"There is a church not too far from us that recently added a $25 million addition to their building.
Our local newspaper ran a front-page story not too long ago about a study revealing that one in five people in our city lives in poverty. This is a book about those two numbers."
This is from the intro to Rob Bell's upcoming book, "Jesus Wants To Save Christians". What are your thoughts?
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Welcome back to the blogosphere my friend! Good to hear your "voice."
My thoughts on building bigger buildings for ministry .... ANNNNNNNG!(that is the annoying buzzer sound)
I am pretty sure that thriving church plants dispell the myth that it's all about the building. Granted, setting up in a school each week sucks! But it does have it's "advantages."
My point is this: Building bigger buildings that for ministry is so 1990's. I believe buildings help but not vital for "ministry" to take place.
I wonder what could be done with 13 million building and 12 million spent on missional ministry? For what it's worth ...
I have no problem with a church adding a $25 million addition to their building, but there's one catch: For every dollar they spend on the building, they need to spend nine on the ministries (and ministers' salaries don't count).
For where your money is, there your heart is.
I heard a cool thing from Rick McKinley (Donald Miller's pastor at Imago Dei in Portland): They've grown in numbers quite a bit, and were contemplating building a huge facility, but after prayer, they decided to rent a local high school's auditorium. I guess the school district is in massive debt and the auditorium is not being used, likely due to budget cuts. So they get to have church meetings AND literally give back to community. It's a beautiful thing.
Just think, by making due with smaller buildings, they could have a bunch extra every month to give to the poor. Yeah right, since when do churches give to the poor? That money would go right into another "program" that helped with maintenance of the church people who also don't give to the poor. (They give to church, because church told them they were supposed to.)
I know, I know - all churches are not that way, blah blah blah - whatever. MOST churches are close enough - you know how I know? Because if they weren't, we wouldn't have so much poverty, so many homeless people, hungry people, widows, orphans, etc...
The big point? Or at least one of the big points? Welfare is so out of control because the Church is failing to take care of the poor like Christ commanded.
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