How Much Should Christians Give?

The question usually arrives one of two ways.

The first is direct: "Am I supposed to give ten percent? Because I don't think I'm doing that." The man asking already suspects the answer. He is looking for permission to either start, or to stop feeling guilty.

The second is buried inside a more technical question: "If I tithe, should it be gross or net? What counts as income?" That version is doing something similar. The percentage is a stand-in. Beneath it sits a harder question: am I doing enough? Is God pleased with what I am giving?

I have heard both versions. Many times. And I understand why they arrive the way they do. For a lot of men, generosity is the one corner of their financial life where the theological pressure is real and the actual teaching is thin. They have heard that Christians give ten percent, without quite knowing where that came from or whether they are measuring it right. And if they are honest, they are not totally sure what they are doing with money in general, which makes the giving question feel heavier than it needs to.

So let us go through it. The real answer. Because the question of how much to give is genuinely worth thinking through carefully, and the answer touches something deeper than a percentage.

The Tithe Is a Floor to Build On

Paul never names a percentage. "Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver" (2 Corinthians 9:7). I have worked through what that means for whether the tithe is even a rule in its own piece, so I will leave that argument where it lives. What matters for the amount question is what the tithe is actually good for once you stop treating it as a law: a number to think with.

Think about how that plays out. If you tell a man to give "cheerfully and generously" without any anchor, you will often get nothing. Or whatever was convenient last Sunday. A vague invitation to generosity mostly produces good intentions, and good intentions do not reach anybody's offering plate. The national numbers say as much: 17.1% of Canadian tax filers claimed any charitable donation in 2022, down from 22.4% a decade earlier. Cheerful and generous, left unanchored, rounds down to zero.

The tithe gives you a number to think with. Ten percent of your income is a place to start asking: can I do this? What would it take? What would have to change? That interrogation is useful. It forces a real conversation between you and God about what you actually believe about stewardship.

The danger is when the tithe becomes a ceiling. When ten percent feels like the full obligation, the thing that gets God off your back, the line you cross to feel like a good Christian. At that point you have turned giving into a bill, and a man pays a bill so he can stop thinking about it.

John Piper has argued that for many comfortable Western Christians, taking the New Testament seriously will land well past ten percent. The tithe might be only the beginning of what a grateful, faith-filled man gives. The ceiling could be thirty percent. Or fifty. The tithe is the floor.

I have heard from men who have tithed faithfully for years and who still describe something restless about it. What they describe sounds like an invitation: there is more freedom in giving than they have yet explored, and they can feel it.

That restlessness is worth paying attention to.

The gross-versus-net question belongs here too, in miniature, because it is usually the amount question wearing a calculator. If you are stuck on which number to tithe and giving zero in the meantime, the answer is: give something, on either number, this month. The full gross-versus-net case is its own piece, and it will still be there once you have started.

Give First, While the Bills Wait Their Turn

There is a second question hiding under the amount question, and Scripture answers it more directly than it answers the percentage one: when does the gift leave? "Honour the LORD with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops" (Proverbs 3:9). Firstfruits is a timing word. The gift came off the top of the harvest, first and best, while the rest of the year's needs waited their turn.

Most of us run the month backwards from that. Income lands, the mortgage and the groceries and the phone plan each take their cut, and giving gets decided at the end, from whatever survived. I understand the logic, and the logic is the problem: giving from the leftovers means the leftovers are deciding your generosity for you.

Move the transfer to the top of the paycheque, and the ownership question gets answered on payday, before a single bill has weighed in. Every other line inherits the answer. That is why Give First sits at move 1 on the Steward's Map, ahead of the emergency fund and ahead of the debt. The order is the discipleship.

What Generosity Is Actually For

Let me say something that might sound strange at first: you should give to be changed.

The tithe question, when it is only a compliance question, is operating in the wrong frame. God does not need your money. "The silver is mine and the gold is mine," says the Lord Almighty in Haggai 2:8. God lacks nothing.

So why give at all? Because you need to. Because the act of giving is one of the most powerful things a man can do to reorient his heart around what is actually real.

Money is, in many ways, a mirror for the soul. Where you spend it reflects what you care about. Where you are reluctant to spend it reveals what you are afraid to lose. Jesus came back to money again and again in his teaching, and a good share of the parables turn on what a man does with what he has been handed. Money is one of discipleship's primary arenas.

Generosity trains your hands to hold loosely what God has given you, and it does that at a depth no amount of right theology reaches on its own. Every time you give, you are acting out an existential truth: this was on loan. I held it for a season. Now I am handing some of it back.

