The Responsibilities of Leaders and Workers With Regard to Safeguarding Offerings

I. Properly Safeguarding Offerings

Next, we’ll go on to look at exactly what responsibilities leaders and workers should fulfill when it comes to safeguarding offerings. With offerings, leaders and workers must first understand what offerings are. When people offer one-tenth of what they take in, that’s an offering; when they clearly state that they’re offering money or items to God, those are offerings; when they clearly state that they’re offering an item to the church and God’s house, that’s an offering. Once they’ve understood the definition and concept of offerings, leaders and workers must have a definitive grasp of and manage the offerings people make, and carry out proper vetting in this regard. First, they’re to find dependable people whose humanity is up to standard to act as custodians to systematically keep records of offerings and safeguard offerings. This is the first task in the work that leaders and workers must do. These custodians of offerings may be of average caliber and incapable of being leaders or workers, but they will be reliable, and they won’t embezzle anything, while in their possession, the offerings won’t go missing or get mixed up, and they’ll be safeguarded properly. There are rules in the work arrangements for this. Nothing less than a dependable person whose humanity is up to standard will do. When people of poor humanity see something nice, they covet it, and they’re always looking for chances to take it for themselves. Whatever happens, they’re always seeking to take advantage. Such people cannot be used. A person whose humanity is up to standard must at least be an honest person, someone whom people trust. If tasked with safeguarding offerings or managing the church’s assets, they’ll do it well, meticulously, diligently, and with great care. They have a God-fearing heart and won’t misappropriate these things, lend them out, and so forth. In brief, you can rest assured when you’ve put the offerings in their hands that not a cent will go missing and not a single item will be lost. A person like this must be found. Furthermore, God’s house has a rule that not just one such person is to be found; two or three is best—with some of them keeping records and some doing the safeguarding. Once these people have been found, the offerings are to be categorized, and systematic records are to be made of who’s safeguarding what category of thing, and how much they’re safeguarding. Once suitable people have been found and things have been safeguarded and registered in categories, is that the end of the story? (No.) What should be done next, then? The accounts of incomings and outgoings must be checked every three to five months to see if they’re correct—that is, if the record keeper has been accurate with their recordings, if anything was omitted when it was registered, if the total amount is consistent with the accounts of incomings and outgoings, and so forth. Such accounting work must be done meticulously. Leaders and workers who aren’t very well versed in such work should arrange for someone who’s relatively adept at it to carry it out, and then conduct regular inspections and listen to their reports. In sum, whether or not they themselves understand the work of accounting and overall planning, they cannot leave the work of safeguarding offerings unattended, nor can they ignore it and simply not ask after it. Instead, they must conduct regular inspections, asking how the accounts that have been checked are and whether they match up, and then spot-checking some records of expenditures to see what the recent spending situation has been, whether there’s been any wastage, what condition the bookkeeping is in, and whether the incomings match up with the outgoings. Leaders and workers should have a firm handle on all these circumstances. This is one task involved in safeguarding offerings. Would you say this task is easy? Is there a degree of challenge to it? Some leaders and workers say, “I don’t like numbers; I get a headache when I see them.” Well, find a suitable person to help you with the inspections and supervision then; have them help you vet these things. You may not like or be good at this work, but if you know how to use people and do so correctly, you’ll still be able to do this work well. Use suitable people to do it and you can just listen to their reports. That also works. Hold to this principle: Regularly check and tally all the safeguarded assets with the person in charge of that work, and then ask a few questions about important expenditures—can you achieve this? (Yes.) Why must leaders and workers do this work? Because it’s protecting offerings—it’s your responsibility.

