What is an offering for?
Most people, as I discovered, have already given whatever they are going to give by the time they arrive for worship and are not thinking during worship about their weekly gift to the church.
My first essay - titled “Woe is Me” - appeared in the print edition of the Reformed Journal in 1980, and from 1984 to 1990 my name was listed on the masthead as a “Contributing Editor.” It was the honor of a lifetime to see my name listed alongside all those names that I had admired and respected.
The print edition of the Reformed Journal no longer exists, but not long ago the Reformed Journal re-appeared as an online publication. And once again I am more pleased than you can imagine to be a contributor.
I am contributing to the daily blog on Sundays during Lent, and here is my post for this week…
Tell me, why do we send the ushers around with offering baskets during worship – when most members have already given electronically, either through automatic deductions or by using the QR code provided on the worship guide?
Comments from the church administrator during staff meetings do not usually spark my theological reflection, but something I heard a few weeks ago started me thinking about those three to four minutes in our church’s order of worship when we, to use the words I have spoken in one form or another for more than forty years, “receive the offering.”
Photo: Offering baskets at the American Protestant Church in the Hague.