{"id":4731,"date":"2006-10-01T15:16:51","date_gmt":"2006-10-01T20:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2006\/10\/01\/tith-o-matic\/"},"modified":"2006-10-01T15:16:51","modified_gmt":"2006-10-01T20:16:51","slug":"tith-o-matic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2006\/10\/tith-o-matic\/","title":{"rendered":"Tith-O-Matic"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Church, an ‘ATM for Jesus’<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jeans are welcome at Stevens Creek Community Church, the 1,100-member evangelical congregation Baker founded 19 years ago. Sermons are available as podcasts, and the electric house band has been known to cover Aerosmith’s "Dream On." A recent men’s fellowship breakfast was devoted to discussing the spiritual wages of lunching at Hooters.<\/p>\n

It is a bid for relevance in a nation charmed by pop culture and consumerism, and it is not an uncommon one. But Baker has waded further into the 21st century than most fishers of American souls, as evidenced one Wednesday night when churchgoer Josh Marshall stepped up to a curious machine in the church lobby.<\/p>\n

It was one of Stevens Creek’s three "Giving Kiosks": a sleek black pedestal topped with a computer screen, numeric keypad and magnetic-strip reader. Prompted by the on-screen instructions, Marshall performed a ritual more common in quickie marts than a house of God: He pulled out a bank card, swiped it and punched in some numbers.<\/p>\n

The machine spat out a receipt. Marshall’s $400 donation was routed to church coffers before he had found his seat for evening worship.<\/p>\n

"I paid for gas today with a card, and got lunch with one," said Marshall, 30. "This is really no different."
\n<\/a> [Via Relapsed Catholic<\/a>] <\/p>\n

Reminds me of a parody I did for Spero New<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n

Are you a priest or pastor of a congregation looking for new ways to raise funds to support your church and yet are having the same old financial difficulties after the collection basket is passed each Sunday?<\/p>\n

Have you preached about stewardship until your blue in the face and still the favorite denomination of your denomination is the one dollar bills?<\/p>\n

Have you given so many homilies concerning being a cheerful giver that you have lost track and yet your flock is cheerfully not giving?<\/p>\n

Have you even tried the following joke with no effect.<\/p>\n

\n

There was this $20 dollar bill and a $1 dollar bill on the conveyor belt at the downtown Federal Reserve Building. As they were laying there side by side the $1 dollar bill said to the $20 dollar bill, "Hey mannnnnn, where have you been. I haven’t seen you in a long time?" The $20 dollar bill replied, "Man I have been having a ball!! I’ve been traveling to distant countries, going to the finest restaurants, to the biggest and best casinos, numerous boutiques, the mall uptown, the mall downtown, the mall across town and even a mall that I just newly built. In fact, just this week I’ve been to Europe, a professional NBA game, Rodeo Drive, the all day retreat spa, the top-notch hair salon and the new casino!! I have done it all!!!"<\/font><\/p>\n

After describing his great travels, the $20 dollar bill asked the $1dollar bill, "What about you? Where have you been?" The $1 dollar replied, "Well, I’ve been to the Baptist church, the Methodist church, the Presbyterian church, the Episcopalian church the Church of God in Christ, the Catholic church, the Mormon church, the A.M.E. church, the Disciple of Christ church, the… "WAIT A MINUTE! WAIT A M I N U T E !!", shouted the $20 dollar bill to the $1 dollar bill. "What’s a church??" <\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You have tried every conceivable means to shame them into supporting the church through tithing to no avail. Don’t despair because we have just the product for you.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/td>\n\n

Your problem until now was that despite possibly excellent biblical exegesis and great homilies that you couldn’t get to them at a personal level. They might have felt like possibly they should contribute more, but just didn’t have the proper incentive. <\/p>\n

The Tith-O-Matic solves all your problems by appealing to their pride. People will no longer be able to use the excuse that they didn’t have any cash on them. They simply swipe their Debit\/Credit card into this ultimate in automated collection basket.<\/p>\n

For further incentive each contribution is accompanied by an appropriate sound effect. The donor’s credit report is checked to see if the tithing amount is in the appropriate range. Depending on the teaching of your church the recommended tithing setting can be set. Use the traditional ten percent or whatever percentage is deemed appropriate.<\/p>\n

If a recommended tithing is detected a heavenly choir sound effect is played.<\/p>\n

If the amount is higher than the recommended tithing setting lights flash and alarm bells sound.<\/p>\n

If the amount is lower than the recommended tithing set a "boing boing" sound effect is repeatedly played until a more appropriate amount is entered. If still no proper donation is given, their name is entered on a low score screen which can be published in next weeks bulletin.<\/p>\n

The Tith-O-Matic even comes with "Widow’s Mite" detection. When this state is detected the words of Jesus are played "Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living."<\/p>\n

For even more incentive to be generous – each donation is accompanied by a printed receipt for tax purposes.<\/p>\n

Collection baskets are low tech and can’t even detect when people pretend to put something in the basket. Go hi-tech with the Tith-O-Matic and we guarantee you will never want to go back to simple collection baskets.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

There is a funny story that goes along with the above parody. An Australian diocesan magazine paid for a couple of my parodies including the one above and ran them. The editor emailed me later that after this had run the one above, one of their pastors not realizing it was a parody called them wanting to order one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Church, an ‘ATM for Jesus’ Jeans are welcome at Stevens Creek Community Church, the 1,100-member evangelical congregation Baker founded 19 years ago. Sermons are available as podcasts, and the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}