Should pastors know who gives to their church? It’s a question that never fails to bring out strong opinions, no matter which side you land on.
And I get it—this is a weighty decision for any church:
- Could knowing influence a pastor’s judgment?
- Does it create bias? Or favoritism?
- Do pastors have the character to handle that information?
We’ve wrestled with these questions in-depth with the leaders inside The Art of Leadership Academy.
Some argue that donor transparency allows pastors to lead more effectively and can even enable them to provide better care to the people they lead. But others worry it could lead to favoritism, bias, or breaches of confidentiality—all important things to consider.
So, in this video, I break down the strongest arguments for and against pastors knowing who gives—and how much.
Should pastors know who gives to their church?
Transcript:
[0:00] Introduction
So here is one of the most controversial questions about money that you can tackle in church leadership. And the question is, should the lead pastor know how much people give in the church? Let’s talk about it.
Let’s start here. People are split down the middle on this issue, and they have very—and let me underscore very—animated opinions about it.
And in the end, you know what? There are actually great arguments on both sides.
So, in this video, I want to share the pros and the cons of both viewpoints, and then I’m going to tell you where I land personally.
You’re probably not going to agree with me, or some of you won’t anyway. So, let’s start with arguments against disclosure. So maybe you’re thinking, like, no way, okay? Pastors should never get that kind of financial disclosure. I get it.
[01:04] Arguments Against Disclosure
You know what? That’s how I started out, too. There are some wonderful arguments on this side. So, for my first decade in leadership, I literally had no clue who gave what. I didn’t want to know who gave what.
And I was kind of proud of it. It’s like, you know what? I don’t have any disclosure. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t touch money, and I didn’t want any.
I wanted people to know that I didn’t know. So, the only people at that time who really knew who gave what were the people who counted the offering and issued the income tax receipts at the end of the year.
And I thought that’s exactly how it should be.
So then the question becomes, well, like, why do people think that the pastor should have zero knowledge of what people give? There are some good arguments, biblical too.
James, for example, writes about not favoring the rich. And that’s really important. And probably one of the biggest dangers that you can run into if you get disclosure is like, I’m going to start favoring the rich people, okay?
Jesus himself also said that the widow who dropped in a single penny gave more than all the rich people ever did. So, you can’t really assume the size of the gift has anything to do with someone’s generosity.
Paul also warns that “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” So, I mean, the biblical arguments can stack on this one. And you would think, okay, open and shut case, right? Pastors should never know who gives what. But there’s a counter side.
As I began to dive more deeply into building a generous culture at our church, I got pretty convinced that there was another view because I had people challenge me.
[02:33] Arguments in Favor of Disclosure
So, let’s flip it and talk about arguments in favor. And here’s where we get into some nuanced thinking. Now, it’s very easy in a church context to want to treat everyone the same, right?
We say things like, well, we can’t treat people differently because everybody’s the same in God’s eyes.
Well, that’s true, and it’s excellent in many ways. Except that’s not what Jesus did. If you actually look at what Jesus did, it is not what scripture counsels. Jesus, for example, would organize his disciples into circles according to potential impact.
So, if you study what he did, he had groups of 70. Well, actually, he had groups of hundreds. But we know for sure there were groups of 70, 12, and 3. And then he had a group of 1.
So the three were Peter, James, and John, and then Peter—he spent extra time with, and he spent intentional time with these different groups and treated them differently than the crowds.
Why? Because he knew that they were going to have a lot of responsibilities. So that’s something that Jesus did intentionally. He did not treat everyone the same.
And then, in the parable of the talents, Jesus says that God gave some people one talent, other people two talents, other people five talents.
And then based on what they did with those talents, God removed the single talent from one person and gave it to the person with five. That’s hardly treating everyone the same. So, I mean, you can start to see this is nuanced, right?
So here’s what’s underneath that. Loving everyone the same doesn’t mean treating everyone the same way.
Because some people are ready for more responsibility, and that’s true financially; others are not. It’s true for volunteers. It’s true for all the other spiritual gifts. It’s also true for people who have the spiritual gift of giving, i.e. donors.
