Let me be absolutely clear: I do not judge anyone based on their giving. That is between them and the Lord. I am simply the man who counts it, records it, and prepares the year-end tax statements. I see numbers. I do not assign moral weight to those numbers. That said, I do have eyes, and I do attend the same church as you, and I did see you pull into the parking lot in a new BMW last Sunday.

I am not making a connection. I am noting two separate facts that happen to exist in close proximity to each other. Your giving is confidential. Your car is parked in a public lot. These are different categories of information, and I keep them in entirely separate mental compartments that occasionally share a wall.

“When you hand me an envelope with $20 in it and ask for a tax receipt, I process it with the same professionalism I bring to every transaction. I do not sigh. I have never sighed. The exhale you may have heard was unrelated.”

I’ve held this position for fourteen years. I have seen patterns. I have noticed that giving drops 40% on holiday weekends and spikes in December for reasons I assume are entirely spiritual and not at all tax-related. I have noticed that the people who talk the most about generosity in small group are not always the people I see reflected in the ledger. But again, I am not judging. Judging is the Lord’s job. My job is data entry.

My wife says I should step down if it’s affecting me. It is not affecting me. I am fine. I simply believe that transparency is a virtue, and if you’re going to propose a $4 million building campaign, you might want to know that the congregation’s average weekly giving is $22.50 per household. That is a fact, not a judgment.

At press time, I was preparing the quarterly report and had, for the eleventh consecutive quarter, resisted the urge to add a column labeled “Observations.”