Photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash
“The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.” — CS Lewis
Our family is gathering tomorrow to celebrate Christmas. As a medical family, we are used to celebrating at odd times due to schedules. Everyone comes to my house, and I put on a huge spread: ham, turkey, pierogis, etc. We will exchange gifts as well. So, there is no way I can do a post. After tomorrow, I can enjoy the season. I can relax at the Christmas Eve service and even go to church on Christmas morning! I will be back in the saddle on Monday.
Remember, I do not want politics discussed on the blog unless it involves churches and politics. I will check in from time to time.
Have a wonderful family celebration!
I have something I’ve been thinking about over the last few years. Our church is located at the edge of suburbia close to the countryside. Church attendance has gone up and down over the 14 years my husband and I have attended, but overall attendance is about 60% of what it was when we first came (about 800 regulars each Sunday to about 500.)
Our current pastor keeps trying to get people to give more to the church so we can pay off the mortgage. “Just think of all we could do in the community with that extra money!” Here’s my question. Why couldn’t we downsize? Our “family” has gotten smaller. We don’t need this big house and yard any more. If we sold our church and downsized, maybe we would have more funds to help others much sooner.
We had our 75 year anniversary celebration recently and the pastor’s sermon frequently mentioned how God was faithful. Most references involved the acquisition of land and new buildings as the congregation grew.
Our church poo-poos the prosperity gospel, but is trusting God to bring in more believers and/or increased giving from current attenders. If an individual family were in a situation where they could no longer afford their home and it was too big for their needs, I suspect they would be advised to sell and move into a more affordable home, and chastised for “believing on God to provide”. There seems to be a double standard in the evangelical church with regards to the prosperity gospel.
Does anybody know of a church that intentionally downsized their property to alleviate debt and free up more funds for community outreach? What are your thoughts on this? Thank you.
Don’t worry. As long as you get the turkey’s internal temperature to 165 degrees you shouldn’t have a problem with pierogis.
Curly Sue,
I’ve not heard of any. I was in a church before which saved up quite a bit of money with eventual building in mind, but the pastor decided to disband. He gave the money to some charity, but sadly, as he was in complete control of the finances (since he didn’t take a salary, he thought this was fine) he never asked the generous givers for any input.
I’m a bit concerned about our current church, which is also saving up money. We’re small and in a small town but growing, and renting a perfectly good room. There are elders who handle the finances; but they were hand-picked by the pastor and put out no financial reports. A few months ago the pastor mentioned Joel Osteen being criticized by many; but said “they can help a lot of people because they have the money”. I thought “but Osteen is also rich as Croesus personally”…. Then the pastor mentioned needing a bigger meeting place and used as an example how he could take more people out boating if he had a bigger boat…
I warned him about a couple churches I’d attended where the desire for a bigger building ended up with the leaders using dishonest means toward that end.
No, but the logic makes sense to me.
The churches I know that intentionally downsized were already struggling, with 30-80 regular attenders (depending on the church). One is now closed, the other two are still around and still struggling.
My wife’s family (her 6 older brothers and their families) have hardly ever celebrated Christmas on Christmas. It always happens earlier or later. This year it will be on Friday the 22nd.
May you have a great time this weekend.
Does this mean we can’t talk about the great orange duck-tail’s legal woes?
In my town the United Methodist and Lutheran churches swapped buildings. The Methodists had the larger building but they have lost a lot of members. The Lutheran Church was growing and needed a larger building, so they worked out an agreement where they swapped buildings. I imagine the Lutherans had to pay the Methodists, but I am not familiar with the financial transaction.
Muff….please, pretty please. I just denied one comment because it went along this line. No politics. 2024 is going to be on heckuva year.
my atheist/agnostic friends and family are the kindest, most generous, honest, sincere people.
a few christians are on par. most are not.
what does that mean?
