Church Of The Poor

Jesus said,“Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant...just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve” (Matt. 20:26-28, NRSV).

We need to face up to the biblical truth that if we ignore financial needs within our own congregations, God’s love is not in us (1 john 3:17). We must learn practical, sensitive ways to detect financial needs within the congregation, and compassionate ways to meet those needs that affirm dignity and build community.

Second, we can look beyond the boundaries of the congregation to those in need in the surrounding community. During the first three centuries of the church’s history, poverty was often eradicated in the vicinity of the churches. Why? Because every Christian “was expected to seek out, street by street, the poorest dwellings of strangers, with the result that the Christians spent more money in the streets than he followers of other religions spent in their temples.” As government assistance for the poor is being but, our churches have a great opportunity to reclaim this aspect of our calling.

Third, the church can encourage and equip its members to each discover what ministries God is calling hem to do, then actively support them as they join existing ministries or launch new ones. Many of these ministries will go beyond traditional church programs. They will be shaped by the varied needs of the people in the communities where God has placed us. And they will take money.

The creative possibilities are endless. displaced persons, runaways, people in crisis. No one who came to the church needing food must be turned away, and a house behind the church provided for a night’s lodging for those who have nowhere else to stay.

In a servant congregation, we must not spend most of our money on providing buildings and services for ourselves. Rather, we must use our buildings more intensively than ever before, going to two, three, or our worship services or more before we build a new auditorium. We must commit the church to getting out of debt and staying out of debt so we aren’t wasting precious ministry money on interest payments. Instead, our goal will be If you and the other people of your church truly want to be servants, not customers, together you can turn your church’s spending right side up again. You can, over a period of years, slash the percentage of your budget that you spend on institutional maintenance.

You can multiply the money you invest in ministering directly to people’s needs. You can become a church that puts your money where your to invest as much of our time, money, and energy as possible in ministry—reaching out to touch the lives of people with Christ’s love.

The contemporary churches spends most of its money on buildings and professional staff. For the New Testament church, “meeting the financial needs of people” tops the list, and “facilities” fall to the bottom; New Testament congregations neither own nor rent buildings.

At the time of the Reformation, this priority on meeting the financial needs of people was still largely intact. John Calvin reflected the prevailing practice of the time by advocating that one-fourth of all church income go the poor in the congregation and one-fourth to others in need outside the church. Fully one half of the church’s income was to go to those in financial need.

Most churches today spend less than 3 percent of their income on these two categories combined (the needy within the congregation and the needy in the surrounding community)—a far cry from the 50 percent advocated by Calvin and an even higher percentage practiced by the New Testament church. Is it any wonder that so many non-Christians view today’s church as just one more self-serving institution, another special interest group, rather than a community of faith that actively demonstrates mind-boggling Love?

We must change this concept. Let us begin with the local churches first!

We are to come together to encourage and equip and build one another up so that we can then go out, serving as the hands and feet of Jesus in a hurting world. When a church really believes that, it will show up not only in its mission statement, but also in its actions—and in its spending.

As it happens, some other Christians are concerned about the money that U.S. churches are putting into imposing temples of worship. Last month a group of seminarians from the Jesuits' Woodstock College in Maryland demonstrated in front of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, protesting the $25 million that has been earmarked to com plete the huge basilica. Some Episcopalians have publicly questioned whether their church ought to spend any more money on the impressive Washington Cathedral, which has cost $30 million since it was started 60 years ago, and will need at least $20 million more to finish. Sensitive to this kind of com plaint, New York's Bishop Horace Donegan last year announced that construction on his massive Cathedral of St. John the Divine would be indefinitely suspended.

A main argument against building big churches is that the money spent buying stone might better be used buying bread for the poor. "For every dollar that goes into a church building, a dollar should go to feed starving children," says Presbyterian Minister Robert Hudnut of Wayzata, a Minneapolis suburb, who believes thatall new churches should reflect "humility and economy." Rochester's innovation-minded Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen (see PEOPLE) feels much the same way; up to 3% of the value of every parish construction project must be paid to Sheen's office in the form of a levy, which is then channeled to the poor in the district.

Tents & Churchlets. Some theologians believe that cathedrals, and all large churches, are obsolete, at least as far as the city is concerned. San Francisco's Grace Episcopal Cathedral, with a capacity of 2,392, averages only 500 to 600 worshipers on a typical Sunday; except at services celebrating Christmas and Easter, St. John the Divine is rarely filled.

Looking far ahead, some church visionaries see a trend toward more worship in small, homogeneous groups—either at home, at work, or in chapel-size churchlets. Presbyterian Theologian Robert McAfee Brown of Stanford, who believes that the traditional parish structure will eventually be an anachronism, suggests that the church should be prepared to quarter itself "in campaign tents rather than cathedrals. That would reflect the mobility of the modern church and allow it to go where the people are." Otherwise, Brown predicts, "we'll have a lot more buildings than we know what to do with."

Moral Crises. The majority of U.S. Christians are not yet prepared to worship in tents, and many American churches, in city as well as suburb, are hardly big enough to accommodate their regular crowds of Sunday worshipers. Moreover, plenty of churchmen see no conflict between service to man and obeisance to God. "I do not believe that not building a cathedral is going to solve the problems of the ghettos," says Georgia Baptist Layman C. H. Lampin. "On that philosophy nothing beautiful would ever be created at any cost." Even Urbanologist Daniel Moynihan deplored Bishop Donegan's decision to stop work on St. John's. "Three summers of rioting and out goes 50 years of zoning," he said. "Twenty centuries of Christianity and we conclude that in a time of moral crisis we will cease work on the most splendid place of worship ever conceived in the city. The retreat from magnificence has gone on long enough."

Moynihan also argues that "an era of great public works is as much needed in America as any other single element in our public life." If that is true, there is certainly no reason why the churches should not contribute their share—and Archbishop McGucken wisely notes that San Francisco "would become terribly secular without some skyline recognition of God."

Nonetheless, there is a widespread consensus that new cathedrals and churches ought to be significantly different from the old. First, they should be much more adaptable—designed not just as places of worship but as buildings that could house a variety of Christian activities, from study centers to theaters. Secondly, they ought to be ecumenical in sponsorship.

In the future, some churchmen believe, cathedrals will be built not under the auspices of one faith but through the cooperation of many.

52 Images

My Pictures Upload your pictures and other images here. You can make albums private by selecting the "Private" option. This way only registered users can see them. You can either edit this Album with your own message, or delete it and create a new one.

subscribe