Those who refuse to give the “first fruits” of their income are no better than homosexuals and will go to hell, Grace City Church Pastor Josh McPherson said in a sermon titled “Are Christians Required to Give Money to the Church?” in March.
“If you’re sitting here claiming to be a Strongerman and wearing the gear and you are not tithing to God through this church and you’re some alpha male who likes to look down on all those gay sex men, just know that God views you and those men as the same,” McPherson said.
“First fruits” means the 10% off the top of whatever your household income is, and McPherson stressed that’s just the starting point. It’s a position McPherson has been vocal about since he started GCC, and former members have said McPherson tells his followers to pay their tithes before their mortgages, car payments and grocery bills1.
Anyone who doesn’t do this falls into one of two categories, “tippers” and “takers” and McPherson was upfront about his goal of shaming them throughout his sermon that Sunday morning on their growing 12-acre compound in Wenatchee’s affluent Sunnyslope neighborhood. Although church numbers have increased by 600 in the last two years, only one-third of the congregation are giving like they should be, McPherson said.
At the beginning of his longer-than-usual sermon, he said he was going to administer a “spiritual colonoscopy” to the crowd and more than once took aim directly at the members of his special men’s group he calls the “Strongermen.”
“Men if you are here calling yourself Christians, calling yourself a Strongerman, and you’re not tithing to this church either hand in your gear and turn in your mancard and leave or repent and start obeying God,” he said. “But do not be a freeloader at this church. We need your seat. We need your parking spot. We need your place to be replaced by a man who will actually have the nuts to obey Jesus with his finances.”
Throughout the sermon McPherson came back a few verses from one book of the New Testament – 1 Corinthians 6.
It’s a letter written by the Apostle Paul, who never met Jesus Christ, to Christians in the Greek colony of Corinth. When read in context it’s clear the focus of the letter wasn’t tithing but rather sexual immorality, lawsuits among believers and treating the body as a temple of God2.
Jesus himself didn’t speak much about tithing in the gospels, which are the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the men who spent time with Christ. But he did address it in Matthew 23 verse 233 in which he makes a point of dressing down some elites for focusing on tithing and failing to see it’s equal to other important matters, like being just and merciful.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin,” Christ said. “But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.4”
The Stick: Shame and Threats of Being Shunned
More than once McPherson acknowledged the fact that he was trying to shame some of the folks in the room, and at one point moved himself to tears talking about the single mothers who work “three jobs” who give more than some of the “six-figure alpha men” in the room.
He also dressed down folks sending their children to GCC’s private school, Garden City Academy, and not giving at church.
“By the way let me just stop there, to go to Garden City Academy and take a 50 percent cut in tuition where everyone receives the ACE scholarship and not give a penny to the church that’s funding that – shame on you,” he said.
Bottom line if you don’t tithe then you are greedy and greedy people aren’t going to go to heaven, McPherson said.
“Shame on you who have known the teaching of God and failed to obey it,” he said. “And I’m praying this sermon is a wake-up call to save your soul.”
God doesn’t need your money of course, he said, but by offering him your “first fruits” shows your commitment to him. If you’re greedy you’re disconnected and separated from God, he said.
According to McPherson the Apostle Paul said that greedy people are in a state of sin by not giving, therefore the people of the church must show them what it’s like being separated from the people they love in this life.
“So what Paul is saying is, ‘If they are sinning in the physical realm in a way that is obvious to all, rebuke them and then separate from them if they refuse to repent and change so that the physical status of separation from the church can remind them of the reality of the spiritual status of their soul, were they to die,” he said.
If you persist in the “sin” of not giving not only will you be shunned by the members Grace City Church, but McPherson said you’ll also be punished by members of other churches in the valley as well.
“I want you to know this. If they land at another church I call that pastor and I warn them there’s a wolf among them,” he said. “You’re like: ‘That sounds like a cult.’ It’s called the church.”
