Tithing???

I have recently been thinking about the practise of tithing in our evangelical church and have wondered again where it came from. It doesn't seem to be a scriptural thing at all to me and I find it curious that so many advocate it. True, we find it in the Old Testament a few times. Not once is it mentioned in a positive way in the New Testament though. But most churches rely on the OT to support this practise. So what texts give all these churches and people such a strong case? I'm not really sure. The Isrealites gave to the Levites a tenth every 3 years of their increase. But the Levites were the people who set up, tore down, carried stuff, basically did menial tasks. Today, the tithe is usually sent to the preachers/teachers of the Word, not the deacon types. Doesn't seem to be a correlation here to me.

I included a link here to a blog that talks about early church thoughts on giving/tithing. It was a short entry and fairly interesting I thought.

Update

Its been a bit since I last posted. Perhaps an update is due! Katie and I have been considering moving to KC. There are two strong points to do so. 1) We would like to be closer to my family and 2) there is opportunity to get a job in the finance industry to use everythingI studied and loved in school.

Also, I have recently had some good conversations with different ones in my chuch and felt closer to the chuch than I have in a while. It doesn't solve the main problem, but it helps.