Curly Sue,
Never heard of this personally, But I did know one church community in a large suburb of Southern California which dwindled in size, and rented out their building to new start up congregations in the area. The building had three different congregations meeting there every weekend. At different times of course. It was a great solution.
elastigirl,
Elasticity, my advice is find better followers of Christ. We don’t know who the wheat and tares are. I have a few atheist friends and some are nice and some are butts, same as christians I know, some model Christ and many don’t.
Fisher,
That is a great solution! My issue with so-called church growth and building bigger and vaster facilities goes back to the parable Jesus told about the guy who tore down his barns to build bigger ones (can be found in Luke 12). I recall a former church I attended years ago that was experiencing growth (in number of people) in a very small facility. So the committees (aka, arguing) commenced to find a proper solution; go to two services and all the logistics that would entail, build on, sell and find a bigger property, etc. Well, God in his wisdom solved the problem although I am certain many would blame it rather on Satan. There was a scandal of some sort – and to this day I don’t know what it was because no one was ‘transparent’ – and many people left. Voila! Building now easily contains all who remained.
Chuckp,
i’ve grown up christian. i know a zillion christians, from different geographical areas, and from very different denominations/traditions.
my observations aren’t from lack of exposure.
something’s off…
not with God/Jesus/Holy Spirit
but with the neat and tidy simplistic cliche promises and maxims of the christian party line.
IMO, something’s off because God/Jesus/Holy Spirit doesn’t visit much of the American church. Pulpit personalities and pet theologies are more welcome. Thus, they do church without God – the something that’s off.
dee,
No worries dee, No more verboten stuff outta’ the muffster.
In my community, there are 9 Southern Baptist churches each with less than 200 members. Some have large sanctuaries, a testament of better times in the past. They should consolidate, but it ain’t going to happen since they like their individual power structures and properties.
I’m a member of a Lutheran (ELCA) congregation.
No alpha male strongman in the pulpit and no nonsense from the pulpit.
It’s a Liturgy driven religion, communion and a tame homily.
Afterwards, it’s coffee and donuts with great people.
This strikes me as a mild example of the tension that appears to me (from multi decades of observation) to be common in church people’s (especially Evangelical protestants’) thinking between “wisdom” and “faith”. In my experience, people are counseled to dream big dreams for God, and to de-emphasize real-world constraints as “sight” that is to be deprecated as contrary to “faith.” Sometimes this works, and when it does it is taken as evidence of the fundamental soundness of the preference for “faith” over “wisdom.” Often it does not, and then the congregation is treated to criticism for its lack of vision, defective faith, secret sin, etc., etc.
I think that there might be an alternative way of thinking that respects “wisdom” considerations without abandoning Evangelical conceptions of “Faith” (though I personally think that the understanding of what “faith” is needs to be tweaked away from “prosperity” thinking). Decades ago, in a book that I think was popular for a while among Evangelicals (the book was titled, I think, “Experiencing God”), Henry Blackaby proposed a model of decision-making in which one first assessed “what God is doing” and then sought to align one’s own (or one’s congregation’s) agendas with that.
Although he didn’t frame it in these terms, I think that “assessment of ‘what God is doing’ ” maps well onto the OT conception of “wisdom.” The world is what it is (and God rules over that); real world constraints are part of what God is doing in His present governance of the world.
Congregational numerical decline can have internal/endogenous causes or external/exogenous causes, or a combination of both. Depending on the circumstances, it might be appropriate to aggressively seek to reverse the trend; but one can also imagine circumstances in which adaption is more appropriate — is a wiser choice.
To insist, regardless of circumstances, that ‘we must hold onto our present possessions’ to my mind smacks a bit of some kind of idolatry.
You mean Consolidate with those False Apostate Lukewarm Heretics(TM)?
Another factor might be real estate prices. Where I am, prices are so ridiculously high (and still rising) that those who bought 30-40 years ago are stuck wandering around a huge empty nest. They can’t move because the prices and mortgage payments are too much. I will have to move out-of-state when I retire in a year or two; just can’t afford to live where I am.
