Q What is the difference between an offering and a love offering?
A The differences between an offering and a love offering are definable — with nuances both inside and outside church walls.
The Rev. Charity Sandstrom, pastor of First Friends Church, described differences between traditional offerings and love offerings, as applied to collections made within individual churches.
“Typically, a love offering is a designated offering taken once to benefit a particular ministry or traveling minister,” Sandstrom said.
A love offering taken for a traveling minister would cover the expense of travel to and from the church, and the cost of equipment, materials, and other related expenses.
“This gift is usually not big enough to actually contribute to their personal income,” Sandstrom said. “Rather, it is something that enables them to do the particular ministry to which they are called.”
Love offerings, as a rule, are not taken to pay for ministers who substitute when the pastor is away. A standard amount, including mileage reimbursement, usually is paid to those ministers from the general budget, she said.
The regular offering taken during regular services goes into the church’s general operating budget and is used to pay for bills, staff, curriculum and other ministry materials, the denominational mission budget and other expenses.
The Rev. Mic McGuire, pastor of Grace United Methodist Church, looked at offerings and love offerings as something made daily, outside the financial and tangible boundaries of the church.
“To start, I believe it depends on what is the offering and what is the intent behind the offering,” McGuire said.
He defined several types of offerings that would not, or may not, be offered in love: offers of illegal drugs or “one more for the road” to an already-intoxicated driver, offers too good to refuse, or offers that may be kind, in addition to being professional obligations to earn livelihoods, such as a doctor prescribing medication or a taxi driver offering the intoxicated driver a ride home.
“If the intent of an offering is to illicit personal gain or favor, I would not consider the offering a love offering,” McGuire said.
“The best way I can define a love offering is to share my understanding of what God offered in Jesus. ... It was a love offering that can’t be bought or sold. It was an offering that can’t be earned. It was the purest of love offerings.”
McGuire said that love offering brought no personal gain to God or to Jesus, but that offering paid the price for humanity’s sin and showed humans how to live their lives in love. God’s love offering, he said, suffered false accusations, cruel punishment and death on the cross.
“It was a love offering that even as death was near, Jesus, the love offering, offered forgiveness,” McGuire said. “I truly believe that we as a human race are only able to love because God has loved us first.”
He said he wants his offerings to be without thought of personal gain and something that aids the recipients by promoting healing and health.
“But even if the offerings I make are seen as an act of love, it will only be because God’s love showed me how to make a love offering,” McGuire said.
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Posted by Observation (anonymous) on October 8, 2008 at 3:44 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Wow! What brought all that on?
Posted by Happiness08 (anonymous) on October 9, 2008 at 11:06 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Either way it's a "pass the plate" to me. I am a Christian, but I do not attend church for personal reasons. I prefer to make my love offerings on the street. I have stopped and given money to people more times then I can count when I can see there is an obvious need. I believe this counts in Jesus eyes just as much as giving at church does.
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