What is a fair share? It's one of those phrases that gets thrown around constantly in political conversations, and almost everybody who uses it is convinced they know exactly what it means — right up until you ask them to define it. Then things get complicated fast. That same complexity shows up when we start talking about giving in the church, and I think it's worth slowing down and actually working through it together, because the Bible has something genuinely helpful to say here — something that cuts through the noise without leaving us in a legalistic fog.
The "Fair Share" Problem
Let me start with the tax conversation, because I think it frames the question well. I've been reading some statistics lately that are worth sitting with for a moment. The top 10% of household income earners in the United States pay roughly 70% of all federal income taxes. The top half of earners — so anyone above the median income — pay about 97% of total federal taxes. That leaves the bottom 50% of earners paying approximately 3% of the nation's tax bill. And somewhere between 30 and 40% of American households pay no federal income tax at all in a given year.
Now, I'm not raising those numbers to start a political argument. I'm raising them because they make the phrase "fair share" genuinely interesting to examine. Is it fair that the top half pays nearly everything? Is it fair that a significant portion of households pays nothing? Reasonable people with genuinely good intentions can disagree about this, because the answer depends on what you think the government should be doing, what you think fairness actually means, and a whole web of economic and social factors that honest people weigh differently. When it comes to tax policy, the "fair share" question doesn't have a clean answer that everyone agrees on.
But here's what struck me: the church has been wrestling with a version of this same question for thousands of years, and the Scriptures actually give us something concrete to work with. Voluntary giving — which is what we're talking about in the church, nobody is being taxed here — still raises the question of proportionality. What does it look like to give faithfully and fairly when people's financial situations are so different from one another? How do we think about that together as a community?
Giving According to Your Means
Paul addresses this head-on in his second letter to the Corinthians. I've been spending time in chapters 8 and 9 recently, and there's a passage I want to point us to again. In 2 Corinthians 8, Paul is talking about the Macedonian churches — congregations that were going through real hardship, people who did not have abundance — and he holds them up as a model of generosity. Here's what he says in verses 3 through 4:
For I can testify that according to their ability, and even beyond their ability, they gave of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the privilege of sharing in the ministry to the saints.
Two things jump out at me in that passage. First: they gave according to their means. That phrase is doing real work. It means the standard isn't a fixed dollar amount that everyone hits — it's proportional to what a person actually has. Paul is recognizing, right there in Scripture, that people have different financial realities, and that God is not asking everyone to write the same check. The measure is relative to what you've been given. Second: the Macedonians didn't stop at their means. They went beyond their means, and they did it voluntarily, even eagerly, begging for the chance to give. That's a remarkable picture of what generosity can look like when it flows from something deeper than obligation.
Why do people have different financial means in the first place? There are a lot of honest answers to that question, and I think we should name them without glossing over the complexity. Sometimes it comes down to the skills a person has developed, and the fact that our economy places different market value on different kinds of work. Sometimes it comes down to effort and the choices people have made over years and decades. Sometimes it's about opportunity — who you met, where you grew up, what doors opened for you. Sometimes it's the relationships you've been able to build. Sometimes it's the level of financial risk a person was willing to take on. And sometimes, honestly, there are genuine injustices involved — things that aren't fair, barriers that shouldn't have existed, circumstances that kept someone from reaching a higher level of financial stability. And sometimes there's just plain bad luck, or poor decisions, or some combination of all of the above.
The point is: financial inequality isn't a new problem. It has existed in every society, in every era of history. It was present in ancient Israel. It was present in the first-century church. And God's approach, both in the Old Testament and in the New, isn't to pretend that everyone has the same resources. Instead, the call is to give faithfully according to what you have.
The Tithe: An Old Principle With Something to Teach Us
When God established the covenant with Israel after bringing them out of Egypt, one of the foundational practices he commanded was the tithe. And I want to be precise here, because we've gotten a little loose with that word in the church. People sometimes say "I gave my tithe" when they mean they dropped something in the offering plate — anything, really. But the word tithe literally means a tenth. A tithe is 10%. The Israelites were called to give 10% of their crops, their herds, the fruit of their labor — back to God, as an acknowledgment that it all came from him in the first place. These tithes supported the worship life of Israel: the tabernacle, and later the temple, the Levitical priests who served the people, the ministry of the whole community before the Lord.
