As minister, I seek not to know what members and friends give to the Church. I feel that this helps me to minister to the person without their giving coming into consideration. Sometimes, though, I become aware of a special donation, and wonder what to do. Or, sometimes, people might have expected a response to a donation where I knew nothing. Different Churches have different practice. In some Churches, giving is all but completely anonymous to the minister. In some, the minister knows exactly what every person gives, and may even address them personally about it. OBSERVATION: With this in mind, there is an unfortunate tendency in Churches, similar to what one finds in political conversation, to be 'respecters of persons' as the Bible calls it: a feeling of (cultural) entitlement on the basis of the quantity of one's giving (or perhaps more accurately, one's monetary worth, since those of monetary worth often are not quantity givers in the context of the Church).
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