The offerings people make to God are for God to enjoy, but does He use them? Does God have use for this money and these items? Are these offerings to God not meant to be used to spread the gospel work? Are they not meant for all the expenses of the work of God’s house? Since they relate to the work of God’s house, both the management and expenditure of offerings alike involve the responsibilities of leaders and workers. No matter who offers this money or where these items come from, so long as they belong to God’s house, you should manage them well, and you should follow up on this work, inspect it, and care about it. If the offerings made to God can’t be properly spent to spread God’s gospel work, but are instead wantonly squandered and wasted, or even seized or taken possession of by evil people, is that appropriate? Is that not a dereliction of duty on the part of leaders and workers? (It is.) It is a dereliction of duty on their part. So, leaders and workers must do this work. It’s incumbent on them. Managing offerings well, enabling them to be used correctly in spreading the gospel work and in any work related to God’s management, is a responsibility of leaders and workers, and it shouldn’t be overlooked. The brothers and sisters painstakingly manage to save a bit of money to offer to God. Suppose that, due to leaders and workers being negligent and remiss in their duties, this money falls into the hands of evil people—it’s all recklessly squandered and wasted by evil people, or even seized by them. Consequently, the leaders and workers do not have enough money for travel expenses or for living expenses, and there’s not even enough money when it comes time to print books of God’s words or to buy necessary devices and tools. Is this not delaying the work? When the money offered by brothers and sisters is taken into the possession of evil people rather than being put to proper use, and money needs to be spent for the work of God’s house, but there isn’t enough, has the work not then been hindered? Haven’t the leaders and workers failed to fulfill their responsibility? (Yes.) Because the leaders and workers have failed to fulfill their responsibility and not managed the offerings well, and they haven’t been good stewards or put their hearts into fulfilling their responsibility with regard to this work, losses have been incurred to the offerings and some church work has been plunged into a state of paralysis or brought to a halt for a time. Don’t the leaders and workers bear a great responsibility for this? This is iniquity. You may not have seized, squandered, or wasted these offerings, and you may not have put them in your own pocket, but this situation has come about due to your negligence and dereliction of duty. Shouldn’t you bear the responsibility for this? (Yes.) This is a very great responsibility to bear!

II. Checking the Accounts

In their work, aside from implementing various work arrangements properly and being able to fellowship the truth to resolve problems, leaders and workers are to safeguard offerings well. They are to find suitable people, according to the requirements of God’s house, to conduct the systematic management of offerings, and from time to time, they’re to check the accounts. Some ask, “How can I check them when circumstances don’t allow it?” “Circumstances don’t allow it”—is that a reason to not check the accounts? You can check them even when circumstances don’t allow it; if you can’t go yourself, you must send a reliable, suitable person to carry out supervision, and see whether the custodian is safeguarding the offerings in a fitting manner, whether there are any discrepancies in the accounts, whether the custodian is reliable, how their states have been recently and whether they’ve been negative, whether they felt afraid when they faced certain situations, and whether betrayal is a possibility. Suppose you hear that money has been tight for their family—is it possible that they might misappropriate the offerings? Through fellowship and looking into the situation, you may see that the custodian is quite reliable, that they know offerings aren’t to be touched, and that no matter how tight money has been for their family, they haven’t laid a hand on the offerings, and through a long period of observation, it may be proved that the custodian is entirely reliable. Furthermore, it must be checked whether the surrounding environment of the house where the offerings are being kept is dangerous, whether any brothers and sisters have been arrested by the great red dragon there, whether the custodian of the offerings has faced any danger, whether the offerings are stored in a suitable place, and whether or not they should be transferred. The environment and circumstances of custodians’ homes must be inspected frequently, so that appropriate responses and plans may be made at any time. As you do this, you are also to make inquiries from time to time about which teams have acquired new devices recently, and how those devices were obtained. If they were bought, you must ask whether anyone reviewed the applications and signed off on them before they were purchased, whether they were bought at a high price or a reasonable market price, whether unnecessary money has been spent, and so forth. Say that, no issues are found with the books through checking and reviewing the accounts, but it is discovered that some buyers have been frequently squandering offerings in an extravagant manner. No matter how expensive something is, they’ll buy it; moreover, when they know full well that a product will go on sale, that its price will fall, they don’t wait, and instead they will buy it immediately, and they’ll buy the good stuff, the high-end stuff, the latest models. These buyers spend money without principles and in an extravagant manner, and they spend offerings to buy things for God’s house as if they were doing things for their enemy. They never buy practical things in accordance with the principles, but just find any store and buy things outright no matter their cost and quality. Once the items have been brought back, they break within a few days of being used, and these buyers don’t get them fixed when they’re broken—they buy new ones. In the event that when checking the accounts and reviewing the financial expenditures, it’s found that some people have been seriously squandering and wasting offerings, how is this to be handled? Should those people be issued a disciplinary warning, or should they be made to pay compensation? Both are necessary, of course. If it’s found that their hearts aren’t in the right place, that they’re simply nonbelievers, disbelievers, that they’re devils, then the issue can’t be resolved by just giving them a disciplinary warning or pruning them. No matter how the truth is fellowshipped, they won’t accept it; no matter how they are pruned, they won’t take it seriously. If they’re asked to pay compensation, they’ll do it, but they’ll keep acting in the same way in the future, and they won’t change. They certainly won’t act in accordance with the requirements of God’s house; instead, they will act in a willful, reckless, and unprincipled manner. How is this kind of person to be handled? Can they be used going forward? They shouldn’t be; if they are, then the leaders and workers are big dummies—they’re just too foolish! When such disbelievers are discovered, they should be dismissed, eliminated, and cleansed away from the church at once. They’re not even qualified to render service—they’re unfit to do so!

