Charity is supposed to be about giving freely, but sometimes those holding the purse strings worry more about saving than serving.

When a cautious church elder tried to limit who could receive help, he never noticed the quiet rebellion happening right under his nose.

You’ll want to read on for this one!

Only help the people that actually come to the church? No problem!

I am the pastor of a small church in the SE United States.

We have a “benevolence” fund that church members contribute to, which is designated to help people in need, such as assistance with power bills, water bills, rent, etc.

At the time this took place, we had about $6,000 in that fund.

We had about as much money coming in as we had going out, so the amount was more or less staying steady over a period of several months.

But some church leadership worried that this money was being used too indiscriminately.

The elder who was in charge of deciding who got help and who didn’t somehow got the idea that we were going to run out of this fund if we were not careful (not likely).

Therefore, he came to me and said, “Pastor, I think we need to restrict our benevolence help to those that physically come to the church, not just those that call in via the telephone.”

The elder explains his reasoning further.

He and I debated this back and forth.

There was no issue about people calling in being less likely to be legitimate cases—he was simply trying to reduce expenditures.

His line of reasoning was that at some point, one of our members might need some help for something big, and we needed to make sure that we had plenty of money on hand if or when they needed it.

But the pastor feels strongly that the fund should be kept open to serve anyone who needed it, regardless of their membership.

My position was that:

1. This money was given with the expectation that we use it to help as many people as possible and not just sit on most of it.
2. We had a really long way to go before we spent so much that we didn’t have any left in reserve.

Eventually the pastor decided to comply with the elder, but he had some tricks up his sleeve.

Not wanting to perish on this particular hill, I acquiesced to his suggestion.

However, when people started calling in saying that they needed help with something, I had a plan.

He gave the callers a specific set of instructions.

I told them, “Ok, here is what I need you to do: bring your bill and a photo ID to the church between such and such hours, and someone will at least talk to you. I can’t promise anything more than that, but someone will at least sit down with you.”

Never had a single person object to coming in, and they would usually show up shortly thereafter.

Others around him took notice.

The church secretary (who agreed with me on this one) overheard me telling this to someone and started laughing, knowing exactly what I was doing.

The elder was amazed at the curious increase in attendance!

A few weeks later, the elder mentioned to me, “You know, we are getting a lot more people coming directly to the church instead of calling in. Word must have gotten out about how we are doing this.”

Little did he know, the church was helping more than they ever had before!

I just replied, “Yep, it must have,” and then I would just smile and move on.

The elder passed away about four years ago, and I don’t think he ever clued in as to what I was doing.

Generosity always finds a way!

What did Reddit have to say about this?

This commenter applauds the pastor and his church for being one of the good ones.

When pressed, some people end up revealing far more of their true intentions than perhaps they mean to.

This pastor found a way to compromise (kinda) with his elder and also do some good!

Another person who’d once asked a church for money also had a horrible experience.

This elder may have thought he was steering the benevolence fund in the right direction, but thanks to the pastor’s intervention, the church ended up helping more people than ever before.

Sometimes you have to bend the rules to do the right thing!

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.