R.G. LeTourneau and the Reverse Tithe

In 1935, Robert Gilmour LeTourneau stood in his Peoria, Illinois factory surrounded by earthmoving machines of his own design. He had nearly lost everything during the Depression — creditors circling, contracts evaporating, his company teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. But LeTourneau had made a commitment years earlier that he refused to abandon: he would give generously to God's work, even when the numbers made no sense.

He started tithing ten percent. Then twenty. Then fifty. By the height of his career, LeTourneau was giving ninety percent of his income and living on the remaining ten. He famously quipped, "I shovel out the money, and God shovels it back — but God has a bigger shovel."

His factories went on to produce seventy percent of all earthmoving equipment used by Allied forces in World War II. He held nearly three hundred patents. The boy who had dropped out of school in the eighth grade became one of America's most successful industrialists — not in spite of his radical generosity, but woven inseparably through it.

LeTourneau took the Almighty at His word. He tested the promise of Malachi 3:10 with an open hand and discovered what the prophet declared centuries before: when we bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, the Lord throws open the floodgates of heaven and pours out blessing beyond what we have room to contain. God's economy has never operated by our arithmetic.