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Bank on God: storing up riches on earth
Bishop Dennis Leonard calls it a step of faith. Standing on stage under the bright lights, the pastor tells Heritage Christian Center members that if they give 10 percent of their income to the church, God will bless their families for generations to come.
Show some patience, Leonard explains, and expect a turnaround in about 90 days.
A new house, a new business, tuition for college … God will help deliver them, he says.
Gifts can be made with cash, credit card or checks written out to “HCC,” he instructs. An ATM sits in the lobby, near the neon cross that reads, “Jesus Saves.”
This is a reading from the prosperity gospel, the belief that God will reward faithful givers in this life with material wealth, a teaching that has ebbed and flowed for nearly a century but is finding prominence again among present-day televangelists.
Big-name Christian leaders from Joel Osteen to Joyce Meyer preach variations of the prosperity gospel.
Other scholars and pastors, including best-selling author Rick Warren of “The Purpose Driven Life” fame, have called it creating a false idol.
“This kind of preaching has great appeal to people who don’t have much, who don’t share in the American dream,” said the Rev. Cleo LaRue, an associate professor of homiletics at Princeton Theological Seminary. “I know pastors who say, ‘I draw a crowd when I preach blessings. I don’t want to talk all that theological stuff.”‘
While many pastors reluctantly preach about giving, Leonard devotes five to 10 minutes weekly to the biblical mandate to tithe, or give 10 percent of one’s income.
“You may be in the valley today, you may be in an impossible thing today,” Leonard preached at a service in late 2005. “But remember, after the valley comes the mountaintop, and after the test comes the testimony. You can’t have the ‘mony’ without the ‘test.’ You can’t have the money without passing the tithes and offerings test.”
Former Heritage member Judi Peer tithed faithfully, even through lean times. She and her husband got the opposite of a blessing on the day they decided to tithe: Her husband was laid off from his job selling medical equipment.
But the couple remained obedient, setting aside the first 10 percent from the unemployment checks while surviving on slices of leftover Pizza Hut and chicken drumsticks from the church food pantry.
“It changed our priorities,” Peer said. “It was not our money; it was God’s money. Everything we have is a gift from him. Our time here, everything is on loan. That step of faith changed our hearts so much and bound us together like never before.”
Others, however, describe a darker side to the constant pressure to tithe put on church members, many of whom are low- to middle-income earners.
The church began a benevolence program to help struggling tithe- paying members with rent and utilities but stopped after a year because the demand drained church resources, said Joel Moreno, a former Hispanic ministries pastor.
“I was confronted with families who said they had prayed and tithed because that’s what Leonard asked them to do,” he said. “Then their electricity was being cut off and they felt the church had turned their back on them.”
Laurie Randolph, a former youth ministry worker, said being blessed sounded good at first but she questioned whether God wanted her money if it put her out on the street.
“God is not a conditional God,” Randolph said. “He’s just not. I’m not saying there aren’t fundamental things you need to do. But he’s not a God of formula, where if I give something to God, I’ll get something back.”
- The Bible, 1 Timothy 6:3-10 NIV
In his 2003 book, “Keys to Financial Freedom: Strategies for Debt-Free Living,” Leonard calls the tithe “the first and foremost key that unlocks God’s blessings” and cites King David and Solomon as wealthy biblical figures. Because money belongs to God, failing to tithe is the equivalent of “stealing God’s stuff.”
Leonard cites Scriptures such as Malachi 3:10, with its call to “bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse,” or the local church. Leonard writes that the Lord will “open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing” to the giver and writes of “a harvest of money and material substance!”
Craig Blomberg, a professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary, said that while tithing is a biblical principle, Leonard and other prosperity preachers twist Bible verses out of context by connecting tithing to material rewards.
Most Old Testament prosperity passages refer not to individuals but to God’s unique covenant with the children of Israel, whose obedience is to be rewarded with peace, security and material prosperity in the land of Canaan, Blomberg said.
“Even in Old Testament times, go to the Psalms, go to Proverbs,” Blomberg said. “There are plenty of texts about the pious poor and the unjust rich.”
Although accounts differ, prosperity theology is generally traced to E.W. Kenyon, an evangelical pastor from the first half of the 20th century.
The prosperity gospel, also called Word of Faith or “name it and claim it,” flourished in the affluent 1980s before taking a hit during the televangelist scandals of the era, said Randall Balmer, a professor of religious history at Barnard College in New York.
“I don’t find anywhere in the Gospels where Jesus promises material prosperity,” Balmer said. “Jesus says if you’re going to follow me, chances are you’re not going to have a place to lay your head tonight.”
In recent years, prosperity has found an audience in black churches thanks to a growing black middle class and a shift in black churches away from shaping societal change and toward personal development, said R. Drew Smith, director of the Public Influences of African-American Churches Project at Morehouse College in Atlanta.
Leonard acknowledged in an interview that not everyone who tithes receives the desired breakthrough. He told his members last Sunday there is no pressure to tithe, and the church will help them no matter what.
Though successful in life, Leonard said he doesn’t hold himself up as an example that tithing works. His defense of the teaching: It’s in the Bible.
Even so, only about 20 percent of Heritage members tithe faithfully, according to Trelles Stepter, who left the church elder board in 2004.
And in his latest book, “Happiness Matters,” Leonard describes a poll in which he asked church members to describe the top two sins in their lives.
Most answered sexual sin and lack of tithing.
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