ClarkeComments.com

Hello everyone:

I finished up “Distant Voices” and I really enjoyed it….so, I picked up another of C. Leonard Allen’s (along with Richard Hughes, this time) books, “Discovering our Roots: The Ancestry of Churches of Christ.”

If you’ve not read this book, pick it up. It provides some really great backgound on Restorationist thought in Christianity that occured before our movement began and which had great influences on our movement.

The best irony I’ve found so far is that alot of our restorationist roots came from the Puritans…who were later known as Congregationalists….who later merged with some other churches and formed the United Church of Christ. Its quite amazing how belief changes over time.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Our church pre-school finally closed.

The teachers in the pre-school demanded that the church pay their insurance and workers comp. payments up front this year, which total about $6000. Since our church has a hard time even paying our small staff (of interns, who make very little), it was a ridiculous demand… but one that they expected us to meet.

The worship ministry met and prayed over it, and asked God to have his will prevail….and so, on Monday, we were handed the keys to the pre-school by one of the member-teachers who just left the congregation because we couldn’t come up with six grand. This was an interesting moment. Very few of us had ever been inside this part of the building, as it was always kept locked and only the teachers and the pre-school “ministry” (what a misnomer…) leaders had a key.

It was sickening to walk inside. Our Sunday school classrooms are bare…we can’t afford supplies hardly….but the pre-school had everything…. a brand new freezer…the only H-Vac system in the building that works….. school supplies everywhere…toys…

Its amazing that such a small, insignificant pre-school could control an entire congregation for years.

I’m glad its gone. Maybe we can start focusing on doing the work of Jesus, and not on keeping a pre-school running.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Well, as you are all used to hearing from me, I’ve been busy. My family and I finally moved into our house, and I’ve been working non-stop. Every time I turn around there is a new crime to investigate or a new emergency to respond to. Being the “resident” ranger has its perks…but also its pains.

I’ve been reading a couple of books….right now I’m in the middle of “Distance Voices” by C. Leonard Allen. Most of it is a rehash of things I’ve read elsewhere, but Allen brings a lot of different material together into an interesting looking collection displaying the diversity of our movement.

I’ve had a couple of topics to blog on, but have never had the time, and now they’ve slipped my mind.

We missed church yesterday because I was really sick. I spent several hours at the hospital and several more in the bathroom. It was no fun.

The 3 Sundays before, however, we spent at an independent Christian Church. We went some Sunday nights to our congregation as well, but the situation there is deteriorating more and more…and I think that sooner of later it will close its doors. When we leave the Christian church…we feel much more renewed and in touch with how we are supposed to live a Christ-like life than we do when we are at our church… I don’t know what is going to happen with that. Now that we live 30 miles from our congregation, it might be time to make a change. I guess we’ll see….

How are you all doing? I’ve not been keeping up with the blogs…any major changes in life?

-Clarke

Hello all:

I recently wrote a post on the Immorality of Church Finance.

A piece of information I left out in that post was about how the church I am a member of got into the precarious financial situation we are in. In my church finance post, I mention a member that was a large contributor financially, who moved away. That same member bailed the church out of a scheme, in the form on a loan. He is still earning interest each month on his loan to us.

The scheme that he bailed the congregation out of was that of bonds. The church sold bonds to various members of the congregation to raise money. Those members were making significant interest on their investment…in other words, they were making money off of the church… a lot of money.

When the congregation couldn’t afford to repay the interest, or the bonds, a wealthy member stepped forward and purchased all of the bonds. Those members who bought bonds got their money back, with interest, and the church started paying off its debt to this member. All of this occurred several years before we joined the congregation.

I believe this to be immoral. Loaning money on interest to Christians is not a biblical concept.

Unfortunately, I see that we are not the only group that has subscribed to this method of church finance. When I opened up my weekly email from the Christian Standard, I found the following ad (Click to make it full size):

Maybe someday we will learn not to do things like this.

I’m sending an email to Christian Standard about this blog post. I challenge them to drop ads from CDF.

-Clarke