‘Cheap Christians’: Pastor Blasts Church for Not Funding His Lifestyle

When Tithing Turns Toxic

Dan Foster
Backyard Church
Published in
6 min readOct 8, 2024

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Image by Wirestock on iStock

Back when I was part of the church, one of the things I found most awkward was the part of the church service when an open offering plate was thrust under your nose by an eager and expectant church usher (usually an older man), with the expectation that you will put a wad of cash in it.

This uncomfortable tradition of ‘sending around the plate’ is usually prefaced by an ‘offering talk’ (that in some churches is almost as long as the sermon itself), where parishioners are encouraged to let the moths out of their purses and fill the coffers of the church for the good of the Kingdom.

I’ve been around the church long enough to have seen some pastors play fast and loose when it comes to asking their congregations for money, but the pastor I just viewed on YouTube takes the cake. In fact, he takes the cake and eats it too.

The offending video is of a pastor berating his congregation for being so damn stingy that he can’t afford to buy that Mova watch he’s been wanting to buy.

Pastor Carlton Funderburke, the senior leader of a congregation in Texas, named the Church at The Well, became an overnight sensation for all the wrong reasons when a video of his sermon went viral. In the video…

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Dan Foster
Backyard Church

Writer, Poet, Blogger: Tackling life, faith, culture, religion, politics, and spirituality. Connect with me: https://linktr.ee/DanFosterWriter