The spirituality of digital giving

Church people moved fast to online giving during the pandemic. People who had formerly thought God strongly preferred cash in offering plates embraced digital giving! Thanks be to God!

Giving is a spiritual discipline like prayer, part of following Jesus. It’s a discipleship question, not a budget question. Because giving is part of faithful living, the church needs to make it easy to give.

When the church limits giving to methods embraced by older people (cash, cheque), it sends the message that giving is for older people. I’m a Gen Xer who seldom carries cash and I haven’t written a cheque in years.

Forget cheques, my kids think I’m antiquated for using a debit card. They use credit cards, their phone or their watch to pay.

What if the Holy Spirit is nudging someone to give to their church and that person lives on their phone? Christians believe in the Holy Spirit - God's presence working in mysterious ways.  Theologians have a fancy word for the study of this - pneumatology.

Christians also believe in promoting generosity, in the spiritual discipline of giving.

Christians, more than anyone, should be about making it easy to give. 

Can somone donate to your church using their phone?

Imagine Matthew comes to his grandmother’s funeral and want to make a gift to her church in her memory. He pulls out his phone. Can he make a gift? And will the church thank him for his gift? It may be the only contact Matthew has with the church. The church’s response to Matthew’s gift is an opportunity for Christian witness. The church’s gratitude provides testimony. What does our silence say?

There's lots of reasons to embrace digital giving - efficiency, social media strategy etc. But for me, it is a theological question at its core: do we want to encourage everyone to give, or only people who have cheque books?