Celestine Whitley couldn't believe what she was seeing: Her fellow parishioners at Baltimore's New Psalmist Baptist Church kept heading to the altar to lay money down each time the guest speaker hammered home a point during his sermon.
Whitley had recently seen such offerings performed on broadcasts of televangelist Bishop Eddie Long. But the practice -- known as seed offering -- left her confused. Was it Bible-based? Were the givers sincere or just showing off? Moreover, where was the money going?
"I said to myself, `What are those people doing walking up there giving that money? They weren't doing that before,' " she says. "They were giving dollars to this preacher, and he doesn't look as if he needed those dollars."
Today -- three years later -- Whitley has joined a growing group of parishioners who place money at the altar, a practice that has become popular and controversial in African-American churches. She changed her mind after talking to the ministerial staff and praying on the matter.
Some people view the practice as a genuine expression of faith, others view it as a distraction or an attention-grabber.
There are two schools of thought behind the practice, which is popular in charismatic, nontraditional styles of worship.
The first is that if the minister utters something that resonates with you spiritually, you place money at the altar -- tantamount to sowing a seed in the ground -- and ultimately you will reap blessings. The second is that if you're inspired by the minister's teachings, you need not wait for the offertory to give.
Nowadays, Whitley is a frequent and cheerful seed sower. So much so that once at a local gospel recording session, she was so inspired by the words of one of the musicians that she approached him and placed $15 in his hand.
"I've done [seed offerings] so many times I can't even count," she says. "Sometimes you can hear a word that ignites something inside you that lasts forever. It's all about what you believe and your faith, and it's not for everybody."
The act of sowing a seed has biblical roots.
"One scripture they [ministers] use is in Genesis, which talks about how God has made all things to reproduce after their kind," says Milmon Harrison, assistant professor for African-American and African studies at the University of California, Davis. "Another they use is in the New Testament, where Jesus teaches the parable of the sower. He talks about sowing into good ground, and receiving a 20-fold, 50-fold, 100-fold increase.
