ClarkeComments.com

Hello all:

I’ve been pondering church finance as of late. My congregation is having money problems, as I have written before. We just had a member move out of the area, one that was a significant financial contributer.

On Sunday, our minister led the Lord’s Supper and took the collection. There was no Lord’s Supper reflection, which is not the norm for our church…but there was a lengthy reflection on giving…of a type I’ve never heard in a Church of Christ yet. Our minister spoke about how giving money can be equaled by others through their giving of time and energy. He was rebuffing a comment made by another member recently about how our worship ministry should respect the wishes of those who give the most money.

Every time I look at our bills and church finances, I see a trend. Our congregation treats people different based on how much money they give. We seem to “employ” some people who are in need of money and have a certain status, yet we take money from others. A case in point:

We employ two widows, one of whom was an elder’s wife, through our pre-school. None of the students in this pre-school attend our church, so, in essence, we take money from non-believers and give it to church members. The pre-school doesn’t break even… no matter how much a couple of members claim… they generate thousand dollar energy bills which the church ends up subsidizing to provide two “jobs” to two widows. At the same time, we rent our parsonage to another widow, a member of the church….. we take her money, along with rent subsidies that the state provides… the money she gives us in essence bankrolls the pre-school. We take money from one person is deemed “not as worthy” to give to someone else that is deemed “worthy.”

To top it off, we also receive rent from Cingular Wireless, as they have a cell-phone tower on our property. Never mind the immoral acts AT&T is involved in….we take their money and subsidize the pre-school and the church.

Our $2.5 million building is falling apart. I’m not sure if that is a good thing, or a bad thing.

-Clarke

Sometimes I reflect on growing up in the church and what we were taught….and then I reflect on what being a Christian is really about.

How did the real meaning of what it means to be a Christian get lost in some Churches of Christ? Campbell and Stone worried much more about being a real Christian than in having every last detail right..so how did it happen? Lipscomb and Harding, the separatists that they were, were very worried about being true Christians….so Sand Creek wasn’t the turning point as far as it all goes….how did it happen?

-Clarke

you think this is one of the coolest things you’ve ever seen:

Zwingli Gear

I want one. lol

-Clarke

Hello all:

In the past year, the little congregation that my family is a part of has gone through a period of ups and downs. We placed membership just a little over a year ago, and became a part of a group of only a couple of younger families in the congregation. My wife was baptized on Christmas of last year, not long after we placed membership, so we had a honeymoon experience with the church.

Not long after, we were fully immersed in the culture of this group of believers. We found out that the church had had close to 350 members before a series of splits occured, caused mostly by the former minister who had finally been thrown out of the congregation six months or so before we arrived. Morning worship attendance was now down to around 65.

I was brought into the worship ministry, which was trying to reform the worship into something a ltitle more “modern”. I was also asked to teach the teenagers, which was something I had a big interest in doing. We stayed very active in the events of the church, with my wife getting involved with lots of projects.

It became very apparent that one of our two elders had cancer and would not survive much longer. Plans were made for governing the church without an eldership or deaconate. Weekly attendance rose during this time period, and we ended up with about 85 people every Sunday morning, which created some optomism for all of us.

After Charlie passed away, a group of ministries was formed, each to govern their section of the church, along with a monthly men’s meeting that served as a business meeting. We also held congregational meetings to communicate with everyone what was going on.

The congregational meetings served as nothing else than a place for people to argue and fight. We in the worship ministry decided this would not be tolerated, and made it clear that abuse would not be allowed to occur. We lost a couple of members during this time, but that was okay because they were chasing visitors away and yelling at anyone who disagreed with them.

It became very apparent that the men’s meeting system was not working, and that the church was in financial trouble. During this time, attendance started to fall, and we are now back to around 65 people on Sunday morning, where we started.

We knew that we needed to do something, but we weren’t sure what.

To be continued…

-Clarke