Young couples discover tithing as one of “marks of a disciple”

HUNTINGTON Before approving a budget for the coming year, members of First Baptist Church of Huntington know that they must commit to give as God has directed them. “It’s one of the marks of a disciple,” explained Pastor Darryl Smith as he led a panel discussion on tithing last year in preparation for a vote on the 2015 budget.

The East Texas church traces its history to 1901 after a revival team from nearby Lufkin held a brush arbor meeting on Main Street. A week later a group of people met to organize a Baptist church that has remained focused on the task of making disciples ever since.

“The way we deal with money is an accurate barometer of how we deal with God,” Smith shared. “Tithing is an acknowledgment that God is Lord over all our life.”

The church’s steady commitment to giving 13 percent of undesignated gifts to the Cooperative Program extends its ministry well beyond the local community of Huntington to reach around the world.  The church’s contributions in 2014 placed it among the top 100 CP contributors in the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention which recorded $78,529 in undesignated gifts.

This year Smith invited several couples who are in their 20’s to offer testimonies of how they had adopted the practice of tithing in recent years. “The future of the church is dependent upon this generation,” Smith told the congregation. “If we as a church do not teach and encourage and inspire the 20-somethings and 30-somethings to say, ‘God needs to be God of my finances,’ then you look at the church 20 or 30 years down the road and we are in trouble.”

The young adults acknowledged the value of incorporating a tithe into a family’s budget. “When we get paid and then we spend it and let it go out of the checking account and don’t pay attention, that’s when it seems to be tight,” one man noted.

“If I’m complacent it just goes and I don’t tell my money where to go. But when I budget, it goes in line with how God wants us to be good stewards of our money,” he shared.

Good stewardship is encouraged through the testimonies of missionaries invited to speak to the church. This year’s world missions offering goal surpassed the $10,000 goal to raise $18,000 for international, North American, state and associational missions.

In addition to local ministry and mission trips to Mexico and Muldova, First Baptist Church of Huntington adopted a people group in West Africa four years ago. “We go four or five times a year with two or three people,” Smith told the TEXAN. “

“Missions involvement is a key for getting them to buy into missions giving. “They know where the money’s going,” Smith said.

“Our members feel more invested as far as supporting the Cooperative Program.”