Five Fast Praise-the-LOOOOOOOORDs do NOT instantly solve everything.
If they don’t, it is NOT because of some Secret Sin in YOUR (not MY) heart…
These may be symptoms of a root cause; in which case, attacking the symptoms won’t work as long as the root stays untouched.
One possibility of a root cause is God may live in the Real World, but a lot of Christians don’t, living inside the event horizon of super-Spiritual bubbles. You see this in Charismatics who have Visions and Prophecies and Paranomral Experiences in all but name every thirty seconds. In Holiness types who maintain ten degrees of separation from anything “Secular/Heathen/Worldly”, isolating themselves from any possible Reality Check. Calvinists who are Predestined to obsess on Abstract Theology.
They all end up like the Pneumatic Gnostics of old, so Spiritual they have ceased to be Physical, ceased to be human. Bodyless Souls floating around like shades in Hades; boy will they be surprised by Resurrection of the Body.
The one that could be summarized as “He Who Dies With The Most Toys Is Still DEAD”?
And an extrabiblical quote from a forgotten source:
“Growth for the sake of Growth is the philosophy of the cancer cell.”
It strikes me that anything for its own sake eventually becomes an isolated Dead End.
Like they did(n’t) when that hurricane hit Houston and the whole city flooded out?
When that huge ampitheatre Mega of his stayed high and dry and closed on one of the unflooded islands in Lake Houston? Right next to the hotel where all the media types were stranded and reporting?
Curly Sue,
I really can’t see a church downsizing (especially if this is a Baptist church). They all expect to grow, grow grow…….seems that “the Lord will provide” mindset always trumps personal responsibility.
A church that I attended as a child and was a member of as an adult for many years has with dealing with financial issues for several years. It’s an old country church (my great-grandmother was a member) that would seat about 100 people in the sanctuary. When I went there, average attendance was 50, counting children. The church was struck by a tornado while I was a member and suffered severe structural damage. At that time, a long-time pastor had left, and the new pastor had just started.
(Side-note: the night the tornado struck, hubby and I were on our war home from a dinner at the home of another member and drove right by the church about 2 minutes before the tornado hit. We live 2 miles from the church in 55 mph speed limit… the power went out at our house just as I started braking to turn in our driveway.)
When the church decided to rebuild, the majority voted to upsize to 200 person capacity in the sanctuary. At that time, the church was still making monthly payments on a new parsonage. Attendance has now dropped to about 20, and the church is struggling to keep the lights on and make minimum payments on the loan. The only solution they have considered: invite new people, get the members that left to come back, and give til it hurts!
I have a degree in mathematics, and I vehemently disagreed with some of the decisions that were voted through after the tornado…… Way much money spent on expensive little pretties that could be easily be added later….. when I looked at the blueprint for the new building and a new parking area and did the math , I knew there would right-of-way and property line easement problems ….. etc. But, this church is SBC, and I am a female. So, when I tried to voice my objections and an explain, I was quickly shut down. So, the architect had to be completely redo his work, and the expenses for just for the design alone were doubled.
This verges on the political, but it is directly related to church issues, so I hope that it does not “trigger” anyone. If it is stricken, I’m fine with that.
—
I’m curious about the observations of those who are still attending in-person services about mitigations to coronavirus spread that you have noticed. Has your congregation done anything to improve ventilation or increase “air changes per hour”? Are individual congregants making adjustments, such as masking? Is “telepresence” encouraged to promote “distancing” among those who do attend in person?
From pretty early in the pandemic I’ve been concerned about “known unknowns” — things about the virus that we know that we don’t yet understand. The most important, from my perspective, of these is the risk of long-term sequelae, aka “long COVID.” My perception of the news flow in the medical literature is that this is real and that the cumulative risk of long-term damage increases with successive infection, so that interventions to mitigate spread, particularly in “shared air” settings, are advisable.