When leaders and workers are checking the accounts and expenditures, they may not just find cases of squandering and waste or some unreasonable expenditures—they may also find that some of the people doing this work are of low character, that they’re base and selfish, and that they have caused losses to the church work. If you discover this kind of situation, how should you take care of it? It’s easy to take care of: You must handle and resolve it on the spot—dismiss those people, then choose suitable people to do the work. Suitable people means those whose humanity is up to standard, who possess conscience and reason, and who are able to handle things according to the principles of God’s house. When they shop for God’s house, they’ll buy economical things that are also relatively practical and durable, things that are essential to buy. They aren’t necessarily bent on buying cheap things, but they don’t feel the need to buy the most expensive things, either; within a group of similar products they will choose those with fairly good reviews and reputations, as well as suitable price-tags, and of course, if their warranty is on the longer side, that’s even better. This is the sort of person you must find to do the shopping for God’s house. They must be right at heart, and they must consider God’s house in their actions, and think things through; they must also handle things according to the requirements of God’s house, acting and comporting themselves in a well-behaved manner, without equivocation and with clarity. Once you’ve found such a person, have them handle a few things for God’s house and observe them. If they seem relatively suitable, they may be used. But it’s not the end of the story once that’s been arranged—going forward, you must meet with them, fellowship with them, and inspect their work. Some ask, “Is that because they’re not to be trusted?” It’s not entirely down to a lack of trust—sometimes, even if they’re to be trusted, inspections still must be made. And what’s to be inspected? See if there have been deviations in their practice in situations when they haven’t understood the principles or if they’ve harbored distorted comprehension. It’s necessary to help them by carrying out vetting. For example, suppose that they say there’s a very popular item on the market, but they don’t know whether God’s house has use for it, and they’re worried that if they don’t buy it now it may not be sold anymore in the future. They ask you how to handle this. If you don’t know, then you should have them go ask someone who’s involved in that professional work. That professional then says that the item is a novelty that won’t be of use most of the time, and that there’s no need to spend money on it. With the professional’s opinion as a reference, it’s decided that there’s no need to buy the item, that to buy it would be a waste, and to not buy it now would be no loss. Leaders and workers must do their work to this extent. No matter how important or trivial something is, if they can see it, think of it, or find out about it, then they must uniformly follow up on and inspect it, and do this in the prescribed manner according to the requirements of God’s house. This is what it means to fulfill one’s responsibility.

