give tithes and offerings automatically through their Visa or American Express cards.
“They want to get the points, and that’s fine,” said Bobby Brown, the church’s business manager.
But is it really Christian to collect frequent-flier points on the way to heaven? Are churches that take plastic contributing to the nation’s credit card debt crisis? Does tithing by automatic assessment rob from the thoughtfulness and spirituality of giving?
And is the latest innovation, the ATM-like “Giving Kiosk” – which lets people swipe a credit or debit card as they’re entering or leaving worship – simply too suggestive of money-changers in the temple to work for most congregations?
Both sides of this issue have valid points, but in general I side with the injunction that parish treasurers should “First, do no harm.” with gratitude to the medical profession for first professing that maxim.
Any form of collecting money and paying bills has its costs, but implicitly raising lay debt levels seems like an unacceptable way of transferring parish costs to the weaker members of the laity. Just because some members might be financially strong enough to use this method of paying bills doesn’t make it universally wise.
Credit card companies take a cut of a few percent on each transaction. Most banks, credit unions, and investment houses allow you to schedule direct payments on whatever basis you want. The cost is either completely free, or a flat charge of a couple of dollars a month for the service. I have found that to be extremely convenience, as have the treasurers of organizations to which I contribute. Of course, as they say, your millage may vary.
Online banking has changed me life. From the advent of ATM machines in the ’80s, my checkbook was balanced maybe once or twice a year. Let’s not talk about the cost of overdrafts! So when online bill-pay became available, I quit buying checks and got with the program. Money orders were much cheaper than overdraft charges, so the few bills that couldn’t got online got paid that way. By then end, it was only the church payments (operating budget and building fund) that were on money orders. Being in choir, it was always a challenge to get my money orders into the plate, and I sometimes had 3 or 4 money orders in my pocket at one time. Then the business manager and I worked it out to send the payments online and voila! problem solved. It’s not credit, but online payment from my checking account and a wonderful thing. Today, our parish has a process that anyone can use, even if they don’t use a bill pay service. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Of course, I’ve been meaning to ask Father David if he blesses the computerized “offering plate” like he does the real one. 🙂
I think this warning is sufficient:
“Caution: Please use this only if you fully pay off your credit card bill monthly. PCBC does not condone credit card debt.”
Conincidentally, I’m about to pay my credit card bill right now (in full and online).
Just silly. Taking credit card payments contributes to abuse about as much as a cookie at coffee hour contributes to obesity. Totally dependent on the parishioner, not the church. This kind of thinking could be carried to ludicrous extremes. The nanny-church.
I’m with pilgrim here. 50-60 years ago, churches had to face the reality of accepting paper checks (yikes!) instead of cash. Debit and credit cards are increasingly used as payment instruments. If I was a church treasurer, and someone offered to sign up for automated monthly payments, I would rejoice.
Problem is, anybody can abuse anything if they want to. Parishoners can abuse the system, churches can abuse it, etc.Go after the abuse, not after the technique (which can be handy for many people and organizations).
In faith, Dave
Viva Texas
Being on the Finance Committee of my church, we’ve been through these arguments. On the credit card sign up form, we do have a little blurb about this being a convenience for people, but we don’t want to have someone do it if it means they are going to run a credit card balance, go into debt and incur interest and finance charges, etc. But it does help us budget and our giving actually went up substantially once we instituted credit cards. To the extent it is done automatically rather than having to be accounted for each Sunday, it also makes life easier for the counters and the bookkeeper.
As the story points out, the fact is that the main reason people want to do this is to get the Miles. Where that fits in with honoring God with our first fruits, I don’t know. I personally still like to put my tithe in the offering plate each month.
Maybe we need to stop passing the plate and start passing a swipe strip. With wireless capability, of course.
One thing the article does not address: wouldn’t the church have to pay a percentage of the transaction to the credit card? All businesses do. If so, the parishioner is essentially using a portion of the the offering to purchase miles. Which IMHO is not cricket.
Can he tithe the miles?
Maybe we could get TOO picky?
In faith, Dave
Viva Texas
Re 10: The IRS has been trying to figure out for years how it can tax frequent flier miles as “income.” Every time they float the idea, however, the public outrage is so great they shelve the idea.
Hmmnnn…. That might be the very first time ever that I’ve agreed with IRS ^_^!!!
In faith, Dave
Viva Texas
11 brings up a point: if miles aren’t taxable income, then they won’t be a taxable deduction. It would be better to just donate the dollars in terms of tax effects.
Which means you might end up with miles to fly on and no money to spend when you get there, but life is tough in the fast lane.
libraryjim-
I was trying to be gracious, and admit to dogmatic error, but if you don’t wish to read my response in its entirety, then that is your option to restate your opinions without reference to what I was trying to clarify about my original. I will state again, I was [i]not trying to revise RC dogma.[/i]
how that last one ended up in the wrong post is beyond me…