So I’m curious the extent to which people are noticing adaptations to protect what might be called “congregational public health.” The few believers I interact with on a frequent basis (all older people who are at greater-than-average risk if infected) have taken what I would call a “faith in preference to wisdom” approach. I hope that this is not widespread.
elastigirl,
This is how I see it Elastigirl….. What spirit is at work in all people who are honest, kind, generous and sincere? The Holy Spirit.
What spirit is at work in christians who are unloving, dishonest, unkind, selfish and insincere? Not the Holy Spirit.
Exactly. “The fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). Where these things are absent in the lives of churchgoers, you can be sure that they are under the influence of another spirit.
In my former days as a Southern Baptist (I’m done with them now), I once attended a very contentious business meeting in which a prominent member of the congregation (who thought their family owned the church) was raving and yelling against an item on the agenda – darn mean about it. After the meeting, I walked to the parking lot with an older gentleman who spoke with wisdom “That was a good reason not to give the devil a microphone.”
Great quote, I need to remember that one!
Marty Moose has become a new mexico icon and someone has written a book about him. Looking for a gift for readers, check out “Marty Moose Makes His Way”
Most of the attitude comes from exclusivity. You’re either in the club or your not. It’s binary.
And it depends on your stream of Christianity and even the specific church. The Lutheran and Anglican churches I’ve attended aren’t particularly exclusive but the Pentecostal church I attended did not consider me Christian because I was baptized as an infant. Guess which one I never felt welcomed at?
In some Christianities the exclusivity can take you down some pretty nasty roads, a mechanic I know stopped taking work without a deposit from some Mennonite groups because they felt that it was ok to stiff him because he was “not Christian” – read not their brand of Christian.
In my experience, the liturgical churches are generally nicer than the evangelical ones but your mileage may vary.
Secular are a little different as the club has nothing to do with eternity or service to the master of the universe (not Dolph Lundgren) but I’m considering ditching a board membership on one of my son’s activities because of cliques.
Upshot is being a believer doesn’t you a better person and what you might perceive as niceness in more secular folks is really that they don’t care your eternal soul – they seem friendlier but can be just as self interested as your average bear.
Every person is different and I judge based on evidence not which bucket they belong in – and evangelicals love to put people into buckets.
That’s the type of church I was raised in. Not litmus test for what kind of belief you held. If you show up, you’re welcome.
I miss it sometimes.
So if we don’t believe but are honest, kind, generous and sincere, it is not my choice but the holy spirit?
I get what you’re meaning but if there is a god, it doesn’t pull the string like that. All people have choice, even Mary, I suppose…nah, if Dolph Lundgren says you’re having his kid, you’re not really in a position to refuse, especially when the kid actually the big guy himself….
Maybe we are pinnochios.
Please forgive me if I don’t understand your meaning. I don’t know what anybody’s actual deep-down beliefs are, but I can tell who is kind and who is not.
Sometimes we Christians are trained to believe all other Christians are worthy of respect and regard, whereas they are just jerks who show up on Sunday. Okay, maybe a volunteer is a bit gruff but hard working; that’s fine. The people who have to dominate, put down, conceal, complain, invent tales, build empires, emulate Dolores Umbridge, play the victim, leer at the teens, scheme, and divide… I have seen them all in one church or another over the decades, and I have no more time for them.
Fortunately such folks are in a tiny minority in my current church. If I encounter one of them, I just keep moving, irreproachably, while saying to myself, “You will need me someday, and then you will show me your good side.”
And they do. 🙂
People are getting smarter every day these days.
How long do you think they’re gonna’ put up with this kind of horse-poo-poo?
I know of three churches that are currently downsizing by merging. The smallest one leases space and will give that up. Another will have an early Sunday morning service. The third (currently largest) will have a bigger late Sunday morning service. The three congregations, and denominational folks, have carefully worked out this plan over the past several years. The buildings will continue to host weekday preschools, a Spanish-speaking congregation, community outreach, etc.