There are some people in your church who actually have the spiritual gift of giving. And some people in your church are going to be ready to give at levels they have never given before. And some people who claim to be generous—this is what I notice.
Well, they’re not. And you can’t treat them all the same. I had so many people come up to me; it’s like, oh, you know, I’m so generous. And I never knew until I got disclosure whether they were telling me the truth. In fact, I assumed they were telling me the truth.
Turns out, spoiler alert, they were not. You just can’t treat all people the same. People have different needs, different views, and different levels of responsibility. So, you might think that playing favorites is not biblical. But as we’ve seen, treating people fairly doesn’t actually mean treating everyone the same.
So here’s a surprise for me. Not treating different people differently can actually make you unfaithful. Like by saying, I don’t. I don’t. I see everybody exactly the same way.
I don’t see any differences. Actually, you could be unfaithful when you do that. If someone has the gift of help, let them help. If somebody has a gift of leadership, let them lead. Not everyone’s going to be leading, all right?
But you’re going to let the people with the gift of leadership lead. If someone has the gift of teaching, let them teach. Not everybody’s going to teach, right? But if someone’s really good at it, you let them teach. And that’s not fair because not everybody got the microphone.
If someone has the gift of giving, then what do you do? Well, you pour fuel on that, and you let them give. That’s exactly what you do. And somehow, we’ve removed giving from the mix.
Now, I know a lot of you are like, wait, okay, look, you’re probably saying some people have the spiritual gift of giving and others don’t. What? Well, everybody is called to give, right? I would argue that we’re even called to tithe. That’s another story for another day.
But some people have the spiritual gift of giving in the same way that others have the spiritual gift of wisdom or discernment. And if you treat people with different gifts differently, why would you make an exception for the gift of giving? So that’s a little bit of the argument that sort of changed my mind. You can see where I’m going with this.
There’s also this: that after a decade in leadership, here’s what I also noticed.
I was getting a lot of, I’m going to call it, quote, financial and leadership advice from very vocal people who claim to be good givers.
They would tell me, “I’m so generous,” you know, and then they would proceed to tell me exactly what I needed to do with the church. And I noticed this pattern. It’s like people are telling me, I’m such a tither, I’m such a giver, I’m a generous person. And here’s what you need to do.
So the biggest complainers actually told me they were the biggest givers. All right? If I’m going to be really direct, that’s what was going on. The people who complained the most told me they gave the most. And, of course, I had no way until then of knowing whether that was true.
I knew they were the biggest complainers. I didn’t know whether they were the biggest givers. And that probably is a challenge for some of you. Watching this right now, you’re like, yeah, I get a lot of complaints. I don’t know what these people give.
At the same time, I realized if we were going to build campuses and truly fund our mission fully, I needed to cast a vision to high-capacity donors. And I had no idea who they were.
So, after a lot of discussion, prayer, reflection, and talking to our board, I asked for financial disclosure, and they gave it to me. So I was nervous, all right?
And here are the questions I was asking myself, “Am I going to play favorites?” Because I know what the Bible says about that.
Would I become biased and only talk to the people who gave the most? Did I actually have the character to handle the information I was about to get? And I would suggest you need to ask yourself the same questions because if you’re really excited to get this data, you might not be the right person to get the data if you’re like, “Let me get my hands on that.”
Probably the wrong person. But I was nervous, all right? These are really big questions. You need to ask the questions. Nothing prepared me, however, for what I saw when I got full disclosure.
So, I still remember the day I saw the first spreadsheet. And when I looked at it, I called my executive pastor, and I said, “Hey, there’s a mistake with this spreadsheet. There are at least five people I can think of off the top of my head who say that they give big to this church. They’re not on the list. So you’ve made a mistake.”
Right? He looked at all the data, and he said to me, there’s no mistake. They’re not telling you the truth. I was shocked, all right, and so then I said, “Look, then our whole system is defective. Our list is defective. Right?”
Maybe the cutoff for who’s on this list is too low. And he looked at me, and he looked at the raw data again, and he said, look, if they worked at McDonald’s and they made minimum wage and they tithed, they would be on the list. Their giving is below that.
Well, that blew me away because these people were business owners, they were successful, and they’re saying they tithe, and they’re not even giving what you would give if you made minimum wage at McDonald’s.
