The Twisted Tenth
The Miseducation of Tithing and the Restoration of Alignment
As a seminary-trained minister and church boy, I grew up understanding tithing as an obligatory sacrifice. You gave because you were supposed to. You gave because it proved faithfulness. You gave because obedience came before understanding.
As I got older, I started hearing the other side. The stories. The trauma. The quiet frustration. Money siphoned from the poor with little visible return. Church buildings expanded while communities shrank. Faithful people struggling financially while still giving and praying to be blessed.
It created a tension no one wanted to name.
Ten percent leaves.
Blessing comes back.
That was the math.
But the equation did not balance. People were faithful, disciplined, consistent, and still fragmented. Time scattered. Talent diluted. Energy poured into systems that required people but never multiplied them.
That is when I realized something uncomfortable.
We were not just tithing money.
We were tithing our lives.
Best ideas funding other people’s visions.
Creativity building institutions that did not know us.
Emotional labor sustaining structures that never planned for our growth.
Planting seeds in fields we did not own, then asking God for harvest in our own backyard.
So I went back to the scripture.
Bring all the tithes into the storehouse (Malachi 3:10).
That line is quoted constantly. Usually presented as a fixed financial system. But as a minister, I had to ask a more honest question.
What is the storehouse?
Because if we never define the storehouse, we default to buildings. We default to institutions.
We default to structures.
But the deeper pattern in scripture is alignment before multiplication. God multiplies what is gathered, not what is scattered. And many of us are scattered across obligations, expectations, and inherited systems.
This is where the miseducation begins.
We were taught tithing as compliance instead of placement.
As obligation instead of investment.
As loyalty to structure instead of alignment with calling—the work(s) of God you are called to.
Tithing is not just giving.
It is allocation.
It is deciding what gets your first portion. Your first energy. Your clearest thinking. Your most intentional investment.
Because whatever receives your tithe grows.
And many people are faithfully funding things that will never multiply them.
This is not rebellion against giving. This is restoration of principle.
Tithing, properly understood, builds coherence. It pulls your life into alignment so your work, your calling, and your capacity stop competing with each other. You stop living divided.
You cannot multiply a divided life.
When I began to understand this, I took inventory. Not emotionally. Structurally.
Public speaking.
Writing.
Accounting.
Ministry.
Brand building.
Hospitality.
Storytelling.
Pain.
Recovery.
Leadership.
Faith.
Individually it looked scattered. Together it formed something precise. A throughline. A design. A voice.
That is when I realized I had been funding everyone else’s storehouse while mine sat locked.
So I redirected my tithe.
Not away from generosity. Toward alignment. Toward the storehouse within me.
I invested time into my own ideas.
I funded my own containers.
I developed my own voice.
I built the gifts I had gathered my life into one place.
And something shifted. My work stopped competing with itself. My decisions stopped fragmenting me. My life became coherent.
That is the part rarely discussed. Tithe builds the person. It forms the structure capable of holding increase. Because if the windows of heaven open over someone divided, the blessing leaks.
So the order becomes clear.
Tithe builds the structure.
Overflow fills it.
Offering flows from it.
For me, this alignment took form through Foragé Atelier.
I did not set out to build a ministry.
I set out to gather my life into one place.
Memory.
Ritual.
Hospitality.
Slowness.
Story.
Flavor.
Presence.
Small batch syrups became the container. Not because syrup is the point. Because ritual is.
A drink becomes an interruption.
An interruption becomes presence.
Presence becomes conversation.
Conversation becomes connection.
That is formation.
Coffee becomes intentional.
Hosting becomes sacred.
Taste becomes memory.
Suddenly my business was not separate from my calling. It became the place where everything converged. My voice, my past, my sensibility, my theology of attention. All of it lived there.
This is what it looks like to tithe into the storehouse within.
I invested in coherence.
And the return came layered.
Financial return.
Relational access.
Creative freedom.
Spiritual meaning.
Authority rooted in lived experience.
This is overflow.
And overflow is what you give.
Not because you are required to.
Because you finally have something to pour.
We have been trying to reverse that. Giving from obligation before we have built capacity. Giving from deficit instead of abundance. Performing generosity instead of becoming fruitful.
A divided and struggling people will produce a divided and struggling institution.
The Malachi instruction is often presented like a fixed formula.
Give here.
Receive there.
A guaranteed pathway.
But if we stop with an exiled people in Malachi and never continue to Jesus reminding us that we are the temple (1 Corinthians 6:19-20), we miss the shift.
The storehouse is no longer external.
Yet many people are still adhering to an outdated model disconnected from personal alignment.
The principle was never about preserving a structure. It was about sustaining alignment between provision and purpose.
When you tithe into alignment, your life begins to multiply. Your work gains clarity. Your generosity becomes sustainable. Your giving becomes meaningful because it flows from overflow.
That is when offering becomes real.
You do not have to be coerced.
You do not have to be guilted.
You do not have to be pressured.
Once you are aligned, your tithe produces an offering, multiplication happens. And what multiplies in excess becomes what you give to others (Malachi 10).
This is not about giving less.
It is about giving from abundance.
It is not disruption.
It is restoration.
A return to principle.
A return to alignment.
A return to investing your first portion into what God is building through you.
Because tithing was never meant to drain you. It was meant to form you. To gather your life into coherence so increase has somewhere to land.
And when that happens, generosity stops being forced and starts being joyful. For God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7).