I went to Kettering, near my parish in Northamptonshire, on Monday to pay in some money at the bank. The high street was unusually busy for a place that has struggled in recent years, like so many, to maintain its centre. Among the crowds was a bunch of young people sitting round a bench and, as I walked by, one of them noticed my dog collar, or so I thought, and said: "Excuse me, do you know where Charity Lane is?" I said I didn't, and as I made to walk off she said: "But while you're here …" It was then I saw the clipboard and the RSPCA logo on her T‑shirt, and realised they were "chuggers". "Sorry, busy," I said and walked away. "That's not very nice," said another.

Charity muggers – street fundraisers as they prefer to be called – have now spread, it seems, from cities to little market towns, where they are paid to stop passersby and sign them up to standing orders supporting charitable causes, from Save the Children to the RSPCA.

I like the object of the exercise; I hate the method. There is no Charity Lane in the town, so what was that question about? It was a trap, I suspect, to make me stop and to introduce the word "charity" into the conversation. If so, it was a technique typical of chugging, as was the conscience-pricking "That's not very nice," as I went away.

Between the post office and the bank I was approached three or four times by RSPCA chuggers; so often and so persistently I began to feel like a winger facing the All Blacks. As I went into the bank another tried to stop me and I said, with impatience: "I'm busy", without breaking step. "That wasn't very nice," he said, in the tone of a school prefect, and I turned and said: "It's chugging that's not very nice," which came out with more heat than I'd intended. Bad vicar.

It isn't very nice. I watched the chuggers at work and saw how they accosted people with arms outstretched, a friendly gesture that is actually designed to funnel you in to their proposal; how they chastised those who wouldn't stop; how they muttered insults at their retreating backs.

Like the charities they represent, they are only trying to make a living. As a vicar who spends much of his time concerned with fundraising, I know what that is like. I had gone into town to pay a big chunk of our parish share to the diocesan authorities, the amount we are asked to raise each year to fund the work of the Church of England in these parts. As it gets harder to make ends meet, I understand also the temptation to employ the dark arts of persuasion – after all, when it comes to pressurising people into handing over their money, the church is a past master. I wonder how much my church in Finedon, a magnificent 14th‑century building, owes to the medieval view that before admission to eternal bliss some departed souls required a bit of assistance. Huge endowments were left by the rich and powerful to pay for prayers to be said by the living to that end; the richer and more powerful, the bigger the endowment. I remember one elderly priest of my acquaintance regretting the decline of belief in hellfire: "Very bad for business."

I suppose it was, but I don't regret its passing. The real issue, as I see it, is not about coercing or pressuring or frightening people into giving, it's about understanding what giving is. Give because it is good to give, because generosity begets generosity, because we might learn something about enduring value, because by making ourselves poor we become rich. I would say that, wouldn't I, from where I'm coming?

Back in the real world, it butters no parsnips. Interesting, then, that some of the richest people that have ever lived – Bill Gates, Warren Buffet – are now committed to giving their wealth away. This is, of course, no substitute for economic justice, but, in an age where disparities of wealth seem as egregious as they did in the Victorian era, it is good to see philanthropy of Victorian energy and ambition reappear.

One of the earliest Christian hymns, sung at the footwashing on Maundy Thursday, goes: "Ubi caritas est vera, Deus ibi est." This can be translated as: "Wherever charity is true, God is there." Like most people I talk to, I have never regretted anything I've done out of generosity. I have regretted everything I've done out of meanness (including snapping at a chugger trying to make his targets).