From the smallest to the largest, whether the intake income is $25 a week or $2.5 Million, every Black church in America needs to have a financially-viable department that addresses needs and issues with regard to JOBS, INCOME, BUSINESS STARTUPS and DEVELOPMENT, ENTREPRENEURSHIP, and EDUCATION/CAREER DEVELOPMENT.

Let’s face it…as much as we like to tell Black America they need to start thinking “outside the box” or stop living like an “employee,” everybody isn’t cut out to be a business owner; but for the ones who are … the church they attend has as much of a role to play in their development as business owners as any school or college or secular outside enterprise.

A person who has chosen to live a God-centered life need not wake up every day and hear about their work-life-career choices ONLY from institutions that don’t focus on their core being as followers of whatever belief system they’ve chosen for the moment, or potentially for life.

Talk about them all you want, but I have yet to hear about any such thing as a jobless Mormon or a homeless Jehovah’s Witness. The tribes and the folds bring it on in and take care of themselves and one another, and you have to be a member of their organization in order to receive that help. They often use those push-button hot topics as a lure to bring outsiders into the veiled cloakrooms of Mormonism (“Need a job?”) and Witnessing (“Need groceries or a place to stay?”) …

And yet there are MEGA churches worth MILLIONS out here who can’t even seem to pry their doors open when a HURRICANE AND FLOOD comes through town and devastates their entire tithe-bearing flock and everyone else around them.

SAY WHAT?!

Yes, that’s right.

Every member of your church, Black people, should be able to come to the Community Affairs Division Office of your church and get financial assistance and information regarding financial assistance with everything from bill-paying to babysitting to job-searching to business-opening to family and nation-building. Not just the principles out of scriptures, but a FAITHFUL APPLICATION of those same scriptures.

Yes, there are public assistance offices and the SBA, but that has no bearing on the church’s economic and financial responsibility to its church members. The government is one thing, the Church is another. We live among Caesar, we don’t become Caesar.

After all, tithes done RIGHT means the church and its keepers are only to have a TITHE OF THE TITHE (10%) and the other NINETY, yes 90-percent is supposed to go into the STOREHOUSE (The Community Center of the People) for EQUALITY OF REDISTRIBUTION, so that “he who has much does not have too much” and “he who has little has no lack.” That is after and according to the Order of Melchizedek, King of Salem, and that is the true interpretation of Malachi 3:10.

Melchizedek did not tithe to the preacher, he tithed to the “preacher” (i.e., Abraham) to give unto his men who had fought so valiantly in the war to bring back Abraham’s nephew, Lot, and all of their possessions.

“Bring me ALL of the tithe in the storehouse and prove me now in this, thus saith the Lord God, if I will not open up the windows of Heaven and pour you out a blessing that you will not have room to receive.”

The scripture was, after all, speaking to the Priests/Levites who were commissioned to keep the Temple, in that they (the Priests) were stealing from the Storehouse laid up for distribution to the People, instead of being satisfied with the portion that had been allotted to them directly by God. The Lord God was essentially, in Malachi 3:10, TELLING THE PRIESTS OFF BECAUSE THEY WERE STEALING THE PEOPLE’S OFFERINGS FOR THEMSELVES and it was NOT their properly allocated portion.

That is a fact of scripture, not a made-up fairytale about a white Roman ‘Jesus’, big houses, Cadillacs and Benzes, and finding a comfort zone in The Word in which to display all of your material fineries and call it a “blessing.” Debt is NEVER a blessing and the hope that goes along with that prayer is that you will be able to maintain the job you need to pay for it all.

Thet’s not the blessing, the STUFF, God is not impressed by your STUFF, for He owns it all anyway. He who gave it is He who will take it away.

Think about how much your church might NOT be struggling with finances when your flock isn’t struggling just to make ends meet. It’s called THE LAW OF RECIPROCITY. If you are not investing in your church members, you shouldn’t be expecting any blessings from them.

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ETERNAL PEACE AND SECURITY IN A GODFORSAKEN WORLD

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