The idea that Christians should tithe to churches isn’t found anywhere in Scripture.

Rather, the New Testament command for believers is much different:

“Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” 2 Cor. 9:7

In fact, the idea that we must tithe to churches didn’t arise until the 6th Century – many hundreds of years after the New Testament was written.

Does that surprise you?

It emerged only after the “church” became something far different than a functional, multi-gifted, local community of believers who gathered in homes and other places where life naturally happened, to mutually encourage and minister one to another like the New Testament commands.

Instead, the church morphed over hundreds of years into more of a temple model and away from its simple New Testament roots.

As it became increasingly self-focused, self-interested, and “institutional,” the tithe became necessary to pay for:

– A growing clergy/laity divide with increasingly hierarchical leadership which displaced the New Testament model of multiple, unassuming elders who emerge within local assemblies to serve among God’s people;

– “Worship” and ritualistic “sacraments” that evolved into staged, scripted “services” that required a new professional class of Christians to “mediate” and “officiate;” and

– The migration towards dedicated buildings that became centralized seats of authority for the new, professional leadership class – and ever larger, expensive, and more elaborate monuments to their own positions of power and control.

So of course, as authentic New Testament churches receded in lieu of post-Biblical institutional “churches,” the “tithe” arose …

Because it costs a lot of mula to feed that beast.