They have chosen a new name for the combined congregations, and it will be on both of the remaining properties.
Dee recently asked why churches are favored by predators.
“Down the Hill: the Delphi Murders” is a documentary covering two middle school girls who walked in a park, but then disappeared.
An expert interviewed in the film notes that the girls went down a popular trail where a predator was then able to box them in. There was no way out, no escape. The predator knew that and planned well his attack. The girls had no idea. The trail was popular.
The girls were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The predator awaited his prey to land, then boxed them in.
Predators know where prey is entrapped.
The rest of us are clueless.
Max,
“something’s off because God/Jesus/Holy Spirit doesn’t visit much of the American church”
+++++++++++++
i’m sure you’re right.
seems to me the practice of church = christianity (in this iteration of the christian religion). and end in and of itself.
like running a costco and being a member of a costco. CostcOity (accent on the second O).
while i believe God/Jesus/Holy Spirit effect change — i think it manifests as speeding good processes up —
…i marvel at how people who invoke the name of Jesus, and describe themselves and the group they belong to (christianity, but only their sector of christianity) as having the answer and having been changed by God
as what distinguishes them from others / outsiders;
and invariably looking down others/outsiders, castigating them with the label ‘the world’ (in a grand gesture of pity for the goblins they can’t help being)
….i marvel at how this ‘in’ they purport to have with the creator of the universe,
& this cataclysmic supernatural change they purport to have experienced
(or at least being associated with it as members of the elite Cataclysmic Supernatural Change Society)
….[and i’m finally getting to the point]
renders them no more Christ-like than atheist/agnostic folks.
Something is very off in the beliefs and expectations of christian culture and its marketing materials.
i’m sure i’m just repeating myself – with too many words.
i just can’t get over it.
Samuel Conner,
My church improved its HVAC system for better air circulation, we have hand sanitizing stations, and cleanliness is next to godliness. Masking is an individual choice and there is no condemnation from the pulpit. Online presence is solid for services and major events. I’d say the leadership is doing a great job!
We’ve only been at our current church since February, so I don’t know what they may have done about things like ventilation. At the moment, masks are welcome in the sanctuary, but not explicitly requested, and leaders don’t wear them. They offer online services and stream to at least one assisted living facility that they have a relationship with in the area. They also continue to set up a streaming area in the courtyard outside with a small circle of chairs, complete with a stack of Bibles and communion, for those who want to be present but also want the extra social distancing.
Coincidentally, the church had an ER doctor on the leadership team during the height of the pandemic. Fortunately, pastoral staff took his advice seriously.
Jack,
I definitely believe we have agency. It’s mind boggling to consider all that is at play in shaping our character and responses to life, but my present thinking is that if God is Love then I see God in those whose character and actions lean towards truth and love whether they believe or not. Observation and experience have taught me that Christ-likeness isn’t the prerogative of christians.
Calluna,
“What spirit is at work in all people who are honest, kind, generous and sincere? The Holy Spirit.”
+++++++++
yes, that is how i see it, too.
it’s being made in God’s image.
if the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance/patience/restraint/tolerance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control,…
then whenever those things are happening the Holy Spirit is involved in some way.
regardless of one’s label or demographic set, or the formalities one has gone through.
it’s a plain as day.
i am angry that my silly religion has engineered this plain truth away, replacing it with in-group/out-group, superior/inferior, us versus them.
‘them’ are to be feared, seen as dirty & tainted & unfortunate, looked down on with pseudo-pity.
at the very least, turning the out-group ‘them’ into a market for selling one’s pyramid scheme to increase one’s downline.
all spiritualized away to sound nothing like this, of course.
Jack,
“So if we don’t believe but are honest, kind, generous and sincere, it is not my choice but the holy spirit?”