Now, whenever I bring up tithing, I know what's coming. Some of you have the inner lawyer activated the moment I say the word, and you're already formulating your response: "Pastor, we are no longer under the law." And you're right. You are absolutely correct. The tithe as a Mosaic command is not something that has been transferred directly into the New Testament as a binding requirement for Christians. Jesus himself does not command a tithe. What Jesus does say — and this matters — is that we have received freely, and we should give freely. The law of Moses required a tithe. Grace invites generosity from the heart.
But here's the thing I keep coming back to, and I'll just say it plainly: the people of Israel, under the old covenant, before the coming of Christ, before the cross and the empty tomb, before the full revelation of God's mercy — they were required to give 10%. And we, who have received Christ himself, who have received his death and resurrection on our behalf, who have received the complete promise of salvation — are we going to look at what those believers gave and say, "Well, I'll aim for a bit less than that"? I'm not going to camp on this soapbox for long, but I do want you to sit with that for a moment. It's worth thinking about.
Even so, I want to gently pull the focus back from the specific number and toward the principle underneath it. The reason the tithe is so useful as a model isn't because 10% is a magic number in the New Testament. It's because the tithe is a percentage. And percentage giving is intentional in a way that random or occasional giving is not.
Why Percentage Giving Makes Sense
Think about what it means to give a percentage versus giving whatever you happen to have left over at the end of the month, or giving what feels right in the moment when the offering plate comes around. Giving a percentage means you've made a decision. You've sat down, looked at what God has entrusted to you, and said: this portion — this specific, intentional share — I am setting aside for the Lord. That act of intentional designation is itself a form of worship. It's a way of saying, before I plan the rest of my budget, before I figure out what I want and what I think I need, I am going to honor God first with what he's given me.
Jesus talked about seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and trusting that the things we need will follow (Matthew 6:33). Percentage giving is a concrete, practical way of putting that principle into action in your financial life. It shows what you're prioritizing. It shows what you consider the main thing. And it creates a rhythm of faithfulness that isn't dependent on your emotional state on a given Sunday morning.
Now, about that 10%: I do think it's a solid benchmark, and I think it's worth working toward if you're not there yet. Here's why I find it reasonable as a starting goal — it's enough that you actually feel it. It's a real sacrifice. It's not pocket change. But for most people, it's also not going to break them. It won't make it impossible to cover housing, food, utilities, and the ordinary expenses of life. It sits in a zone where it requires genuine trust, without demanding the impossible.
I also want to be honest about the current cultural reality for many of us. If you're aiming to give 10% to the church, and the federal government is already taking somewhere in the mid-30% range of your income, and then you add state taxes and other levies on top of that, the total ask on your finances is significant. That's real, and I don't want to wave it away. It genuinely complicates the conversation, and I think it's okay to name that complexity rather than pretend it doesn't exist.
So here's my practical word for anyone who isn't yet giving by percentage: start somewhere. Start at 3%. Start at 5%. Start at whatever number you can commit to and actually sustain. The goal isn't to jump from zero to 10% overnight and then abandon the practice because it felt impossible. The goal is to begin giving intentionally, and then to grow in what Paul calls the "grace of giving" (2 Corinthians 8:7). We learn to walk before we learn to run. That's just the way growth works.
And on the question of whether to calculate your percentage on gross income or net income — a question I've been asked more times than I can count — here's my simple answer: start with whichever one is smaller. If God blesses that, if you find yourself trusting him more and worrying less, if you discover his faithfulness in the ordinary movements of your financial life, then consider working toward the other. Give yourself room to grow into this. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
What Does "Fair" Look Like in the Church?
So how does all of this connect back to the idea of a fair share in the life of the congregation? I think there are a couple of principles worth anchoring ourselves to as we live together as a community of faith.
