Question, followed by some ranting

Is it acceptable to give part of your tithe money to charities instead of the church? Also, can you count time spent volunteering as part of your tithe(let's pretend for just a second that my time is valuable or matters to anyone)? I feel like the answer to both is no, but I want to donate to a Donors Choose project and I already donated money to Komen (October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, in addition to being Domestic Violence Awareness month. Bowling Green doesn't have a Komen run, so I just gave money.) and now that I am volunteering to do camera every other Saturday instead of getting paid to do the same, I am a little more strapped for cash. You know how it goes... It ebbs and flows.

I went to Sunday school for the first time in years this past summer. It is now called ABF (Adult Bible Fellowship) at Living Hope. I feel old. Anyway, that was not the point. The point is that the 20-somethings class was discussing submission and service. Which happen to be things I have been thinking about a lot recently. My church is fairly large, one of the larger churches in town, which is all well and good, except that in a church where more than 2,000 people come through three services each Sunday, it should not be the same 20 people doing all the work. I'm not even talking about the children's ministry because I know that they likely have the same problem and when our pastor Jason entreats people to serve, he generally talks about the children's ministry.

But the worship ministry remains the same. There are two guys at church who run lights. Just two. It's not like it's hard. I've done lights a few times, although I didn't read the handbook about the board and learn to program it so you can just press go to go the next light cue. We actually have more than two capable men who can do sound for the first time in memory, although it is still my dad more often than not (which is how he prefers it anyway). We do have more than enough graphics people too, although that is the thing that requires the most attention, but the least knowledge. There are only two people who do monitor board and the same maybe 7 people help reset the stage each weekend that that is necessary. We do not have enough camera people. Not even close. I was on for a month and a half straight this summer because we don't have enough. My dad has been on the list for camera recently because there aren't enough. I'm on five times this month, although two of them are for graphics (yay! I love being on graphics because then I get to sing all the songs three times. Also, I do better when something requires all of my attention, because if it's only some, I get distracted, so graphics inspires me to pay attention, since any mistakes made are obvious to all and sundry.). Really the only actually difficult tech crew job that would require more than one Sunday of demonstration would be sound. The same two people switch off doing monitor board on Sundays. It's just inconceivable to me that in a church as large as ours, more people don't volunteer to help. Our pastor wants to get three good cameras and actually make more use of the video aspect than just piping it into the lobby and nursing mothers' room as we do now. But I can't see that happening when we barely have enough people for one camera. For three we would need at least three per service and one director. And when I say I've been thinking about this lately, I mean ranting to several people about it. Ask around. Anyway, when the ABF leader asked at the end where people should serve I was like, hello! I doubt any of them will act on it, but at least I was there to offer the suggestion. I don't even remember how I wound up on the tech crew, although I'm sure it was about my dad. But we are more backstage kind of people, and I can't remember a time when my dad wasn't serving a church. Or a time when my mom wasn't serving by being in the choir. It's just how they roll and thusly, how the Benz spawn roll. When they sent out the tech schedule for August, they sent me an extra e-mail asking if they were overusing me because they didn't want to burn me out. I do sometimes get irritated about camera at church, but that's mostly because the situation is not ideal. The lighting on our stage is terrible, so that people on the right side are in the dark and people on the left side are overexposed. It's not cool and there's nothing you can do to make wide shots look good and you have to adjust the iris constantly as you pan. But I wouldn't quit, because it's something I can do and someone has to do it, and apparently no one else is going to volunteer. And I think it will be more fun after we get the lights fixed and have three cameras and a director. Sometimes I have fun doing it, if there's a lot going on that I have to stay on point for. Like I said, I'm easily distracted when something does not require my full attention. I've been on something so much this summer that now I feel weird when I go to church and don't have anything to do.