building funds

[godsjoyfulkid]

 There comes a time in almost every church's life when they start thinking about building a new, larger, fancier, more comfortable building. The church starts a "building fund"...sometimes they give it a catchy name to make it more appealing, but deep down, it's just a building fund. They aproach the congregation with their vision and building

Comments

[mudboots]

Aye. As you know the church I go to is one of the worst in this area (in my opinion-- like, did we really need to have that 30,000 dollar cappuccino machine shipped in from Europe?!) and I totally agree with you. I have been part of 3 churches that have built a bigger and better building-- all suffered from stagnation and power-struggle issues.

fight the slavery of money. let's move towards freedom from sin, from greed, from our comfort zones... and aye, that means a freedom that is easier not to pursue, but one that is truly free, truly from God.

[mudboots]

big words for a hypocrite, Brian!

[anonymous]

i'm another one of those losers who goes to a big church. the one good thing about our church & church building is that they raised a bunch of money and gave it to churches in the city that were flooded out. but overall, going to a big church is lame. people hide in big churches, and ours feels like a show way too much. the ability to go to church and easily avoid meaningful interaction with others (more than just the silly "greeting time") is just another one of the many problems with big churches.

does that mean that we should go back to the small church where no one was there to help me find a class? or the smaller church that was really formal, filled with old white people and seemingly lifeless? which battles should i fight, and which ones should be saved for later?

- your anonymous swamp-dweller

(by the way, thanks for having a non-myspace blog where i can actually post comments - i haven't sold my soul to news corp. yet)

[mudboots]

yeah-- I mean all churches are f-ed up right? That's because a church is a group of people and people are, well, f-ed up. (I just realized what a raving idealist I portrayed myself as in my first comment).

Ultimately it comes down to the will of God the father. And yes, I believe he has called me to be a part of the church I'm in (the institutionalized one called RCF) though I also think he is shaping my beliefs to be quite different than most the peoples' in my "church".... or maybe it is mostly the emphasis and life-changing reaction to my beliefs that he is shaping...

right...

[anonymous]

on a similar line of thought, discerning the will of God is much more difficult when you aren't in close contact with other believers...yet another reason why being in a messed up church is better than not being in church. having a believing spouse isn't enough.