I've never understood the idea of passing the collection plate around. Religion was always meant to highlight community and togetherness. It's one thing to donate from the bottom of your hearts after the service. Ultimately, it does cost money to keep the lights on and maintain the building. However, we lose the plot at some point by factoring the monetary with the spiritual. It starts to get especially icky when a popular pastor like Marvin Sapp implements the money gathering into the service itself.
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At what point do we call this grifting after a while? Oftentimes, we might not even see where the money is going. Things must be especially desperate for the gospel singer, considering he essentially held his congregation hostage for funds. Recently, a clip surfaced of Sapp telling ushers to close the doors and informing the 1,000 attendees to pony up $20. That way, he can accumulate $40,000 in total and everyone can leave together.
Marvin Sapp Denies Hustling The Church, Uses The Bible to Defend Himself
This sounds an awful lot like a robbery to me. You have the ushers blocking the door from me leaving? I have a mandatory $20 fee to give up, it's not a voluntary donation anymore? This sounds legitimately insane and the kind of greed that goes against everything Jesus spoke about in the Bible. Moreover, He flipped over a whole table for this kind of behavior from Sapp.
However, he
defends his actions on Facebook and says the clips shown are taken out of context. Additionally, he claims that he gave more than anyone that night. Marvin emphasizes the budgets of big conferences and churches and that it's not explicitly about money. Rather, he says that it's merely a way of expressing commitment and dedication. Sapp goes on to use 1 Chronicles 29, where he identifies David challenging people to help build the temple by giving what they can."The Bible says they gave gold, silver, bronze, iron, and precious stones. Specific amounts were recorded not because God needed their money," Sapp says. "But because the people needed to show their commitment to the vision and because stewardship demands accountability."
This is outrageous; as someone with plenty of familiarity within the church and scammers alike, I know when those two ideas lock together. The Bible emphasizes giving what you can, not out of a mandatory need. Rather, it's quite the opposite, what's most important is the spiritual commitment, to dedicate yourself in worship. Of course, Sapp knows this. But he's either got a personal bill to pay off or he's more interested in expanding his empire than the worship of God. You would never catch Jesus or the Apostles preaching like this.
