Building churches

For quite some time now, I have been without a church.

In December of 2005, my husband and I had to move about 80 miles south of our home in order to find work. After 7 months or so, we ended up moving to another state 1,000 miles south of our home so that we could find work.

That is all another story for another day.

For today, I want to talk about the fact that I have attended scores of churches in the past couple of years.

The majority of the churches I have attended are in some stage of remodeling, annexing, or building a new building. That in itself is amazing to me.

More amazing, though, are the fact that not one of the buildings in which I sat was falling down or even very old. And in each of those churches, a preacher stood behind a pulpit and addressed the progress of the building -- whether it was still in the planning stages, or almost finished -- and asked the congregation for money for the project.

Maybe it's just me, but I really want nothing to do with a church that thinks that's okay.

I have no problem with a pastor asking for money from the pulpit, but not for such things. Outreach? Absolutely! Food for people in need? Sure thing! Bus trip for the youth group? Fine with me!

But it just seems to me to be self-indulgent to be building bigger buildings when there is so much that needs to be done in the world and so little time to do it in.

I recently attended a Pentecostal church in order to see a nationally-known speaker. The church was beautiful! From the outside, it was shaped like a huge crown, and it had a coffee shop and a school on the property. I don't mean it was extravagant, but it was nice enough that one of my first thoughts about the congregation was that they must be pretty well off.

I got there early enough for bible study, and was struck by the size of the auditorium-like interior. I'm not good at estimating that kind of stuff, but it seemed to me that it had room for several thousand people.

The bible study was nice. It was about Moses and Jethro, and was done with a projector and complete with maps. I like that kind of study. Knowing the geography and the culture always makes me see better in my mind's eye how things happened.

Then it came time for the service, and at the end, the speaker was going to be there. I am assuming that because the speaker was going to be there, many guests were in the pews. Even so, the place was not even half full.

The preacher dedicated a baby, led a prayer or two, and then started talking about how they needed more money for "the building project."

As I said before, I really don't like that much from any church, but the fact that this church was in such nice condition and was not filled to capacity made me feel so even more.

The national speaker was great. Well worth the trip. And when he was done, I wanted to tell the preacher what I felt about his requests for money for the building. Fortunately, I'm sure, the line of people waiting to talk to him and the speaker was far too long for me to want to stand in.

I figured that, like the Pharasees, he already knows that the point of church is to feed the flock so that they can do God's work, not to fleece them. That being the case, I don't suppose my telling him about it was going to change his heart.