Pepper in the Offering Bowl!

The Dagomba are a hospitable people who care for one another. Many of them don’t have much money to spend but if, for example, they are celebrating a funeral, many of them will contribute towards feeding the many visitors one can expect during such a festivity which can last for many days. Also when someone is sick, the Dagomba are prepared to contribute towards the cost of hospitalisation or medication. It would not be fair to pretend that you have nothing when somebody else is in need.

Some time ago, I overheard a conversation between one of our church members and an American visitor. The visitor asked how many bags of maize the family uses on a yearly basis. The church member answered, ‘Oh, we don’t know, we do not count the bags we need during the year. If at the end of the season some maize is left, we sell it.’

Sales of Yam to generate some cash

In Dagbon it is not only the nuclear family which is important but also the extended family and it can be very big. It is not possible that you as a family still have food to eat when other family members go hungry. You cannot put a claim on food and say, ‘this is only for us.’ It is therefore also hard to calculate the amount of food you will need in a year because that depends greatly on the extended family and the events which you are expected to contribute towards. In many cases this is a form of social security for those who have less food to eat. But it also puts a lot of pressure on families. In some cases, the responsibility of providing food for all the extended family falls on just two or three members. And it is not always because the others cannot work. On occasions, some members of the family are just lazy and try to profit from those who feel responsible for the family. This causes a lot of complications. Within the church we see a number of people suffering because the rest of the family puts a lot of pressure on them. We often advise those families to build their own houses, away from the family house so that they do not have to daily feed the whole family. This also encourages others within the family to take on the some of the responsibilities. Here one can see the wisdom in God saying that, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” Gen. 2:24.

A lot of  people own a few cows as capital investment. The Fulani people take care of the cows of many different owners for a small contribution

However, unlike the automatic contributions that are made to the family or community, people find it difficult to contribute towards the church – whether it is an offering or giving of tithes. One of the reasons for this might be that people think they have to contribute in cash. Most people do not have cash but do have a stock of food or goats and chickens. These items are usually sold for cash as and when the need arises. Some weeks ago, during a church service in a small remote community two women offered part of their harvest as their contribution towards the Church. What a wonderful and even Biblical way of giving. They brought a big bowl full of dried pepper and okra for the church to sell and to use its returns to serve the church.

The contribution - dried okra and pepper - from the women to the church

Dried okra and pepper

Education on ‘giving’ is also important. Why do we give to God? During last Sunday we had a discussion about this with a small church community. During the church service we realised that they did not have an offering. Abukari touched on the issue. The leader of the church supported him. If we do not give, God cannot bless us in ‘giving’. One of the women made a comment, she said, ‘After the harvest our houses are full of grains and we seem to be so rich. But after a little time, everything is finished and I do not understand how that happens, we had so much. And if everything is finished and I hardly have enough to feed my family not to speak of paying school fees for the children, then it is so difficult to give to God. Would He really want to bless me in this?’ God promises in Malachi 3:10, ‘ “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it…”’ We cannot give more than God, who for our salvation and wellbeing gave us his only son. Pray with us as Abukari devotes his time to teaching over twenty local churches on Biblical giving.