What If......?

What if every adult in Britain was willing to give away 5% of their income?  

The report "UK Giving 2005/6" estimates that UK adults each give an average of £183 a year to charity.  That doesn't sound that much, until you realise that totalled across all UK adults, it's a huge £8.9bn. This represents about 1.2% of income. That's either a lot, or a little, depending on how you view our relative wealth.

Remember that in the UK, an average income will put you in the top tenth of the World's earners.  To get into the top 1% of the list, you don't even need to pay higher rate tax!  

So, if British people were willing to give 5% of their income away, rather than 1.2%,  that would create additional giving of £28 bn or approximately $56bn.  That matches the World Bank estimates for financing the successful achievement of all of the United Nation Millennium Development Goals.  Amongst other things, that would :
Halve the proportion of people with less than one dollar a day.
Halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger
Achieve universal primary education
Reduce by two thirds the under-five mortality rate.
Halve the proportion of people without access to potable water.
Significantly improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers

That would be just from Britain's giving!  Whilst it is unrealistic to expect that British citizens would achieve this alone, it shows just how attainable these targets are.

What if every Christian in Britain was willing to give away an additional 5% of their income?

An additional thousand million pounds a year, or ONE BILLION pounds, would be invested in God's economy. Just imagine for a moment what that could do if the money was divided five ways….. 
Using one fifth of the money would enable our churches to fund 10,000 more full time community workers called to work with our children and young people, the old and the disadvantaged. 
Perhaps two fifths might contribute to the fight to eradicate poverty and ill-health. This share would generate new funding exceeding the current income of Christian Aid, CAFOD, Oxfam, World Vision, CMS and Tearfund combined. 
A further fifth might provide the start up capital to initiate projects such as centres for refugees and asylum seekers, debt counselling centres, community cafes and other projects. If the average investment required to initiate each project was £100,000 then 2,000 such projects could be funded each year. 
A final portion could be given to our churches, to enable local ministry and mission to grow and prosper, without the need for penny pinching. The average church might gain around £5,000 per year to help remove the lack of finance as a barrier to many visionary ideas and projects.

Now that really would be a Money Revolution!