Church Adventure

I decided to go to Apex Community Church this Sunday because it had been recommended to me by a couple of people and I briefly met two student age people who go there. It's a five mile bike ride to get there, which is a bit long for a Sunday morning, but I figured I'd do it once and hopefully meet someone who lives in my area that I'd be able to mooch rides from in the future. Another factor was that they have an 11:15 am service, which is conducive to sleeping in after a late night. So I set out this morning on my bike with a map in my head including the street the building is on, major streets I'd cross, and the big street before it and the one after. After riding 6.5 miles, I concluded that I had somehow missed it and so I went back about a mile to another church I had passed that looked friendly. (It turned out I had ridden right past it and that it was just down the street from the one I went to)

So I went in and managed to catch most of the sermon. After the sermon the teaching pastor spent quite a bit of time talking about their new building project. The pastor was responding to a possible lack of commitment of the congregation to supporting the project financially. Part of what the pastor shared indicated that he saw the new building as an evangelism project.

Afterwards, I seriously considered walking up to him and asking "How will the new building aid/improve/strengthen your church's efforts at evangelism?" From my perspective there was nothing wrong with their current building (which is probably incorrect to some degree), and in my humble opinion American Christians spend too much on building temples unto themselves instead of treasures in heaven. The other interesting aspect was that after the service I waited around for a few minutes. I managed to make eye contact with less than half a dozen people, and two people greeted me verbally in passing. I could see that the people in that church have excellent families, good relationships with one another, and from all appearances are a growing body of believers. I really don't mean to knock them because I imagine that if I attended the college Sunday school I would have met some people and gotten rooted in a little better. I also might have been greeted had I been on time. But if the only welcoming thing about that church that I experienced is the big banner by the door proclaiming "Welcome" to all who enter (actually I didn't notice it until my way out. Irony, anyone?), I don't see how getting a new building is going to turn the church into a bunch of evangelists. The next question that I ask myself is would I be any different from these people at a church that I was a regular attender? And to be honest I would probably be no different.

What if instead of building a new building they took that 6.5 million dollar project and used it to send medicine, Bibles, and food to needy churches in Africa? What if they used it to support native missionaries in India? What if they sent it to Russia, where instead of one hundred and seventy-five baptist churches in Dayton, Ohio there are less than one hundred churches in a province larger than the state of Ohio?

I'm reminded of a (true) story I heard from someone I personally know who visited a church in Russia. The small body of 100 or so believers have no plumbing in their church. The bathrooms are quite literally a small outside building with a dirt floor and a hole in the ground. Quite uncomfortable, to say nothing of the bitter cold in the winter. A few women of the church asked the elders if they could get indoor plumbing and install proper toilets. They did some research and found that they could do so for the same amount of money it takes for them to send one missionary to another city to start another church. They concluded that before God they COULD NOT spend money on indoor plumbing instead of sending another missionary. 80% of their annual budget is spend on sending missionaries and so they pee in a hole in the ground for the cause of Christ.

I'm not saying that it's wrong for churches here to have indoor plumbing, but sometimes it almost disgusts me how nice churches are. Is God glorified by a beautiful building with a state-of-the-art sound system with subwoofers built into the stage? Perhaps. But God IS glorified by people who sacrifice earthly comforts for the sake of reaching the lost. Yes, there is a balance, but it seems to me that in America we err on the side of comfort all too often. I'm not positive what I'm even saying here. But it seems to me that there is a problem with the church in America and the experience that I had this morning is a good example of that problem.

Let me try a summary statement: American Christians are too concerned about themselves and about having nice things and should be more focused on reaching out to those around them and using their finances to further Christ's kingdom.