A Giving Moment
Something is missing.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that something is wrong, just that something that could be present — or perhaps should be — is not. … it’s a giving moment.
Since our first corporate gatherings in 2015, Cities Church has sought to structure our liturgy in a way that centers on God and his glory. More than anything, we want to exalt Jesus and declare his gospel, for our highest joy in him — because we believe that God, as Jonathan Edwards once explained, “is glorified not only by his glory being seen, but by his glory being rejoiced in.”
For this reason, the crescendo our worship is preaching that welcomes us to the Lord’s Table. The message of the gospel is not mainly “go and do,” addressing our wills. But it’s “come and adore,” penetrating our hearts. We receive Jesus with the empty hands of faith. We remember our union with him. We happily find in him rest for our souls.
There is a sacred passivity in this. All right worship is only a response to who God is and what he’s revealed about himself, which he most vividly shows us in the cross and resurrection of his Son.
All of this is true — amen and amen! And it’s non-negotiable.
The Ancientness of Offerings
At the same time, one aspect of true worship that is as ancient as it gets is the giving of our resources to God. In fact, the very first scene of worship in Scripture, right at the start in Genesis 4, is all about an offering — about one that God accepts and the other that he rejects (see Genesis 4:1–5). The practice of giving to God, whether an animal (in the old covenant) or modern currency (in the new), is a way that God has designed for us to express our worship. It’s the letting go of something valuable to us in order to confess that God is our highest value. In Philippians 4:18, Paul even calls financial gifts to the church “a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.”
And yet, we have no such moment in our liturgy.
You may remember, going back to the end of 2019, that the pastors featured a donation box on the Lord’s Table, just before the congregational prayer. That was to highlight the important theme of offerings as part of our worship, but we stopped doing that when the pandemic hit, and so far we’ve not reintroduced it back.
Many churches in America, most traditionally, “pass the plate,” the old-school way — and there’s nothing bad about that. In fact, reportedly, during communion some beloved saints have dropped clean 20s into the bread bowls every now and then (old habits die hard). The great thing about passing the plate is that it’s an up-close reminder of God’s claim on our lives, that all that we have is from him and for him. And when most of us give online, out of sight and out of mind, the plate at least reminds us of our giving. Such a reminder, I think, would be the main purpose of a giving moment.
Coming Soon
Though it’s unlikely we’ll start passing a plate, the pastors are praying and considering a new way to highlight giving in our liturgy. God has blessed our church to be generous, and he has always met our needs. The issue is not that we lack generosity, but it’s that we want to faithfully connect our generosity to our worship. We believe this would be truer to Scripture, both blessing our church and magnifying God’s glory.
For more on a theology of giving, read or listen to the sermon, What Is God-centeredness Generosity?
