Tag: finances

  • Sell Your Church Reach Your Community

    sell-your-church

    Permit this heresy: There is no mention of a church owning a building in the New Testement. I’m not saying it’s unbiblical to own a church building, I just think its worth it is worth thinking about.

    What would church look like with no building? How would programs change? How would staffing change? How would worship services change? How would staff meetings change?

    How would church finances change? How much more mission could you do without building maintanence? Without a mortgage? Without property insurance? How much less stuff would you buy, in general if you had to store it at your house?

    How would your community change? If it changed the zoning of church property to commerical or residential? If that space became a public park? If that building became used as a community center?

    I’m not saying that churches shouldn’t have buildings. I’m just saying that for some congregations the benefit of having property is not outweighed by the negative impact on the congregations mission and finances.

  • The Mission of Less

    Planet Wisdom Chicago was great. 2000 kids slammed into a building to be challenged by the word of God is always awesome. Going into it I knew that the team was passionate about the conference and I saw first hand why. It’s really cool! Lives were changed. It doesn’t get any better than that.

    At the same time I felt really challenged by the church that hosted. It was one of those brand new megachurch $10 million deals. I don’t know how long it has been open but it was massive and it was gorgeous. It had that new church smell. And I thought to myself, “I’m glad I am not on the leadership team of this church.” I would never question the integrity of a church leadership team and I am certainly not doing so now. Yet, I wondered how I would process the excess as it correlates to the excessive need of the gospel in their community. Would I have stood behind the decision to build? This is more a reflection of where I am in my walk with the Lord than it is an indictment on a church. In fact, I want to fully acknowledge that I am positive that it’s a great building for them. And I want to make it clear that I am positive the gospel is advanced as a result of that church. And this post has way more to do with big church buildings generally than it does the particular church who hosted us. Moreover, driving around the Chicago suburbs that particular church merely did what dozens of others did… build a bigger building to better suit their needs. OK, enough apologizing for what I’m about to say!

    Here’s what I was left thinking about. For $10 million how many churches could they have planted in their community? For $10 million how many kids could they mentor at the local schools? For $10 million how many homeless people could they feed? How many families could they help? Assuming they paid cash for the building, for the $10,000-$20,000 per month it likely costs to heat, cool, and light the building how much kingdom work are they prevented from doing with those same dollars?

    Now that we go to a church with no building, my perspective has changed. All of my life I’ve said “the church is the people and not the building.” And yet fiscally, the churches finances reflect that the church is the building and the staff. (90% of spending, more or less.) When a person diverts giving to advance the kingdom, a building based church says “No, that money needs to pay our light bill! We have staff to pay!” And as a result the kingdom work the Holy Spirit has compelled a giver to give towards is thwarted by a churches building needs. Now that we go to a church with no building, we can worry about building the kingdom of God in our community and not a building. It’s freeing and wonderful and we are thankful for this time that God has placed us here.

    As I’ve shared before, my perspective on big fancy churches always makes me think of my time in Europe. Congregations spent generations building trillion dollar cathedrals that are largely empty today. They were so busy showing their community that they were the city on a hill that they forgot to be the city on the hill!

    What do you think? Is a big, nice building needed to advance the gospel? Or is it preventing the people from being the church?