Some people often apply to purchase some items, asking God’s house to buy these products, and through careful review and checks, it’s usually found that only one of five things requested needs to be bought, and there’s no need to buy the other four. What’s to be done in such cases? The items they apply for must be reviewed and considered in a strict manner, they’re not to be bought in a hurry. They’re not to be bought just because those people say the work requires them—those people are not to be allowed to arbitrarily apply for things at will under the guise of it being for their work. No matter what guise these people adopt, and no matter their urgency, leaders and workers or people in charge of managing offerings absolutely must be steady at heart. They must conscientiously inspect and check these things; there can’t be the slightest error. Things that absolutely must be purchased must be researched and given the green light by leaders, and if buying them is optional, they’re to be denied, not approved. If leaders and workers do this work meticulously, concretely, and in-depth, it will reduce instances of offerings being squandered and wasted, and even more so, of course, it will reduce unreasonable expenditures. Doing this work isn’t just a matter of looking carefully at what the recorded incomings and outgoings on the books are, at what the numbers are. That’s secondary. The most important point is that your heart must be in the right place, and that you treat every expenditure and every entry as if it were an entry in your own bank account. Then you’ll look at them in detail, and you’ll be able to remember them, and you’ll be able to understand them—and if there’s a slip-up or a problem, you’ll be able to tell. If you view them as someone else’s accounts or public ones, you’re sure to be blind of eye and mind, unable to discover any problems. Some people save a bit of money in the bank, and every month, they read their statement and take a look at the interest, then they check the accounts—they check how much they spend each month, how many withdrawals they make, and how much they deposit. Each entry is recorded in their minds, they know every number as well as they do their own address, and they’re clear on them in their minds. If a problem arises somewhere, they can spot it at a glance, and they don’t overlook even the slightest error. People can be so careful with their own money, but do they show the same concern toward God’s offerings? In My opinion, 99.9% of people don’t, so when God’s offerings are handed over to people for safeguarding, there are often cases of squandering and waste and various kinds of unreasonable expenditures, and yet no one feels it’s a problem, and the people responsible for this work never feel pangs of conscience, either. To say nothing of losing a hundred dollars—even if they lose a thousand, ten thousand, they feel no rebuke, indebtedness, or accusation at heart. Why are people so muddled when it comes to this matter? Doesn’t this indicate that most people’s hearts aren’t in the right place? How is it that you’re so clear about how much money you’ve got saved at the bank? When the money of God’s house is temporarily deposited in your account, for you to safeguard, you don’t take it seriously or care about it. What mentality is this? You’re not even loyal when it comes to safeguarding God’s offerings, so are you still a believer in God? People’s attitude toward offerings is proof of their attitude toward God—their attitude toward offerings is very telling. People are indifferent about offerings and they don’t concern themselves with them. It doesn’t sadden them if offerings are lost; they don’t take responsibility, and they don’t care. So, don’t they have the same attitude toward God? (Yes.) Does anyone say, “God’s offerings are His. As long as I do not covet or seize them, everything’s fine. Whoever seizes them will be punished—that’s their business, and they deserve it. It has nothing to do with me. I have no obligation to concern myself with it”? Is this statement right? It clearly is not. Where does it go wrong, then? (Their heart’s not right; they don’t defend the work of God’s house, and they don’t protect the offerings.) What is the humanity of this sort of person like? (It’s selfish and base. They care very much about their own things and protect them very well, but they don’t care about or ask after God’s offerings. The humanity of people like that is of such a low quality.) Primarily, it’s selfish and base. Are people of this sort not cold-blooded? They’re selfish and base, cold-blooded, and lacking in human feeling. Can such people love God? Can they submit to Him? Can they have a God-fearing heart? (No.) What do such people follow God for, then? (To gain blessings.) Is this not being dead to shame? How a person treats God’s offerings is most revealing of what their nature is. People aren’t actually able to do anything for God. Even if they are able to do a bit of a duty, that is very limited. If you can’t even treat offerings—which belong to God—correctly, or safeguard them well, if you harbor that kind of view and attitude, then aren’t you someone who is most lacking in humanity? Isn’t it false for you to say you love God? Isn’t it deceptive? It’s so deceptive! There’s no humanity at all in this kind of person—would God save such scum?

III. Following Up on, Looking Into, and Inspecting Expenditures of All Sorts, Carrying Out Strict Vetting

For leaders and workers to be good stewards of God’s house, the first work they’re to do well is to manage the offerings properly. Beyond safeguarding the offerings properly, they should carry out strict vetting with regard to expenditures of offerings. What does it mean to carry out strict vetting? Primarily, it means to absolutely eliminate unreasonable expenditures, and to strive to make every expenditure of offerings reasonable and effective, rather than the offerings being squandered and wasted. If cases of waste or squandering are discovered, leaders and workers are not only to put a prompt stop to them, but also to hold them accountable, and to also identify suitable people to do the work. Leaders and workers should know exactly where each expenditure goes and what each expenditure is for within their scope of management—they should review these things in a strict manner. For example, if a room is short of a fan, they should give parameters for who’s to buy it, how much is to be spent on it, and what functions it would be most appropriate for it to have. Some leaders and workers say, “We’re busy; we can’t make time to go along to buy it.” You are not being asked to go and buy it yourselves. You should get a good person, a person of caliber to handle this task. Don’t get a bad person who is a blockhead and whose heart is in the wrong place to buy it. People of normal humanity know that they have to buy things with appropriate functions and an appropriate price-tag—excessive functions are useless, and they cost considerably more. Pleasure-seekers whose hearts aren’t in the right place, by contrast, buy impractical things that have a jumble of various kinds of functions, which costs more money. Buyers must possess reason; they must understand the principles. Purchased items must be practical without costing a lot, and be deemed suitable by everyone. If you get an irresponsible person who loves indiscriminately spending and squandering money to make this purchase, they’ll just pay a high price for a top-of-the-line air conditioner, for ten times what it would cost to buy a fan. They believe that though it costs a bit more money, the people must be our first priority—that air conditioner not only filters the air, it can also adjust the humidity and temperature, and it has various timers and settings. Is that not a waste? This is wastefulness and squandering. That person is out to enjoy themselves, and they’re spending money for kicks, to show off, not to buy practical things. Such people have their hearts in the wrong place. If they shop for themselves, they find ways to save money, look for discounted items, and try to bargain. They save money if they can—the cheaper the better. Yet when they shop for God’s house, no matter how much money they spend, they don’t care. They don’t even bother to look at cheap things; they just want to buy expensive, high-end, state-of-the-art stuff. This means their hearts aren’t in the right place. Can people whose hearts are in the wrong place be used? (No.) When handling tasks for God’s house, people whose hearts are in the wrong place only do absurd and worthless things. They don’t spend money on the right things; they just waste and squander offerings, and every one of their expenditures is unreasonable.

