In a recent sermon, Pastor Kent Christmas of Regeneration Nashville, a non-denominational church in Tennessee, urged his congregation to avoid putting their money in banks and instead give it to the church as a form of spiritual investment.
You read that correctly.
Not only that, Pastor Kent promised his flock, and I quote: “If you’ve got a million, give it, and God will give you back two million.”
Check it out for yourself.
Wow.
Just wow.
Of all the irresponsible and self-serving things I’ve ever heard preached from a pulpit, this is right up there. It frightens me to think that well-meaning — but not necessarily well-off — people who genuinely want to please God might be duped into giving over their hard-earned cash to this clown, believing that somehow God will send it back to them twofold.
Call me faithless, but that ain’t gonna happen.
Maybe I’m reading too much into the snippets of his sermon that have made their way onto social media and gone viral for all the wrong reasons. But it’s hard to understand them in any other way. Let’s unpack the main points of Pastor Kent’s sermon.
Trust me, don’t trust banks
First of all, Pastor Kent says, “I don’t think Churches should ever have to lean on banking systems to finance the Kingdom of God. Christians deposit their money in the wrong places — they put it in banks.”
Let’s pause for a moment.
On the surface, Pastor Kent comes across as being “anti-banks,” encouraging the church to ditch the bank and give to the church instead. Let’s imagine you actually did that. Let’s imagine you gave all your extra money to the church instead of putting it in a bank. What do you suppose the church does with your money? Bury it? Stick it under a mattress in Pastor Kent’s house?
Nope.
It goes into a bank account, specifically the church’s bank account. In fact, Regeneration Church has a special donation webpage where you can make your deposit into the church’s bank account.
Make of that what you will.
Christian banks are different
Next, Pastor Kent says, “Any company that doesn’t believe in God, that backs up abortion, that backs up homosexuality, that backs up anything that stands against Christianity has a curse on it. When you invest your money in companies that exclude God, you are planting in bad soil.”
Okay, so if you’re bank “believes in God,” (I didn’t know institutions had collective beliefs, but okay), then I guess it’s OK to put your money there…. I think.
Unless your bank also supports female reproductive rights and/or the LGBTQ community… then clearly, it mustn’t believe in God. Do you see what Kent is doing there? He’s basically equating unbelief to LGBTQ allyship. He is saying, “You couldn’t possibly support the LGBTQ community and believe in God. Nor could you support abortion and be a Christian.”
Well, guess what, Kent…. I believe in God, and I support the LGBTQ community. I believe in God, and I believe in a woman’s right to choose. I don’t think I’m the only one, either. What does that make me? In Kent’s world, I am a heretic: Bad soil.
Interestingly, Kent tells us to avoid companies that support abortion or the LGBTQ community but seems to have no problem with corporate greed, capitalism, and workplace exploitation. Kent doesn’t think companies that produce their goods unethically using sweatshops in developing nations, for example, are worth a mention. Where is his interest in justice?
For Kent, stamping out injustice and exploitation is not important when compared to policing the sexual preferences of certain others. It speaks volumes about his priorities.
It also strikes me as odd that Pastor Kent says to avoid any companies that exclude God. What exactly does it mean to “exclude” God from your company? Can God be stopped from entering? If you have staff prayer time at the beginning of the day, does that constitute “including God?” If your company refuses to bake cakes for certain minorities, does that make you a “godly” company in Pastor Kent’s eyes?
Who knows.
Double your money
Currently, banks are offering around 3% per annum on term deposits in my country. But Pastor Kent promises his church they can double their money if they hand it over to the Lord. And by “The Lord,” Pastor Kent means “his Church” because, well… you can’t physically give your cash to a God you can’t see. Can you?
Pastor Kent says, “Listen, right now, we are good soil. If you’ve got a million, give it, and God will give you back two million. You say, “Well, that’s easy to say,” but I’m telling you, you cannot outgive God. This is an opportunity for you, for God to open the windows of heaven over you. Give him your seed, and he will give you your harvest.”
How many church offering cliches can you include in one paragraph? “God will open up the windows of Heaven to you,” says Pastor Kent. In my opinion, God opened the windows of heaven when he sent Jesus, and that was something he did for free. God doesn’t need us to pay for his windows to be opened.
“Give him a seed, and he will give you your harvest,” says Pastor Kent. But the Bible says to give without expecting a return. There is nothing generous about giving when you are giving to receive. Is there? Everything about the kind of “generosity” that Pastor Kent is peddling is not really generous at all.
The economics don’t check out
It’s clear that Pastor Kent is a proponent of the “Prosperity Gospel,” one of the most abhorrent and heretical beliefs going around. It teaches people that God rewards faithful believers with material wealth, health, and success in proportion to how much they give. It is also known as the “health and wealth gospel” or the “name-it-and-claim-it” gospel.
What is worse, it argues that God wants his followers to be wealthy and healthy and that poverty and sickness are signs of spiritual weakness or sin.
And herein lies the problem. Most Christians in the world are actually profoundly poor when compared to Christians in the west. Yet few would say their faith is weaker or dare to suggest that they are more sinful than the average American Christian. And that’s why the basic economics of the Prosperity Gospel don’t check out.
If becoming wealthy were a matter of giving the money that you have to “God” (aka the Church), then we would see all these poor but faithful Christians climbing out of poverty into abundance. But they don’t. So, either all those poor Christians in developing nations are terrible Christians, or the prosperity Gospel is a pile of horse shit.
I vote for the second option.
The prosperity gospel is a distorted and self-serving interpretation of the Christian faith that ignores the biblical teachings of humility, compassion, and social justice. What is more, the prosperity gospel, in the hands of a charismatic and convincing preacher, can be used to exploit vulnerable people — especially those already facing financial hardship or health challenges — by manipulating their emotions and faith for financial gain.
Now, the truth
The blessings of God are free.
If there were a price on them, you couldn’t afford to pay for them anyway. Neither could Elon Musk, for that matter. The breath in your lungs, the breeze on your face, the love in your heart, the peace of the night, and the hope of the morning — They don’t cost a cent.
Anyone who tells you that you must give them money to receive the blessing of God is a conman and a scam artist.
Period.
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This post was previously published on Backyard Church.
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