My family and I made our annual trip to Fort Worth for Kenneth Copeland Ministries’ Southwest Believers’ Convention. As always, we had an awesome time. I highly recommend it for anyone who seeks a week of outstanding preaching and teaching, glorious praise and worship, and intense immersion in the Word of God. We were also blessed to reconnect with old friends and to make new friends.
We were also blessed to learn that 2774 people gave their lives to the Lord Jesus as a result of the work of Riley Stephenson’s evangelism team, which swept the streets of Fort Worth during the week before and the week of the convention. The Word of the Lord will not return to Him void, but will accomplish His purpose! (Isaiah 55:11).
On Saturday, though, I read an online New York Times article about the convention. Not surprisingly, it highlighted pictures of ushers carrying stacks of offering buckets and of a woman placing an offering on the steps of the platform, and included digs about the speakers’ preaching about prosperity and divine health, and the manifestation of health and prosperity in the speakers’ lives. The article also quoted a religion professor from the University of California, who attended the convention to do “research” on Word of Faith preachers. He gave his opinion that the preachers were irresponsible because they barely acknowledged the current economic downturn, and because they suggested that people continue to tithe and give while expecting a financial return from the Lord.
Let me flip open my Bible. It says that the tithe is holy to the Lord. (Leviticus 27:30, 32). My Bible tells me that the Lord considers it robbery to withhold tithes and offerings. (Malachi 3:8). The Lord also invites us to test Him and His promise that He will open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing for the tither, and that He will rebuke the devourer for the sake of the tither. (Malachi 3:10-11).
Jesus Himself preached the hundredfold return on giving (Mark 10:29-30) and that the giver will receive “pressed down, shaken together, and running over.” (Luke 6:38).
Obviously, the Times article didn’t include any such scripture references.
The Times article also missed the the theme of Brother Copeland’s messages during the convention: remaining clean of covetousness. In an awesome series of teachings, Brother Copeland taught from Luke chapter 12 about covetousness, and about maintaining a right relationship with money and things. Just like Abraham, we’re supposed to be blessed for the purpose of being a blessing!
I love to tithe and give. It’s an honor to be able to tithe and give. The day I stop tithing and giving will be the day I go home to be with the Lord. And because the Blessing of Abraham has come upon me (Galatians 3:14), I can be like Isaac and thrive in famine. (Read from Genesis chapter 26). If I thrive, I can be a blessing to people who are hurting, and to ministries that are spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
We already have our hotel reservations to return to Fort Worth next year. In the meantime, I plan to implement what I learned at this year’s convention. I and my family will continue to tithe and give, and to be obedient to the Lord as He instructs us. I’ll probably preach to Abundant Life Church in Athens some of the things I learned in the convention. When next year’s comes along, the Lord will have provided more than enough for us to attend and to be a blessing to other people along the way.
I thank God for Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, and to the other speakers at each year’s Believers’ Convention. My family and I are blessed to have heard them!
(If you want to see and hear the teachings from the conventions, you can find them online: http://www.bvov.tv/kcm/ondemand/2009swbc.php. Also, you can see the side and back of my bald head in the picture above).