Church Sounds Caution on Credit Card Giving

Seventh-day Adventist leaders in North America say that although credit-card giving in churches is a growing trend among many denominations, Adventist churches should take a cautious line on the practice.

It’s important that church members understand that credit-card giving is for convenience, and is not introduced in order to make more demands on church members, says Dan Jackson, president of the Adventist Church in Canada, where a pilot project will start using credit card donations this summer during a camp meeting.

“We don’t believe in giving on the spur of the moment,” says Jackson. “We want church members to figure out at home how much they want to give. We don’t want people to be in debt.”

For the past year some 30 Adventist churches in Southern California have also been allowing church members to give donations by way of credit card. “We’ve found that if we accommodate them, they will give,” says Theodore Benson, treasurer for the Adventist Church in the Pacific Union. “If the church can’t offer a service where it’s convenient to pay they’ll take their money elsewhere.”

Many of the church members only deal with bills once a month and some churches have found a credit card is easy for these members, he explains.

Members can go to a Web site and give to their church online. But Benson warns that this practice is not for everyone. “We have brochures as well as instructions on our Web site that point out some of the pitfalls of credit card donation,” says Benson.

“We want to offer a service that some of our members can use, but we try to caution them so they’re not ignoring good stewardship counsel.”

Offering a credit card option for church members has not changed the amount that most church members give, says Benson. While some churches have reported a 10 percent increase in tithe giving, he says, this mainly represents donations from church members who previously weren’t giving at all.