I was crestfallen. Some of these people were really successful. And I had no other conclusion than that they weren’t telling me the truth. And then what I saw next also shocked me. Among the top 20 givers to our church were people I didn’t know.
I had no idea who these people were. I didn’t recognize the names, and they were being super generous. I didn’t even know who they were.
So then I asked myself, “Okay, well, how can I possibly, as a lead pastor, be devoting so much time to people who weren’t financially invested, and yet I don’t even know the names of some of the most invested people?” There’s a mistake with that.
And that’s when I learned this principle. The people who complain the most often give the least. And the people who give the most almost never complain. In fact, they’re almost always your biggest cheerleaders, right? They’re the mission’s biggest supporters.
They’re the ones sending you emails going, “Hey, this is awesome, way to go.” So that opened up a whole new era for us as a church. And as we learned to lean into people with the gift of giving, we helped them fuel the gift that God had given them.
So, if you’re looking for some help with this, I’ve got a step-by-step plan that will help you honor your top donors and invite new donors to give to your mission. You can check it out.
It’s Module Two in my course, The Art of Building a Generous Congregation. The course has proven methods; it has strategies to inspire giving, to create a culture of generosity, and to grow your church’s impact.
[11:02] One Last Objection to Disclosure
Now, one more objection. So you might, you know, listen, watch this whole thing and you’re like, I’m not fully convinced. You may think, okay, someone in leadership should have full disclosure, but why the lead pastor?
Like, why the top person? Well, here’s the principle. You have a hundred or a thousand voices chirping in your ear, telling you what to do if you’re the senior pastor, and they all claim to be valid, but now you know that the people who complain the most give the least, and the people who complain the least often give the most.
This knowledge is going to help you filter the choices so you can make better decisions. You’ve only got so much time; you’ve only got so much energy.
You will make better decisions if you know who to listen to most. And I’ve got a two-part filter that I run everything through. As a leader, when I’m processing all the voices in my head:
First, I ask, “Is there a biblical argument in what the person is saying?”
And if so, I have to listen, right? And if not, it’s probably about preferences, not about biblical principles.
So number one, even if it’s a critic, even if it’s somebody who doesn’t give a lot of money. Is there a biblical argument in what they’re saying? If it is, I have to listen.
Second, the answer to that first question is usually no because it’s usually the arguments about preferences, not principles.
Then the second question is, “Is this the kind of person we can build the future of the church on?”
If not, you thank them and let it go. But if this is the kind of person you can build the future of the church on, then you have to listen up, right? And when someone is heavily invested, they’re the kind of person who will help you lead in the future. After all, you could be wrong. You do not have a monopoly on wisdom.
[12:45] Deciding if You Should Have Financial Disclosure
So the question then is, should you get full disclosure? How do you know what the right decision is? How do you know whether you should get full disclosure?
Well, I think one of the factors has to be your attitude toward the information you might get.
If, as I said earlier, you can’t wait to see the list, you’re going to think about how you’re going to court your top donors and penalize the people who don’t give much. You’re not ready for disclosure. It’s not the right move for you.
On the other hand, if you’re a little bit nervous about it, if you’re worried that it might require a certain level of integrity that you’re not sure that you’ve got, well, you might be ready, right?
People who think that they have stellar character are rarely the people who have stellar character. And the people who worry about it, usually they’re the people who can be trusted.
Second, there’s a great verse in the Bible that guides me when matters aren’t clear. And in this case, I think it could apply.
Paul writes that everything that is not from faith is sin. So, if you can’t gain disclosure in faith, don’t get it. Like, if you can’t do this as a matter of faith and trusting God, then you’re not ready. Don’t do it.
Finally, you will want the input of your board. This isn’t an administrative decision. You just send an email. I want disclosure. You get it.
You want to submit yourself to your board, to your governing elders, and let them speak into whether they think you’re ready.
So those are the arguments, pros and cons. I personally think it’s a great thing for pastors who have the right character, attitude, and integrity to gain access because it’ll help you lead better.
But now, at least for yourself, you know the pros and cons of disclosure and nondisclosure, and whatever decision is right for you, make it and embrace it.
