Spending on Ourselves
What should we be spending our money on? I got this today from a friend. A blogger in Atlanta was comparing the costs of some megachurch programs with the cost of making the world a better place. Hope this helps us think about what it means to create a church that really has mission as the central priority of everything (including budgets):
• Estimated cost of the new 3,000-seat North Point Ministries church to be built on Lenox Road: $40 million
• Annual budget of the largest church in Atlanta, First Baptist Church: $13 million
• Number of uninsured children in Georgia: 166,000• Approximate cost to give a basic check-up, without blood tests or vaccines, to all those children: $12,450,000
• Approximate number of Sudanese refugees who've fled to neighboring Chad because of tribal warfare: 250,000
• Cost to shelter and feed those refugees for one year: $13,590,000
• Minimum number of homeless people in metro Atlanta 37,000
• Minimum number of meals provided to homeless by the Open Door Community each year: 15,600
• Annual budget of the nonprofit Open Door Community: $440,000
Sources: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia Department of Community Health, Georgia Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Save Darfur Coalition, CARE, Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, Open Door Community
posted by Bob | 8:56 AM
4 Comments:
Amazing indictment of our priorities... really puts a sweet soundsystem or media projector in perspective. We're not called to have the most beautiful church, but to feed the hungry, succor the sick, clothe the naked. This should be an important issue for us as we move forward.
This raises an interesting question for me also- once we decide to spend our money on aid, where do we spend it? How do we use our dollars to cause lasting improvement, in addition to temporary relief?
Bob: thanks for the post. The disconnect between what Jesus said should be a primary way that we live out the faith - taking care of "the least of these" - and the way Christians/churches spend their money is something that needs to be talked about more. Giving 10% to church and calling that good enough is not within shouting distance of following this foundational imperative of the Christian life if your church is spending all or most of the money it gets on its own staff, physical infrastructure and programming.
It is interesting and relevant that Jesus' talk on the least of these comes immediately after the parable of the talents. It has been my experience growing up in conservative evangelical churches that this parable gets "spiritualized," and talents (the money God has given us) becomes talents (a nebulous idea of our "gifts") and the idea that Jesus might be saying that we are to use our money to take care of those who are unable to take care of themselves is either glossed over or ignored completely. (I have noticed a similar thing with the feeding of the 5000 – no one seems to notice that what Jesus is doing is feeding hungry people and that to follow his example would be to do the same.)
When Jesus talks about taking care of the least of these, it is immediately following an illustration on money. To focus solely on how Jesus met the spiritual needs of people while ignoring the many, many ways he met their physical needs is to ignore half of the gospel message. James 1:27 says that religion that the kind of religion God accepts is one that takes care of orphans and widows (the least of these). If we are not doing that as Christians and churches, we should be asking ourselves what kind of religion we are practicing.
David Johnson
I definitely agree that church's in general need to be very careful of how they spend their money. The backbone of any church should be a deep trust in the sovereinty of God. From that we must see that church is not about being appealing to the outsider (physically) or entertaining those regularly attending members by huge props and stage shows.
But we have to be careful when we choose to go out and infect the word with our surplus of funds. I had a professor last year talk about the differences between Muhammed and Jesus.
Muhammed was a conqueror and conquests during his lifetime for "the faith" have a lot to do with why Islaam is so prevelant today. Jesus, on the other hand, did very little to promote his ministry physically. He wasn't a conqueror and he didn't spend time rallying the troops for an invasion of Christianity. When He died there was a very small population of the earth that even had a clue he ever existed.
What I'm getting at is that we need to check our motives. Are we thinking about things in the vertical, in relation to God, or in the horizontal; how many people (numbers) can I reach today?
Good point anon, we do need to be aware of our own tendency to 'promote' Christianity with our dollars, but I don't see that as a big stumbling block if we are being missional. Helping a friend out of one's own surplus is a natural expression of love and good will, in my opinion, so if we're living missionally we'll have appropriate outlets for resources in the needs of our community.
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