"How much should I give?" is a question the Treasurer often hears, and one which I usually answer by asking people to balance their own needs against those of St Ursula's. Any attempt to give a precise guide based on scripture or on history is doomed to failure.
Before the settlement of the Promised Land, which we associate with the stories of Moses and Joshua, giving and offering were very basic, a simple matter of offering an animal as a sacrifice to God. And because God neither eats nor spends money, people ate their sacrifices themselves, "giving" God the blood by pouring it on the ground, or in a holocaust, by burning the whole animal, sending it up in smoke.
After the settlement of Canaan, things became more complicated. A religious caste arose, the Levites, among whom were the priests, the descendants of Aaron who eventually became responsible for conducting the sacrifices in the Temple in Jerusalem. In theory the Levites and even more the priests were landless - though we read in Nehemiah that this was only partly true, and we know that several chief priests were also rich landowners.
To support the priests and Levites, ordinary people made an offering, detailed in Numbers 18. This was of a tenth of their produce, the tithe offering. But this was not the only tithe - for example, Deuteronomy 14 describes how people were to take a tenth of their crops to Jerusalem - four years in seven they were to eat it there, or sell it, and two years in seven, they were to give it to the Levites and to the poor. If your Bible includes it, Tobit 1:6-8 describes the three tithes a devout Jew might pay in some years, shortly before the time of Jesus.
In addition to the tithe, there were the first-fruits of various kinds of produce, as well as the temple tax, which paid the Temple's running costs - half a shekel a year, or two days' pay for a simple labourer.
But of course the Temple is no longer with us. Jesus himself had no buildings to maintain, and no staff to pay. His disciples followed him voluntarily, and as far as we can gather, the fishermen among them carried on fishing for fish in between fishing for men. We know that they kept a common purse - Judas Iscariot was in charge of it, but we do not know what it contained.
The tradition of voluntary apostleship continued with Paul, who was proud that he had always supported himself from his tent-making business. But Paul insisted that others who "proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel" (1 Cor 9:14)
The Sunday collection was intended primarily for the poor (1 Cor 16:2), though at times part of it was used to support the ministers and, after the church had grown too large to meet in private houses, to maintain buildings. But at least by the eighth century, a system evolved for supporting the clergy and their work with a fixed offering of agricultural produce and the profits of trade, also called the tithe - tithe barns (Zehntenscheunen, granges dimières) can be found all over Europe. The Sunday offering was normally "for the poor", defined more closely as "such pious and charitable uses, as the Minister and Churchwardens shall think fit" (1662 Book of Common Prayer).
These were not the only sources of money for the work of the church: legacies, gifts, endowments all played a part, and mediæval fundraising would require a whole book to describe. After the Reformation, many countries took over the support of the church, replacing the tithe with a church tax, but not in England, where tithes were gradually consolidated into lump payments, lingering on in a few places until 1996.
The free churches that arose after the Reformation had to support their ministry completely from voluntary giving. The Church of England at one time had massive endowments, but these have dwindled - it now has massive commitments in the form of old buildings to maintain! We at St Ursula's receive no benefit from these endowments: at the most they pay our bishops' stipends and provide a small subsidy for our clergy's pension contributions. Effectively we have to support ourselves - hence our pledge appeal! There is no recipe, no set amount, just the total cost, of some Fr1000 a day, that St Ursula's needs to carry on its ministry. May that need be met!
HD