By Oyewole Sarumi
The offering plate has been replaced by a QR code, and the usher’s row by a livestream chat. This is not a trivial technological shift. It is a theological one, and the church has not yet reckoned with what it has done.
When a congregation places its account details on a public platform, promotes a giving app to an undefined audience, and leaves the channel open to anyone with a bank card, it has made a statement about the nature of the church, the nature of worship, and the nature of the God it serves.
The question is not whether digital giving is convenient. It is whether the church has any business collecting money for the work of God from people who have not bowed the knee to the Son of God.
There is no virtue in opposing technology for its own sake. A widow who cannot attend in person may still give from her apartment, and a young disciple who no longer carries cash may still honor the Lord with the firstfruits of her income.
The medium is not the problem. The audience is. The New Testament knows nothing of a church that funds its mission by soliciting the general public, and it knows nothing of a treasury that is open to the world on the same terms as it is open to the saints. The church’s giving is a covenant act, and covenant acts have boundaries. When those boundaries are erased, the church does not become more generous. It becomes less holy.
THE CHURCH AS A COVENANT COMMUNITY , NOT A PUBLIC CHARITY
The church is not a religious service provider. It is the assembly of the redeemed, the body of Christ, the household of God. Its members are those who have been baptized into Christ, who have received the Spirit, who confess with one voice that Jesus is Lord. The New Testament calls them “the saints,” not because they are morally perfect, but because they have been set apart by grace. And it is the saints who fund the work of the saints.
This is not an incidental detail of church administration. It is a matter of identity. The church’s treasury is not a public utility; it is a sacred trust. When the church opens its accounts to the world without distinction, it treats the holy as though it were common, and it treats the covenant community as though it were an audience. The pastor who posts a giving link without teaching the flock what giving means has not extended generosity; he has abdicated catechesis.
The Old Testament principle is instructive here even before it is fulfilled in Christ. When David purchased the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite to build an altar to the Lord, Araunah offered to give him the site, the oxen, and the wood for the sacrifice. David refused. “No,” he said, “but I will surely buy it from you for a price; nor will I offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God with that which costs me nothing” (2 Samuel 24:24). David understood that worship which costs the worshiper nothing is not worship at all. The sacrifice must come from the one who offers it. The world’s free gift cannot substitute for the saint’s costly obedience.
If that was true under the old covenant, how much more under the new? The church’s giving is not a payment for services rendered; it is a participation in the mission of the gospel. It is the saints’ response to the grace of God in Christ. To fund that mission with the money of those who have not received that grace is to offer to God a sacrifice that does not belong to Him.
THE APOSTOLIC PATTERN : GIVING FROM THE SAINTS, FOR THE SAINTS
The apostolic church knew nothing of a general collection from the world. Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians are precise: “On the first day of the week let each one of you lay something aside, storing up as he may prosper” (1 Corinthians 16:2). The “each one” is not the curious pagan or the passing stranger. It is the member of the assembly, the one who has been prospered by God and who responds in grateful stewardship. The collection was gathered within the community of faith, on the day of worship, as an act of worship.
The Apostle John is even more explicit. Commending Gaius for supporting traveling missionaries, he writes, “For they went out for the sake of the Name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore we ought to support such men, so that we may be fellow workers for the truth” (3 John 7–8).
The missionaries refused pagan patronage not because they despised money but because they understood that a gift creates a bond. In the Greco-Roman world, to accept a benefaction was to enter into a relationship of obligation to the patron. The missionaries would not allow the gospel to be entangled with the patronage of those who did not confess Christ. The church was to support the church’s mission. The world was not to fund the work of the world’s Savior.
The distinction between passive reception and active solicitation is crucial. When the offering is received within the assembly, the church cannot see the heart. A visitor may drop a bill into the plate, and the church is not called to interrogate his spiritual state. But when the church posts its account details on a public platform, promotes a giving app to an undefined audience, and markets its financial needs to the general public, it is no longer receiving; it is soliciting. It is actively recruiting funds from those whose relationship to Christ is unknown or openly hostile. That is a different act altogether, and it has no New Testament warrant.
The early church’s giving was for the saints. Paul’s collection was for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem (Romans 15:26; 2 Corinthians 8:4; 9:1). The community shared what it had, as Barnabas sold his field and laid the money at the apostles’ feet (Acts 4:36–37). When Ananias and Sapphira lied about their giving, the judgment that fell upon them was not merely for dishonesty about money; it was for profaning the integrity of the covenant community’s worship (Acts 5:1–11). The treasury of the church was a holy thing, and those who touched it were touching the honor of God.
THE PROPHETIC REFUSAL: ELISHA, NAAMAN, AND THE INTEGRITY OF GRACE
The story of Naaman the Syrian is one of the most instructive passages in all of Scripture on this question. Naaman was a commander of the army of the king of Aram, a man of great power and wealth, but he was a leper. He came to Elisha the prophet seeking healing, and the prophet told him to wash in the Jordan seven times. Naaman was healed. He returned to Elisha with a lavish gift: “Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel; so accept now a present from your servant” (2 Kings 5:15). Elisha refused. “As the Lord lives, before whom I stand, I will receive none.” Naaman urged him, but he refused.
