Passing the Plate

As I Was Saying is a forum for a variety of perspectives to foster faith-related conversations among our readers with the goal of mutual learning, even in disagreement. Apart from articles written by editorial staff, these perspectives do not necessarily reflect the views of The Banner.

One of the changes that can be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic is the end of the offering time in many churches—that part of the worship service when the deacons pass around plates, and people are supposed to put in their donations. To be fair, in a lot of churches, the offering was already on its last legs well before 2020, many people having shifted to making online donations. When the thought of everyone putting their germy hands on an offering plate made us all a little queasy, many churches opted instead for boxes at the back of the sanctuary where you could drop your check without having to touch anything. Even when other parts of life returned to normal after the pandemic, in many churches this new way of collecting the offering stuck.

Not at our church, however. We are still passing those wooden plates down the rows, twice every Sunday morning. The deacons decided it was an important part of the service, and so, after a respectful period, back it came. I’m glad. As someone interested in the form and function of the worship service, I think having an opportunity to give of our money as a gesture symbolic of our giving of ourselves is important. Pausing and physically passing that plate is a reminder that we’re all contributing to this project together.

One of the most powerful aspects of this symbolic action is that it allows for the participation of children. This is how kids learn, after all: by watching, by imitating, by doing. I’m glad we’ve continued the antiquated tradition of the offering because it gives us all a chance to stop—after we’ve sung praise, confessed our sins, been reminded of our forgiveness, and been fed by the Word—and give of ourselves in gratitude. Every month when I give my youngest daughter her $10 allowance, she divides it up into piles: $1 for her tithe, $2 to savings, $1 to her “hospitality” fund (things for others), and $6 for her “wants and needs.” The tithe dollar goes right into the bag she takes to church, and on Sunday morning she drops it into the first offering plate.

Part of why I do this is I want my children to be reflexive givers, the kind of people who tithe without even thinking twice about it or begrudging the loss of that 10%. At 11 years old, this cheerful giving is easy for my daughter. I’m pretty sure she never even considers not putting that dollar in the plate. She’s been given it to give; pocketing it is unthinkable. Having been trained this way myself, I can attest to the fact that it can work. As an adult, the concept of giving money back to the Lord hardly causes me even a second thought. By the grace of God, I have never struggled with the decision of whether to tithe to the church; I simply do, that’s all.

Beyond Money

Giving back my other God-given gifts, however, has been a much different story, filled with much more angst, frustration, jealousy, and fear. When I first had children, I struggled to give up a teaching job that I loved and knew I was pretty good at for the humbling, often-thankless, and opaque task of motherhood. Of course I loved my children, but walking away from the professional life I had constructed for myself was really, really hard. As a mother, I felt like I almost never experienced the feeling of flow, that magic, liquid experience of knowing exactly what to do and when to do it. I felt like I was constantly banging my shins or shooting airball after airball. It quickly became clear that I was not going to be able to use all of my other gifts and talents in the way I had been used to using them and be the wife and mother I knew God was calling me to be. So, one by one, into the plate they had to go. And it hurt like death.

The temptation is to see my abilities as uniquely “mine,” mine to grow, mine to enjoy, mine to use, mine to give how I want to give them. The modern story says that if you have a talent or a skill, you have a God-given right (maybe even a God-given mandate) to make pursuing that talent or using that skill one of the main priorities of your life. “But you don’t understand,” we are tempted to say, “I’m good at that! I can’t give it up!” Or, “If I don’t do this, my years of training and experience aren’t going to be put to use!” Or “I just love this so much.” Additionally, so the modern story can seem, people in your life—your spouse, your kids, your parents—must sacrifice themselves so that you can exercise your talent. In the Christian world we label it a “calling” or a “vocation” and that effectively ends the discussion about whether we ought to be pursuing it. Of course you should. This is what makes you, you! You’re good at that. You have a gift.

And yet all of these gifts, the gifts of the CEO, the professor, the police officer, the teacher, the lawyer, the basketball player, the doctor, the plumber, and the writer, all of them were given to us by God, the giver of every good and perfect gift. They are not ours. He has handed out big wads to so many of us, and some we’re meant to bank, and some we’re meant to use for the benefit of others, and some we are free to spend on ourselves, and some we’ve been given just so we have something to put in the plate as it goes by. We in the Reformed world talk a lot about doing all things to the glory of God. What we don’t talk about very much is not doing things to his glory too, setting things down, letting things go, putting things away, offering things up.

This kind of giving is not reflexive for me. It goes against every grain in my body to have a gift and to be unable to use it the way I want to. I fight and I tug and I hang on for dear life, and then just when I think, “OK, I’ve given everything I have to give,” the Lord comes and gently uncurls my fists and says, “Yes, but what about this one? I’d like that one too, please.” And the tighter I hold on, the more it hurts when the Lord takes it away.

Yet every time I have, by God’s grace, laid a gift in the plate, I have received so much more in return—“a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over” spilling all over my open hands, into my lap, onto the floor, with baskets and bushels and barrels so full that I cannot even begin to take an inventory of it all. And I find that all of those gifts I had that I thought made me “me” were just the smallest little tithe, the tiniest dribble in the bucket, and what I have in return is glorious riches of Christ himself.

So let us pass the plate, putting in whatever God is calling us to give.