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Lead Story- Blessings, Guaranteed

More and more churches (“hundreds,” according to a June Christianity Today report) offer hesitant parishioners a “money-back guarantee” if they tithe 10 percent (or more) of their income for 90 days — but then feel that God blesses them insufficiently in return. The South Carolina megachurch NewSpring instituted such a program in the 1990s and claims that, of 7,000 recent pledgers, “fewer than 20” expressed dissatisfaction with the Lord. Advocates cite the Bible’s Book of Malachi, quoting God himself (according to Christianity Today): “Test me in this.” “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse” and “see if I will not pour out so much blessing” that “there will not be room enough to store it.” [Christianity Today, 6-28-2016]