Big day for our church

The big day was actually four days ago on May 2.  I'm a little late getting started this month. Our church is bursting at the seams. There is little room in the parking lot, little room for Sunday School and, to fit everyone in, there need to be three services on Sunday morning. This is a good situation in some ways (you always want to be spreading the Good News and getting more people to come and learn about Jesus) but it makes it very inconvenient to worship and learn.

So, it was decided that a new building was needed. Unfortunately, that also means a new location. The church is currently a five minute walk from our house. The new location will be about a ten minute drive from our house. I won't go into the specifics in this post. Those can be found here. The picture here is the architect's conceptual drawing of the proposed new church building and is from the page the link points to.

The building of the new church and the need to raise money for it was the subject of a story in some local newspapers. A letter writer, in the next edition of the paper, questioned the need for such a large, expensive new church and wondered why all that money couldn't be used to help the poor. Well, first of all, this church is quite active in helping people. This is no "just come to church on Sunday" congregation. It is very involved in helping the needy. But this new building is going to be very expensive. And the Big Day I refer to above was the culmination of a capital campaign to raise money for the church. Are you ready for this? A total of $2,325,835.11 was pledged over the next three years to cover the acquisition of the land and the building of the church. And that doesn't cover the operating expenses it will require. That's a lot of money. So, should we just take that money and help people? It's a fair question in a bad economy like this.

This reminds me of the story in John 12 about the time Jesus was in Bethany to visit Lazarus and Lazarus' sister Mary anointed Jesus with expensive perfume. Judas objected, saying,

"Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year's wages."   John 12:5  New Living Translation

Jesus answered, saying,

"Leave her alone," Jesus replied. "It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me."   John 12:7-8   New Living Translation

It has taken me a long time to realize what Jesus was saying here. He wasn't saying we shouldn't help the poor. On the contrary, he was always among the poor and helping them himself. And there were many laws and traditions for helping the poor in the Jewish religion. I think Jesus was saying two things here.

One thing I think Jesus was saying was that taking money and using it in a one-time-help to the poor isn't always going to really help them (an exception would be helping in time of an emergency). I remember a time when an acquaintance, who was complaining about the existence of government programs to help the poor, said that he was more likely than most of us to stop and give a beggar some money. He said that's what more people should do and so we could cut government "give away" programs, as he called them. What he didn't realize is that intermittent giving, based on a feeling of pity at the moment, doesn't really help. It's the old giving a man a fish versus teaching him to fish proverb. It takes time and commitment to teach someone to fish. So, just taking the money and using it to help the poor may help for a while. But the purpose of building the new church is to have more facilities and to draw more people into the church. The church, which has useful and continuing programs to help, will be better able to help people - both physically and spiritually.

The other thing Jesus was saying is that there are moments when it is appropriate to use our money and talents to worship and praise God. Jesus, when he was anointed with perfume, was on his way to Jerusalem to be praised for a short time and then crucified. The time was right for what Mary did. After a great deal of prayer and examination, it was decided that this was the right time to build the new church. It will be to God's glory that this new building and facilities will be dedicated. And this will be a new, useful and open-to-all facility that will last for decades - or longer!

All that being said, we should not be angry with the letter writer. They asked a valid question and we should treat it as a challenge. Jesus said something else in verses 7 and 8. We will always have the poor among us and it is our duty to help them when we can. I believe this new church will do that.