Some other people have a poverty mindset and they believe they must buy the cheapest things when they shop for God’s house, the cheaper the better. They think this is saving God’s house money, so they exclusively buy obsolete, cut-rate things. As a result, they purchase the cheapest machines that are shoddy. These machines break as soon as they are used, and they are beyond repair and unusable. Then it’s necessary to buy other ones that are of adequate quality, and that can be used normally, and so another sum is spent. Is this not foolish? Such people are to be called stingy, and possessed of a poverty mindset. They always want to save God’s house money, and what comes of all their scrimping and saving? It turns into waste, into the squandering of money. They even make excuses for themselves: “I didn’t do it on purpose. I had good intentions—I was just trying to save God’s house money—I didn’t want to spend money indiscriminately.” Is them not wanting to do that of any use? In fact, they are spending money indiscriminately, they do cause wastage, and this does consume money and manpower. Such people can’t be used, either—they’re blockheads, they’re not savvy enough. In brief, people with their hearts in the wrong place aren’t to be used to shop for God’s house, and neither are blockheads. Those who should be used are savvy people who have a certain amount of shopping experience and a certain caliber, and who view everything in an undistorted manner. Whatever’s being bought, it must be practical, and its price must be reasonable, and even if it breaks, it must be easy to fix, and it must be easy to buy parts for it. That’s reasonable. After some people buy something, they see that it has a one-month return window and rush to try it out, and they get their results within the month. If it’s a bit faulty and doesn’t work well, they return it right away, and pick something else, reducing losses. These people have relatively good humanity. People without humanity buy something, then toss it aside. They don’t try it out to see if there’s anything wrong with it or if it’s durable, nor do they look at how long its warranty is or how long they have to return it—they don’t care about any of this. When one day they take a sudden interest in that item, they take it and try it out, only then to find that it’s broken. They check the receipt and see that the return window has passed, and the item can’t be returned anymore. They then say, “Let’s buy another then.” Is that not a waste? “Let’s buy another”—with that phrase, God’s house has to fork over another sum of money. Applying to buy another seems on its surface to be for the sake of the church work, and a reasonable expense, when in fact, beneath it all, it is due to them being remiss in their duties by not promptly checking the item after they’d bought it. One sum of offerings is wasted, and another is paid, and the new item still has no one good to safeguard it, so it, too, is only used for a short time before it breaks. It’s surprising that there’s no one to oversee these things, no one to handle the problems that arise—what are the leaders and workers doing? They’ve been entirely derelict in their duties with regard to this work—they haven’t performed their function of supervising, inspecting, and carrying out vetting, and so offerings are squandered and wasted like this. If the buyers are responsible people, they’ll promptly return an item they’ve purchased when they see it isn’t practical. This reduces loss and waste. If they’re irresponsible people with their hearts in the wrong place, they’ll buy shoddy things, thus wasting offerings. So, who exactly should this loss of money be attributed to? Don’t the buyer and the leaders and workers all bear responsibility for this? If the leaders and workers had handled this matter conscientiously, concretely, and meticulously, wouldn’t these problems have been discovered? Wouldn’t these flaws have been made up for? (They would have.) If leaders and workers often go to the churches in various places to inspect the status of the expenditure of offerings, they will be able to find problems, and eliminate this sort of squandering and waste. If leaders and workers are lazy and irresponsible, these cases of unreasonable expenditures and of squandering and waste will arise repeatedly—they’ll continue to proliferate. What causes this proliferation? Doesn’t it have something to do with leaders and workers not doing real work, and instead situating themselves above others and acting like ineffective officials? (Yes.) Such leaders and workers have no conscience or reason, and they have no humanity. Because all the money the church spends belongs to God’s house, and it’s all God’s offerings, and they believe it has nothing to do with them, they neither care nor ask about it, and they ignore it. Most people believe that the money of God’s house ought to be spent, that it’s fine to spend it in any manner, that so long as they don’t pocket or embezzle it, it doesn’t matter if it’s wasted, and that it’s just people buying experience and broadening their horizons. Leaders and workers just turn a blind eye to it: “Anybody can spend that money however they want to, and buy whatever they want to. It doesn’t matter how much is wasted—whoever wastes the money is responsible for it, and they will face retribution and punishment in the future—this has nothing to do with me. I’m not the one spending it, after all, and it’s not my money being spent.” Is this not the same view and attitude that nonbelievers harbor toward the spending of public funds? It’s just as if they were spending their enemies’ money. When nonbelievers work in a factory, if the management is lax, communal items will always be stolen and taken back to people’s homes or casually ruined, and if something breaks, they will ask the factory to buy a new one. When they shop for the factory, they will exclusively buy good, expensive things. In any case, the money will be spent arbitrarily, and without any upper limit. If believers in God also have such a mentality toward offerings, can they be saved? Will God work upon such a group of people? (No.) If people have an attitude like this toward God’s offerings, then you should know without Me telling you what sort of attitude God has toward those people.