When a man gives, he begins to understand what God feels. God himself is the one true giver of all things, and when we give, we participate in that. The life of generosity and the life of faith turn out to be the same life.

I can say from my own experience: giving has brought me closer to God than almost any other practice. The moments of giving that required something real, the decisions where I was not sure how it would work out, those are the moments where I felt something genuine about what it means to trust.

If the question of what your life and your money are for is not yet settled, the gospel is where that conversation belongs. Every framework for generosity builds on that foundation.

One practical note before the framework: Canada gives part of every registered donation back to you at tax time, worth roughly $359 on a $1,000 Ontario gift once the federal and provincial credits stack. The full mechanics are covered elsewhere. Give for better reasons, then claim the credit anyway, and let it go back into the work once the CRA is done with your return.

The Giving That Never Lands on a Receipt

Money is the easiest generosity to measure, and it is a fraction of the ledger. In my own life, some of the best giving stayed entirely off the paperwork. We have opened our home. I have given my music, my time, and whatever skill I have with words, and some of the most useful serving I have done was work I was overqualified for. That kind stings a little, which is usually a sign it counts.

So if the debt is real this season and the transfer is small, your hands can still be open. An evening, a skill, a seat at your table, a truck on somebody's moving day: a man's generosity runs far past his chequing account, and a church full of men who believe that is provided for in ways no budget line will ever show.

How to Figure Out Your Own Number

After all of this, how do you actually arrive at an amount?

Here is a simple framework.

Start by naming what you are giving right now. Whatever the number is, say it honestly. If it is zero, that is where you are starting from, and God is not surprised by it.

If the reason it is zero is debt, you deserve a straight answer on that. Here is whether to tithe while you are paying off debt.

Second, ask what a tithe of your take-home pay would be. Treat the figure as a reference point you are testing, with nobody holding you to it. If you bring home $6,000 a month, ten percent is $600. The tithe calculator will run that on your real income, gross or net, with your province, CPP, and EI accounted for. Is that possible? What would have to change for it to be? That interrogation is valuable regardless of where you land.

Third, ask where God is inviting you. This is the prayer question, and I mean that practically. Give it a week before you answer. Is there a restlessness about your giving that might be God prompting you toward more? A specific need, ministry, or cause that you keep returning to? That recurring pull is often worth following.

Fourth, decide and automate. Whatever number you land on, set it up as an automatic monthly contribution. Take the decision out of your hands so it does not get re-litigated every month when money is tight. A giving amount you chose thoughtfully once is better than one you evaluate twelve times a year and never increase.

Last, revisit it annually. As income changes, as life changes, as your heart changes. The number is not fixed for life. Generosity should grow as God grows your capacity. If a man's income has doubled since his twenties and his giving has not moved a dollar, the giving stopped being a decision a long time ago and became a standing transfer he forgot about.

The goal is becoming the kind of man who holds money loosely and gives with genuine joy, and who finds out somewhere along the way that generosity is one of the most reliable routes to freedom he has.

Start This Week

If you have not given anything recently, or have been giving sporadically, start with this.

This week, set up a monthly automatic transfer to your local church. Start with what you can actually give this month. Keep it realistic.

The tithe goes to your local church. That is the body you belong to, the one carrying the preaching you sit under, the pastoral care, the staff and the hydro bill, and those obligations arrive every month whether anyone felt inspired that week. Handing it over also means trusting the church to steward what it is given, which is part of what it means to sit under its care. Giving past the tithe is where the rest opens up: missions, a parachurch ministry, a family in your small group who will never tell you what they need. Give that as God leads, and give it freely.

Then leave it alone for a year. Let it run. Do not evaluate it every month. Let the practice form you before you optimize it.

If you are already giving regularly and have been for some time, take a different prompt. When did you last ask whether your giving has kept pace with how your life has changed? Income tends to climb and expenses climb with it, and the giving line is the one thing on the page that will sit there unchanged for a decade unless somebody looks at it. Once a year is enough. Ask the question and adjust if the answer calls for it.

Giving touches something deeper than a budget line.

What you do with money is one of the clearest windows into what you actually believe about God and about who owns your life. Nobody gives his way into squaring the account with God, and the generous man knows it better than anyone. He is acknowledging, with every donation, that none of it was really his to begin with.

The tithe is a starting point, and cheerful generosity is the country it opens into. The road between them, walked faithfully, will change you more than almost anything else you could do with the money.

Our wealth is in the cross. Everything else is held in trust.