no sq

Church, the Poor, and Bigger Buildings

So I live in a small, conserative town. It has lots of nice, conservative churches. And this town tends to be isolated from the financial, social, and racial problems that plague bigger cities. But I want to ask some hard questions anyway.

What should a church do when it has, let say… an extra $10,000, a need for more nursery space, and a desire for greater visibility? Build or move into a bigger building, right? That’s easy enough.

Additional question: can you think of any church that can afford a building that does not own one?

Two competing values are at play: caring for our church members (who have kids that should be in a better nursery than what we’re providing) and caring for the poor. We have extra money - how ought we spend it?

Caring For Our Church Members

Care for our church members right now means having enough nursery space for the babies and children of familes that want to attend our church. It would be very difficult for any family with kids to make Trinity its home if we didn’t provide some kind of services for their kids - and I fully understand why some families would never bother to come in the first place.

If we can’t also offer good programs for their babies, kids, or teens, then they’ll probably be better off attending a place that can. (Anyone want to venture a guess as to why we have almost no teenagers in our church?)

I agree that having space for age-separate daycare is important. I agree that well-equipped teachers to instruct them are important. And I also feel that having nicer rooms, separated from the main service, better heating, and better access to bathrooms would be a welcome improvement.

And how nice to not have to set up and take down chairs every week! And maybe even our sound equipment will already be in place - think of all the work and time that would save!

Wow - having all that stuff would be so nice…

An Alternative

But none of those things are completely out of reach at our current building, are they? It would take a lot more work, but I know of another church - Mosaic - that has amazingly dedicated teams of people to do cleanup and setup so that they can hold their services in Club Mayan on Sunday mornings. (They’re also in the process of buying property in the Glendale area, I believe; mostly for family reasons: they want space for families and kids to be able to play. Can’t do that so much in the middle of downtown L.A.)

So we’re not warm enough? We can buy more space heaters. Not pretty enough? We can buy nicer furnishings or create our own artwork to transform the place - and for a lot less than $10,000 a year.

So we have to move it in and set it up every Sunday - so what? What’s a little bit of extra labor compared to giving an extra, say… $7,000 away? I know the poor, or missionaries, or other disaster victimes (hurricanes, earthquakes, you know: usual acts of God) would feel the need for what that money can provide a lot more than we feel the desire for a nicer space.

The Air We Breathe

A post on churches and money caught my attention a little while ago. I’ve never fully replied with my thoughts on his post because I’ve been busy changing jobs…

But a lot of what he wrote rung true of my experience in InterVarsity - IV, church, and missions are all run the way they are in this country because we have a lot of disposable income. The models - and some of the values behind them - that the evangelical American church has in these areas about “how things ought to be done” do not translate to other cultures. (And I could write a whole other post about this one sometime.)

The evangelical church breathes the cultural air of “money will make me happy” just as deeply as the rest of the world around it. But what ought to be poison (Matt. 6:24) to our system is hardly given a second thought, it seems.

Hypothetical Challenges

What if we lived in earlier times and the most we could ever hope for was a one-room church building with wooden pews? What if we wanted families with children to come and there were no other churches for miles around - what would we do then?

What if our church’s mission statement was the same as Jesus’? To quote an article from the PCA magazine:

To Herald His ministry, Jesus read His mission from Isaiah 61, “to preach the good news to the poor… proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed” (Luke 4:18, 19).

Oh, but surely Jesus only meant the spiritually oppressed and poor, right? Right…

What if that was our church’s mission statement? (Thought: what if it was my own?)

One final hypothetical: what if our church had nothing but bare wooden floors, 100 degree heat in the summers and a 40 degree chill in the winters? Would people still come? Would they be drawn by the message of the gospel?

What really brings people to our church?

My Choices

I would opt for one of two plans -

1. Let’s stay where we’re at since there is no space advantage to moving to a new location. Everything else we want could be achieved if a sufficient number of church members agreed to help setup, decorate, and pre-heat rooms. I’ll put myself on the line and volunteer to do this at least once a week for a year.

2. Let’s move to the new building but agree to a “matching fund” type of deal: everything that we pay in rent over our current location is also given away over the course of the year to help those in need. Church members should have a voice in determining and learning who “those in need” are.

   I’ll put my money on the line and do the same for the next car I buy: whatever it costs I will also give away. So it takes me twice as long to save up for a car? So what? If you have choices you are a person of wealth. I have choices.

But…

I know: we live in suburbia. “There are no poor peple here.”

Living in suburbia (which was created to escape the poor, btw) does not exclude us from responsibility to the commands of God.

I hope the church makes a decision in line with the values in chooses to follow. That, at least, is integrity.

For me, I will continue to struggle to live out a love for the poor in my own life. I won’t pretend to be an expert at it. But the gospel… the gospel is about loving the poor and loving our neighbor. Isn’t it?