Elisha understood something that many modern church leaders have forgotten. The grace of God is free. If the prophet accepts the Syrian’s money, the healing begins to look like a transaction. The God of Israel is not a vendor, and His prophets are not merchants. The refusal of the gift was a theological statement: the power of God cannot be purchased with silver, and the messenger of God must not allow the world to think that it can.
The sequel is even more sobering. Gehazi, Elisha’s servant, ran after Naaman and took the gifts in Elisha’s name. When he returned, Elisha pronounced upon him the curse of Naaman’s leprosy (2 Kings 5:20–27). The one who sought to profit from the grace of God was stricken with the very disease from which the outsider had been cleansed. This is not a minor moral lesson. It is a warning to every church leader who would turn the altar of God into a source of revenue from the world. The grace of God is not for sale, and those who sell it forfeit their own inheritance.
THE SIMON PETER REBUKE: THE GIFT OF GOD IS NOT FOR SALE
The New Testament counterpart to Elisha’s refusal is Peter’s rebuke of Simon the sorcerer. Simon saw the power of the Holy Spirit and offered the apostles money, saying, “Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” Peter’s response is one of the most severe in the New Testament: “Your money perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money!” (Acts 8:18–20).
The church’s treasure is not for sale, and the world’s money cannot purchase a place at the table. When the church accepts the money of those outside the faith without addressing the state of their souls, it is not far from Simon’s error. It allows the giver to believe that his money has done something for him before God. It treats the gospel as a commodity and the church as a vendor. Peter would have none of it, and neither should we.
The writer to the Hebrews declares that “without faith it is impossible to please him” (Hebrews 11:6). A gift given without faith cannot please God, because it is not offered from a heart that trusts Him. The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord (Proverbs 15:8). If the church collects money from those who do not believe, as though that money could fund the work of the God they do not know, the church is not performing a charitable service. It is offering to God a sacrifice He has already declared unacceptable.
THE WITNESS OF THE EARLY CHURCH: A TREASURY FOR THE HOUSEHOLD OF FAITH
The earliest post-apostolic documents reveal a church that understood its finances as a sacred trust for the covenant community. The Didache, a first-century manual of church order, instructs that the firstfruits are to be given to the prophets, “for they are your high priests,” and that if there is no prophet, the gift is to be given to the poor. It also warns, “Woe to him who receives; for if anyone receives having need, he is guiltless; but he who receives without need shall give account” (Didache 13:3–7; 11:12). The church’s giving was directed within the community, with discernment, and it was never a general appeal to the pagan world.
Clement of Rome, writing to the Corinthians before the end of the first century, assumes a common fund administered by the church for the relief of the brethren: “Let the rich man provide for the poor; and let the poor man bless God, because He has given him one by whom his need may be supplied” (1 Clement 38:2). The charity of the primitive church was legendary, but it was a charity that flowed from within. When the Christians of Rome cared for the poor during times of plague, they cared for their own and for any who would receive, but they did not fund the church’s mission by soliciting the temples of Jupiter or the synagogues of the diaspora. The church’s giving was an expression of its identity as the household of God.
THE PURITAN VISION: STEWARDSHIP WITHIN THE COVENANT
The Puritans understood this instinctively, and their vision of covenant community is a rebuke to the modern church’s indiscriminate fundraising. John Winthrop, preaching aboard the Arbella before the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established, articulated a vision of Christian charity in which the community of faith cared for its own out of a shared covenant obligation. “We must be knit together in this work as one man,” he declared. “We must delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body.” The giving Winthrop envisioned was not a public appeal to the surrounding world. It was the internal economy of a people bound to God and to one another.
William Ames, the great Puritan theologian, insisted that the church is a society of the faithful, and its officers are stewards of the mysteries of God, a stewardship that extends to the material resources entrusted to the congregation. Thomas Boston wrote that those to whom God has given substance are “his stewards, and have their orders from him to steward faithfully.” The steward does not own the estate; he manages it according to the master’s will. And the master’s will is not that the household of faith be funded by the patronage of those who deny the master.
To solicit the world’s silver for the Lord’s house is to blur the line between the two cities that Augustine so carefully distinguished. The city of God is sustained by the charity of its citizens, not by the taxes of Babylon.
THE DIGITAL TEMPTATION: CONVENIENCE WITHOUT BOUNDARIES
The research on digital giving in churches is unambiguous. The 2026 Annual Church Giving Report from Ministry Brands, analyzing billions in digital donations across tens of thousands of congregations, found that among Protestant churches, fifty-seven percent reported an increase in digital giving, with digital methods accounting for forty-one percent of total donations among churches that offered the service. Protestant churches were more likely to report year-over-year growth in giving, with fifty-five percent reporting growth in 2025. Younger donors, accustomed to mobile payment in every other area of life, respond readily to digital giving tools.