+++++++++
this is how i see it:
it’s the capacity to make the better choice.
i remember observing my kids when they were very young weighing their options on what they were going to do:
the rude thing or the respectful thing;
the selfish thing or the charitable thing;
sometimes they chose the better thing.
as if the moment were slowed down into very slow motion, i could see them considering both options.
Headless Unicorn Guy,
Once I had construed most church doctrines (i.e church order questions, which are the archetype that God is bound to in heaven) as just so many fashion statements, I got sparked off by ch 20 of Roland Barthes’ The Fashion System (1983):
– in flyer / sermon / video / stage format, religious fashion as autonomous cultural object (life of its own)
– both producer AND guardian of meaning through proliferating terminology (status through jargon)
– fashion becomes narrative
– in denotation, pretends to be saying what the signs appear to say
– in connotation, mingled with the ambience which it sucks power out of (bad boundaries), became an ensemble of “reasons” (ideology, which secular forces mirror back)
– signs become reasons, and both signifier and signified attain ever vaguer usage
– its economy (anti-talents) rests on the elimination of substance
– a system of meaning as true luxury of the mind
– simultaneously preventing any variation (grass roots Holy Spirit intuition) and imposing infinite variation (the spanking new 1563 Confession, reversing Gen 3:16)
– hierarchy of memes / tropes / activities that belies its material elements, promoting minor ones and shying away from the important (sacramentolatry, false top-down ecumenism)
– meaning is distributed according to what Barthes (translated by M Ward & R Howard) calls “revolutionary grace”: a slogan which YRR / ESS and their non-protestant lookalikes surely ought to be “eternally grateful” to Barthes for *
– its autonomous power acts at a distance to dissolve substance itself (a sort of conjuring transubstantiation, by the Emperor, of his own new clothes, i.e us)
– fashion as rhetoric (the look speaks volumes)
{ * Another essay by R Barthes titled Loyola, is a case study in the 16 th century industrialising of intrusive religion, while in his short masterwork Plastic, he recalled the wonderment of modern moulding techniques }
Thus once I got really going:
– is it “in” (like New Frontiers was said to be by Rev Liam Goligher in 2007) or “out”?
– is it U (to everything there is a Season turn turn turn) or non U?
– sound (decibels / sentimentality) and fury (in the hands of an angry fixer / minder), signifying nothing
– measuring of time in logo’d coffee cups and wooden spoons
– religious tropes R us
One could also cite Marshall McLuhan’s The medium is the massage published just as J Stott entrenched his “influencing” strategy when Lloyd-Jones warned him to let God.
Bad religion can get more indigestible than any turkey.
A weekend prayer for all of you:
Glory Be To The Father
And To The Son
And To The Holy Ghost
As it was at the beginning
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end, Amen.
(Jesus Ascended is glorified in the gifts in each one of us)
– addendum –
Before format (line 4) add of course the sacred press release.
The Christian Industrial Complex allows very little room for genuine worship of the Creator of the Universe. The church as a House of Prayer seems to be a foreign concept. Churches which give all authority to Jesus are almost non-existent; men are on the throne. Christ is not truly at the center, even in places which boldly proclaim to be Christ-centered Christ-followers. Pulpit personalities and pet theologies are in His place. He has little influence in the American church. Both pulpit and pew don’t ‘really’ expect Him to be present when they gather. Strange isn’t it? Without Him, what’s the point?!
To “have a relationship with an assisted living facility” says a lot about your church. The elderly are so often lonely and forgotten. They are surely among the “least of these” in our society. Often poor, sick in some way, often abandoned by family and friends. No one gets celebrity points in the culture for ministering to an assisted living community, but Jesus sees.
Eyewitness,
A church which doesn’t minister to the lonely and hurting within its reach isn’t much.
“Religion that is pure and genuine in the sight of God the Father will show itself by such things as visiting orphans and widows in their distress” (James 1:27).
