Sometimes I really hate church!!!

Today at my church, we had a guest speaker. He was a man from the higher up part of Covenant denomination who has been involved with helping our congregation coordinate a property renovation project. The campaign is called Generation to Generation (G2G) and is going to update the facilities we currently have as well as build new ones and improve our property overall. It has been stressed throughout the whole process of introducing the project to the congregation that the project itself is meant to expand our ministry and that part of the funds that we raise for the project will go towards a church plant. A church plant in the Watsonville area sounds like a really great idea as does the concept of being responsible with what the church has been given, along the lines of property and buildings.

First of all, I have to admit that when a sermon (or speech in this case) on giving to the church happens, I turn cynical and shut down. I say this so no one will think I'm trying to hide any bias I have. I think it comes mainly from the fact that I don't support the church as an official institution. I like supporting my community of believers but once the concept of that as an institution arises I am immediately resentful.

Our Guest Speaker
He dives right in to the fact that he's going to be talking about giving. Good...at least he's not trying to hide it. His point was that God calls us to give. He was using an example of the lady who dropped in two coins after all the rich people had dropped a lot of money into the offering plate. He presented the notion of equal sacrifice, not to be confused with equal giving. I like that...it's fair. I believe he is right here. God calls us to sacrifice ourselves and some have more, so they should give of themselves what is due to God's Kingdom.

In much detail he explained exactly how God is putting it on our hearts to give. He had a lot of backing from scripture, but I couldn't help but think that anyone who is asking for money in a church would pull those scriptures out of context to support their claim. Then he says, "Some of you need to grow in the grace of giving" in reference to people who may not want to give to this project. If I'm not mistaken he even pointed his finger. He then proceeded to say something along the lines of 'after you write that $30 check, you have communicated with God...'. What I heard here and other times in his speech was that giving money is the best way to communicate with God. There were a number of times that I couldn't help but cringe or even laugh at some of the things he said.

I was waiting for him to bring Satan, the Devil, the dark force of sin into the lecture. Sure enough, it came is the form of "the adversary"...that, in this coming week 'the adversary' would be working in our lives to keep us from giving 'over and above'. He would break our car, ruin some relationship, or various other things so we don't help grow the Kingdom. I personally do believe in a spiritual struggle between God and the Devil in whatever form they exist in that struggle. To be fair, he did say that he wasn't saying this to scare anyone, only to point out how real the threat is and not to be discouraged. But now, anything that happens in the next week is going to be blamed on the adversary. The reason I have an issue with this, is that people now have a tool to take the blame off of themselves. This is a free ticket to take personal responsibility in one's problems off of themself and blame it on a dark force...then to feel better, give money to prove their resistence to that dark force. Also, when something bad happens this week they'll say it's the devils work. Then they'll instantly remember what our speaker said and be coerced by this well crafted logic sequence into giving money to this G2G campaign...not out of desire to give to God or desire for this campaign to be successful, but because they think that what they experienced is truly the work of the devil and that this guy was right.

Last week at church, it was announced that this guy was going to come speak to us. I was under the impression that he was going to be talking about how part of our money from the church plant proposal in Pajaro/Watsonville and how awesome that is. It was barely mentioned. I was excited that he was going to talk about this because I like the idea that we are going to do something with our money that helps a less fortunate community. My roommate put it well when he said that $25 will go a lot farther in Pajaro than it would in Scotts Valley. Our help there is much needed and is truly something to celebrate. Instead of speaking at length about this or other church plants, he explained that it is our duty as part of "the face of the Covenant" to give money to grow this demonination.

In conclusion, I saw a number of new faces in the crowd today and was thouroughly embarrassed that visitors would be welcomed to our community on a Sunday like this. Hopefully these new people have actually been going to our church for a while and I just haven't noticed them. Though this would speak poorly of my welcoming newcomers, it would make me feel better knowing that their first impression of our church was something other than this impersonal speech on stewardship.

For the record, I am in support of our church doing this remodel and expansion thing. It's great that we want to make our facilities better serve the community as a long term goal and it's great to see that in raising the money for this we are essentially raising money that will directly benefit our community. There are some aspects that I think are unnecessary, like the outdoor theater, but the congregation approved it so it must be part of the collective conscience. With that said, I need to say that I am very unimpressed with this recent portion of the fund raising aspect of the project. To have such a impersonal approach to such a personal subject was not a good idea. If he was going to talk about the benefit in regards to planting a church and getting people excited about that idea, that would have been great. I don't know what I expect out of writing this, I just needed to voice my opinion, and probably what is the opinion of any new people who were at the church today as well as other people who think the same as me but wouldn't take the time to write it out like this. There's a lot more that I could add, but I wouldn't be able to make a very good case unless I could hear the audio...maybe my roommate Mike will do a better job when the audio of the speech is posted on the church website.