Why Churches Should Be Self-Supporting

There are two biblical doctrines that support the pursuit of a self-supporting church: the doctrine of the family and the doctrine of the local church.

“It’s worth every one of the two-hundred and fiftty-thousand dollars it costs. There isn’t a better return on any investment, multiplying to incalculable value,” I think to myself, as I look at another $309 dentist’s charge on my credit card. A three-hundred dollar dentist visit stacks with the other innumerable costs of raising a child. The average cost of raising a child in our society is nearly a quarter of a million dollars, not including college tuition. That’s a lot of money, but it’s kind of a bargain, when I think about the value my kids bring to our family and our world. I mean, despite the worst days when I feel like putting them up for rent on Offer-Up or Facebook Marketplace, I would gladly pay up ten thousand times over if I had to.

But I also, like you, pour these costs out for my kids knowing that these dollars are like scaffolding surrounding the construction of their lives. Eventually, hopefully, they won’t need my financial resources but will be able in turn to pour out their own resources for their own kids.

This same principle applies to the life of a new church. For example, our new church has had over a dozen churches and individuals from outside of our church build a robust and generous scaffolding to help us build up the life of our church. These dollars have been given with the joyful hope that we will be able to grow to become a self-supporting local church that can in turn bless others. Nearly every week when I talk about giving, I explain to our church that must become a self-supporting church. We have been immensely blessed by these partners giving to help us build up our mission, and we are coming to the downside of the bell curve. Our partners need to be able to move our scaffolding to other places and people who are called on God’s mission. In fact, we would love nothing more than to call up these partners and tell them that we don’t actually need their scaffolding, and we’d like them to invest it in another place where it’s more needed.

With that in mind, I want to reflect briefly on the biblical basis for a church becoming a self-supporting church. I believe there are two biblical doctrines that support the pursuit of a self-supporting church: the doctrine of the family and the doctrine of the local church.

1. The Doctrine of the Family

The family is the first and archetypal institution of creation. God created the family as a crowning achievement of his masterwork of humanity made in his image. He brought man and woman together in Genesis 2. The man and woman started a family, fulfilling their purpose and obeying the command to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:28). This connects with what we might call the mandate of multiplication, that God designed the world to be full of life. Life is inherently multiplying. In some ways, this only makes sense because God is a multiplicity of persons—the Father eternally begetting the Son, and the Father and Son eternally breathing the Spirit, 1x1x1=1.

The family is a multiplying entity. Humanity started with one family and now there are probably two billion families on the planet. Scripture has a lot to say about the family, but we don’t have time to get into the entire doctrine here. For our purpose, I want to look at one example from the Old Testament and one Scripture from the New Testament.

First, in the Old Testament, we find a pattern for family leadership in the person of Boaz in the book of Ruth. Boaz fulfills his responsibility to care for his family, marrying the poor, immigrant, orphan, widow Ruth, eventually having a baby who became the grandfather of the greatest king in Israelite history, David.

Second, in the New Testament, it says that “if anyone does not provide for his own family, especially for his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Tim 5:8). To provide means to give “forethought” or “careful thought” (Rom 12:17; 2 Cor 8:21).

Putting these things together, we find the Scripture showing that a family or household is supposed to be a self-supporting institution, provided for by the father at the head. I think this has implications for a local church under the provision of our heavenly Father.

2. The Doctrine of the Local Church

The heartbeat of God throughout the New Testament is the building up of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. God loves the church, to the point that he purchased it by his own blood (Acts 20:28) in the death of Jesus Christ. Jesus promised to build his church (Mt 16:18). The church displays the glory of God: “God’s multi-faceted wisdom may now be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavens” (Eph 3:10). The word “church” is used 114 times in the New Testament, with the shocking majority of times—over 90!—referring to the local church. God loves the Church, and God especially loves the local church.

The local church is the headquarters of the Great Commission, as we see exemplified in the burning hub of missionary faithfulness and fruitfulness in the New Testament, Antioch.

Now those who had been scattered as a result of the persecution that started because of Stephen made their way as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks also, proclaiming the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord’s hand was with them, and a large number who believed turned to the Lord. News about them reached the church in Jerusalem, and they sent out Barnabas to travel as far as Antioch. When he arrived and saw the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged all of them to remain true to the Lord with devoted hearts, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And large numbers of people were added to the Lord. Then he went to Tarsus to search for Saul, and when he found him he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught large numbers. The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch. (Acts‬ ‭11:19-26‬) ‬‬

Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, a close friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. As they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after they had fasted, prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them off. (Acts‬ ‭13:1-3‬)‬‬

So the church sends out Barnabas and Saul/Paul, and this missionary team goes and plants churches. The way the disciples understood the Great Commission was to lead people to faith and following Jesus and to gather these folks into a group called a church, a gathering, a family.

As these churches were planted and gathered, leaders were installed. In the midst of the mission, Paul leaves his protege Titus for the purpose of empowering and installing leaders in the church: “The reason I left you in Crete was to set right what was left undone and, as I directed you, to appoint elders in every town” (Titus 1:5).

An elder is a leader or shepherd or pastor or overseer of a church. The NT uses all three words to describe the office and function of this role, elder, pastor, overseer (sometimes translated bishop). As the churches gathered, they realized that their pastors had a lot of work to do, so they provided for their pastors. Paul himself explains this, “Don’t you know that those who perform the temple services eat the food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the offerings of the altar? In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should earn their living by the gospel” (1 Cor 9:13–14). As the churches matured they began to sustain and finance their own ministers and ministries—and their own roles in the Great Commission.

The Upshot

In the doctrine of the family and creation we find a mandate for multiplication. So too, this principle applies to the doctrine of the church. Churches are called to multiply life in conversions and new congregations. This generally requires a church to be self-supporting. This, as I said, is a major goal for our young church, and we would appreciate your prayers for God’s favor in this aim.

What other reasons can you think of for churches to be self-supporting? What are some creative ways you’ve seen churches be and become self-supporting?