If a congregation’s focus is on a celebrity pulpit, rather than Jesus, it will drift from purity and holiness in thought and deed.
A LOT of churches fall so short on that one it’s like “the lonely and hurting” don’t even exist.
Doesn’t need to even have a celebrity pulpit.
Groupthink can function just as well.
Or PRAYER(TM) becomes a (dead) end in itself.
i.e. Going overboard in the other direction.
At which point, “I Pray More Than Thou” can become an escalating game of One-Upmanship.
Headless Unicorn Guy,
A celebrity pulpit as well as other varieties of religious shepherds commonly fleece then eat the sheep.
Jesus, in contrast, declared Himself the Good Shepherd, who leaves not one sheep behind … not one.
John 10:27-29
“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them away from me, for my Father has given them to me, and he is more powerful than anyone else. No one can snatch them from the Father’s hand.”
I do know of a smaller church which purposefully does not buy a building and instead worships out of a high school so that money can go towards outreach in their community! I think it is awesome! The church members have to set up and break down every Sunday, which keeps eveeyone active and collaborating. They have a studio rented in the center of town so they can minister in the center of town during the week. An interesting note is that this church has historically been in many diferent locations, including outside for some time. They are always trusting in God to provide!
Headless Unicorn Guy,
No-one who genuinely prays puts down anyone else for their praying style or their unique gifts. We’ve all come across people who either calculatedly or subconsciously seek “advantage” by making an issue of others’ manner. I’ve found it devastating.
As Jesus predicted, the evildoers and their helpers wanted to discredit:
prayer
providence
contingency
thoughtfulness
freedom
gifts, including those in children
Holy Spirit
Holy Scripture
the actual kingdom / household of God / heaven (last 21 verses of Proverbs)
There are real versions, and generations who come after us will be grateful that we kept them in sight for them (talking the walk, which is what evangelising the church is really about).
Much to my amazement, I’m in my mid-seventies still working some and still puttering along. I still attend an Evangelical church led by elders who are all sinners.
_______
What took decades for me to learn and accept is this: God doesn’t owe me an explanation.
___________
I accept that He is loving and He is just.
___________
God doesn’t owe me an explanation
I do know of one church that lost 60% of its congregation over about a 10 year period. Hubby suggested they either merge with another local congregation of same denomination and sell one of the buildings. A local hospital needed major repairs and if those churches gave a large donation, that sure would look like loving your neighbor, as we are commanded. Nope. “Which pastor would we use?” “It would have to be our building we keep!” They also had a rental home that an every aging retired gentleman did all of the volunteer repairs on it and waiting around for plumbers, etc. Your basic property management stuff. He suggested they sell that. Nope. They were so sure that there wasn’t enough equity in it, so they continue to pay property taxes, insurance, and major repairs on it. I get what you are saying Curly Sue. Makes me scratch my head also.
JJallday,
Around here, a few churches have just one congregation, and the building is pretty much closed all week. I’m not a fan of pouring money into an empty structure, espcially if it’s kept off limits (rather than remotely located).
Most churches here are busy places, though. Many have their established congregation, plus a Korean- or Spanish-speaking congregation that might be from a different tradition. Many also have a preschool (which might not be connected with the church), and meeting space for AA, Al-Anon, NA, scout groups, literacy classes, and exercise and self-defense programs. Some hold concerts and other arts events. Several have nice playgrounds and gardens. One place is rather famous for letting folks hold birthday and graduation parties. All of these things are part of outreach, in my opinion.
Sinners are a dime-o’-dozen.
Which sins are we talkin’ about?
You nailed it.
I would like to add to the above that OT god does not forbid one to question whether god is loving or just.
Only Job’s religious friends told Job to shut up, confess sin, and accepted his lot because in their mind what happened to him and his household is from god and therefore is just.
Because He Says So?
He just Holds the Whip.
Unless you’re one of His Special Pets, that is.
(Dryly…)