Generosity Revisited

To review, and then get to the point: the “topsy-turvy act,” called “tithing in reverse” by Manya Brachear Pashman in the Chicago Tribune, involved a $1.6 million windfall that fell into the hands of LaSalle Street Church, a self-described “evangelical” community of about 300 members that ministers in a complex neighborhood on Chicago's Near North Side. Admittedly, $1.6 million and 300 people are numbers that wouldn't register on the big news scene, but millions of church (and synagogue, etc.) members in their own small and often unsung enclaves would call them sizable. Instead of using the entire fund to help meet budgets and support existing ministries—which are many on LaSalle Street—the members, inspired by their pastoral and other leaders, decided to do church-funding and church-working “topsy-turvy” style, in the pattern of Jesus' ministries.