Everyone Has Skin in the Game
There's real value in everyone participating in the giving life of the church, even at different levels. Having some stake in the ministry — contributing something of yourself to it — means you are genuinely connected to what God is doing through it. You have skin in the game. And that matters. When you give to the work of proclaiming the gospel, you are not just writing a check; you are investing yourself in the hope that other people will hear the good news and have their lives changed by it. You are saying: I want there to be a place where people can come and hear clearly that they are loved and forgiven by God. I want there to be a pastor who can walk with people through the hardest moments of their lives and point them to Jesus. That's what's at stake, and it's worth being invested in.
Now, there are people in every congregation for whom financial giving is genuinely not possible right now. Life has put them in a place where the numbers just don't allow it. And the church has always understood that. For those brothers and sisters, the call isn't shame — it's to find the other ways they can invest themselves in the ministry. Their time. Their service. Their prayers, which are always possible and always powerful. The principle of skin in the game applies to all of us, even when the form it takes looks different from person to person.
We Sacrifice Together
The second principle is this: percentage giving creates a sense of solidarity in the congregation. When we give a percentage of what we have — each of us, from the most financially abundant to the most financially stretched — we are all making a proportional sacrifice. We are all saying the same thing with our giving, even if the dollar amounts look very different. We are saying: this matters enough to me that I am going to give a real portion of what God has entrusted to me.
I think about my own kids when I try to explain this. Some of them are just getting started in life — entry-level jobs, tight budgets, figuring out how adulting works. They simply cannot give the same dollar amount that their mom and I give. That's just the math of where they are. But for them to give something — to set aside a percentage of their income and bring it to the Lord — that is every bit as meaningful and faithful as what we give. In a sense, their sacrifice might be more striking, because their margin is smaller. And for us to give more than they give isn't unfairness; it's proportionality. It reflects that we've been entrusted with more. We're not all giving the same amount, but we are all in the same posture before God: hands open, acknowledging that what we have came from him, and returning a portion of it in gratitude.
That's a different kind of fairness than the political version. It's not about equal dollars. It's about equal commitment, equal sacrifice, equal acknowledgment that God is the source of everything we have. And there is a genuine bond in that — a way of saying, we are in this together, we are working toward the same thing, we trust the same God with our finances and with the future of this ministry.
Generosity as a Reflection of Who God Is
Ultimately, the reason we give isn't because the church needs money, though of course it does take resources to do ministry. The deeper reason is that giving is one of the ways we reflect the character of our God. Our God is generous — extravagantly, lavishly generous. He did not hold back his own Son. He has poured out mercy on us that we did nothing to deserve. The whole arc of the gospel is a story of God giving freely and richly to people who had nothing to offer in return. As Jesus put it: freely you have received, freely give.
When we give generously, we are not just supporting a budget line item. We are participating in the character of God. We are saying, with our checkbooks and our bank accounts and our envelopes in the offering plate, that we have been shaped by grace into people who give rather than hoard, who trust rather than fear, who look outward rather than inward. That is a powerful witness, and it flows naturally from a heart that has genuinely encountered the mercy of God.
So here is my encouragement as you think about your own giving: spend some time in prayer about what your fair share looks like. Not what the person next to you gives, not what you think sounds impressive, not what you think the pastor wants to hear — what does faithful, intentional, percentage-based giving look like for you, given what God has entrusted to you right now? Ask whether the principle of percentage giving holds real wisdom for where you are in life. Consider how richly God has blessed you, not just financially but in every dimension — his mercy, his patience, his presence through every season you've walked through. And then ask yourself: is there an opportunity here to let the way I give be a reflection of who my God is? Is there a way for my financial life to tell the same story my faith tells — a story of generosity, of trust, of open hands before a God who never runs out?
That's the question worth sitting with this week. Not "how little can I get away with?" but "how might my giving reflect the generosity of the God I say I believe in?" That's the heart of what a fair share really means.
Transcript generated with A.I. Original script by the author.
Comments