The most direct way in which a person’s attitude toward God manifests is in their attitude toward offerings. Whatever your attitude is toward offerings, that’s your attitude toward God. If you treat offerings as you do the entries in your own bank account—meticulously, carefully, cautiously, rigorously, responsibly, and attentively—then your attitude toward God is more or less the same as this. If your attitude toward offerings is like your attitude toward public property, toward vegetables at a market—casually buying a few of whatever you need and not even looking at any of the vegetables you don’t like, ignoring them no matter where they’re stacked, not caring if anyone takes them and uses them, pretending not to see when they’ve fallen on the ground and someone steps on them, believing all this has nothing to do with you—then that spells trouble for you. If that’s the sort of attitude you have toward offerings, are you a responsible person? Can a person like you do a duty well? It’s obvious what sort of humanity you have. In brief, in the work of managing offerings, the main responsibility of leaders and workers, beyond safeguarding them well, is that they must follow up on the subsequent work—most importantly, they are to regularly check the accounts, as well as follow up on, look into, and inspect expenditures of all sorts, and to carry out strict vetting. They’re absolutely to eliminate unreasonable expenditures before they result in squandering and waste; and if the unreasonable expenditures have already led to those things, they must hold the culprits accountable, give them a warning, and have them pay compensation. If you can’t even do this work well, hurry up and resign—don’t occupy the position of a leader or worker, because you can’t do the work of one. If you can’t even take charge of this work and you can’t do it well, what work can you do? Tell Me systematically: How many tasks are there, in total, that leaders and workers must do with regard to offerings? (The first is safeguarding them. The second is checking the accounts. The third is following up on, looking into, and inspecting expenditures of all sorts, and carrying out strict vetting; unreasonable expenditures must be eliminated, and no matter who causes squandering or waste, they must be held accountable and made to pay compensation.) Is it easy to work according to these steps? (Yes.) This is a clearly delineated way to work. If you can’t even do such simple work, then what is it you can do as a leader or worker—as a steward of God’s house? There are instances of offerings being wasted and squandered at every turn, and if, as a leader or worker, you have no awareness of it and don’t feel bad about it at all, then is God even in your heart—is there even a place for Him there? This is questionable. You say that your God-loving heart is great and that you really do have a God-fearing heart, yet when His offerings are squandered and wasted like this, you somehow have no awareness of it and don’t feel bad about it at all—does that not call your love and fear of God into question? (It does.) Even your faith is questionable, let alone your love and fear of God. Your love and fear of God doesn’t hold up—it’s not tenable! Safeguarding offerings well is an obligation leaders and workers should fulfill, and it’s also their unshirkable responsibility. If the offerings are not safeguarded well, that’s a dereliction of duty on their part—it can be said that all who safeguard offerings poorly are false leaders and false workers.