The Buck Stops Here

A person reported in the news sacrifices and gives up $3 million in an offering plate, and on the other hand the church gets excited about hoarding it. Here’s a news story of a person anonymously putting a lottery ticket in the offering plate of a (here we go now. . .) strugggglllliing church. Ooooh! doesn’t it just make you shiver! Man, this church was busting out the seams and now they can afford a new building. yippeee! God is glorified. When our building cup runneth over, God just goes all out and gets us a new building cup.

If your cup is full? Duh! Just get a bigger cup. We don’t need to plant more churches. Duh! Just make ours bigger. That’s the problem with us Christians. When our church is packed out, we think the size of the building is to blame. When a cup overflows, the size of the cup is not at fault. The fault is those who don’t pour it out when its full.

Our first reaction when we are full is to get a bigger cup instead of pouring ourselves out into a completely different cup that’s empty. There are desperate and empty parts of town that need a church, but we don’t want to pour ourselves into that area, because we just want to get bigger. Our first reaction is “let’s just expand ourselves “IN” here”, instead of “let’s just spread OUT there”.

Before you get onto me about the big deal of getting a new building, let me explain something to you. What was all the hype about in that news video? The truth is that the excitement was generated from what they were going to “build” with that money. You didn’t hear anything about needs being met, or bodies or souls being fed with that money. Because. . . well. . . duh. . . that would just be boring. Who would just give away that money and not use it on themselves? Giving away money is boring. Using it on ourselves, now, that’s exciting! Apparently, the person who gave the lottery ticket away in the first place felt that it was important to distribute the wealth. Unfortunately the Church doesn’t think it’s important to distribute. The church is truly where the buck stops.

The deception our church leadership has is that we take this money in the offering plate every Sunday and invest it into facilities and programs and call it a distribution. We don’t recognize that we are just spending it on ourselves. For instance, if me and my wife saved money for some long term goals, and rarely and barely gave to others; we would be considered selfish. But if a church does this very same thing under the cloak of “God’s will”, then they do not fall under the same accusation. But why not?

God’s Word does not provide instructions on how to fund an organization. It does however show us how to help those in need. We are the only thing left on this earth that resembles Jesus Christ. Jesus left us a legacy from his works and actions. He didn’t leave us a building, or a worship center, or a youth center. On the other hand, we’ve done a good job of leaving all the things that Jesus didn’t leave. Unfortunately, we have not done a good job of leaving Jesus. Where does the buck stop with you?