Let’s note that none of this is inherently wicked. But the same technology that allows a faithful member to give from her hospital bed also allows a scammer to exploit the church’s openness. Cybersecurity analysts report that nearly forty-three percent of North American cyberattacks target ministries and nonprofits, often because they lack the robust defenses of larger organizations. In 2025, the New York Attorney General sued the operator of Zelle, alleging widespread fraud connected to the platform over multiple years. Pastor impersonation scams, fake donation links in livestream chats, and “overpay-and-refund” schemes are now commonplace. When the church posts its giving mechanisms without boundaries, it does not merely open itself to financial risk. It becomes complicit in the deception of those who use the church’s name to prey on the vulnerable.
The deeper danger is theological. Digital giving makes no distinction between the disciple and the stranger. A QR code on a livestream is visible to the member who has walked with Christ for decades and to the skeptic who clicked on the video out of curiosity, to the scammer who sees an opportunity and to the seeker who thinks a donation might purchase peace of conscience. The church that posts its giving link without pastoral discernment has effectively said to the world: “Your money is welcome here, regardless of your relationship to our Lord.” This is not generosity. It is a failure of covenant discipline.
THE CONSCIENCE OF THE GIVER AND THE CREDIBILITY OF THE GOSPEL
There is a pastoral dimension to this question that cannot be ignored. Some who give to the church from outside the faith are seeking to appease their conscience. They have done something wrong, or they feel the weight of guilt, and they believe that a donation to a religious cause will quiet the accusation within. The church that accepts such money without addressing the state of the giver’s soul is engaged in a form of spiritual malpractice. The gospel calls sinners to repentance and faith, not to financial contributions. If a man who has never bowed to Christ gives money to the church, and the church receives it with gratitude and no further word, the church has implicitly communicated that his money is what matters, not his soul.
The testimony of the church before a watching world is at stake. When the church’s giving mechanisms are indistinguishable from a GoFundMe campaign, the world has reason to suspect that the church is more interested in its budget than in its God. The apostolic missionaries refused pagan money precisely so that the gospel would not be discredited. The church today must recover that instinct. A church that builds its building with the donations of unbelievers may find that the building is a monument to its own lack of faith. A church that funds its mission from the pockets of those who do not know Christ has preached a gospel that is for sale, and the world will believe the sermon.
RETRACTING THE PATH: LEADERSHIP DECISIONS FOR COVENANT GIVING
What then should a faithful church do? The first step is to recover the biblical categories. Giving is an act of worship, a fruit of faith, a participation in the covenant community. The church’s teaching on giving must be addressed to the saints, not to the public. The pastor who preaches on stewardship must preach to the flock, not to the livestream audience of strangers. The giving link, if it is posted publicly, should be accompanied by clear teaching that this is an opportunity for the church’s members to participate in the Lord’s work, not a request for the world’s patronage.
The second step is to practice pastoral discernment in the church’s digital giving mechanisms. This does not mean interrogating every donor or refusing anonymous gifts. It does mean that the church’s communication about giving is directed to the covenant community. A church that markets its giving app to the general public has confused its mission. The Great Commission is to make disciples, not to raise funds. If the church makes disciples, the funds will follow. If the church makes fundraisers, it may find that it has made neither disciples nor faithful stewards.
The third step is to trust God’s provision through God’s people. The Puritan ideal of stewardship was that the community of faith would care for its own and for the poor among them, not by extracting resources from the world but by the voluntary generosity of the saints. The church that trusts God will not be impoverished by refusing the world’s money. It may be smaller; it may be poorer by the world’s standards; but it will be pure. And purity, in the economy of God, is worth more than silver and gold.
THE ALTAR IS NOT A COLLECTION BOX
Let me conclude this part, because I intend to take it further in Part 2. The church is the bride of Christ, not a vendor of religious services. Her treasury is filled by the offerings of those who love her Lord, not by the donations of those who are indifferent or hostile to Him. The digital age has made it easy to forget this distinction, to treat the giving button as a neutral tool rather than a theological statement. But the church’s giving mechanisms are a confession. They declare who belongs to the community, who is responsible for its support, and who is the true source of its provision.
The apostolic church refused the patronage of the world because it would not allow the gospel to be compromised. The primitive church cared for its own because it understood itself as the family of God. The Puritans gave as stewards of a covenant community because they believed that God’s people were sufficient for God’s work. The church today must recover this vision. Let the world keep its money. Let the church give from hearts transformed by grace. Let the altar remain a place of worship, not a collection box for the appeasement of uneasy consciences. “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts” (Haggai 2:8). He will build His church, and the gates of hell, and the bank accounts of the world, shall not prevail against it.
Prof. Sarumi, a disciple of Jesus Christ and teacher of the Word of God, writes from Lagos. Tel. 234 803 304 1421, Email: oyewolethecoach@gmail.com
