As promised yesterday, below is another example of Nat Gillett’s work, from his series of Well Values. He put this up on his facebook status and generated a very interesting discussion, which presumably atleast a portion of his 700+ friends looked at.
Feel free to comment on the poster itself, or the idea of using something like this on Facebook.
#reachingthe1024window
“Owning” a building (with the bank/building society!) and gradually paying off the mortgage must always be more economical than leasing so that someone else can make a profit.
Paying off your own mortgage therefore means much more money can go to “serving the poor”, both during repayment and especially afterwards.
So this graphic is not really a question of ownership of buildings, but of church life and practise. The questions this really poses are: should churches meet in large groups (e.g. once a week for ‘worship’ and ‘word’), and should they employ a staff team and leader(s)?
If the answer is “no” to these questions, then purchasing buildings (except as part of “serving the poor”) is definitely not necessary.
If the answer is “yes”, then the only remaining philosophical question is: Are we committed to this town for the long-term, come what may? If so, why not purchase a building and so be able to give more to the poor?
James. I believe we’ve had a similar chat to this before over some Dr Pepper?
Thought i’d wade in as this graphic always seems to stir it up!…
Of course, you’re right – not all churches should rent, SOME should buy – but virtually every local church leader I have met in the past 5 years has said to me at some point “We’re looking to buy a building”.
A leader recently told me how much it was costing to buy and renovate their new building (I probably shouldn’t say how much on here), but I can say I worked out that the figure would be enough to sponsor 2,500 children in a developing nation (giving them food and education) for 5 years. Or that figure could build over 300 wells in a developing nation (giving an essential water source to a community without one).
Is a building – even if it’s multi-purpose (ie: worship space and community centre for the local community) – really a better use of such a vast sum of money?
I imagine 2 newspaper headlines:
“Local church sells building to build 300 wells in Africa!”
And…
“Local church buys building to sing in on Sundays and hold coffee mornings.”
However, “What do we do when we meet together if we need a big space?”… If we don’t own a building surely we have to rent (which seems like a waste of money – which is your point I believe?). You know me James, I’m not really up for big meetings, so the cost to hire a hall twice a year for these wouldn’t be a lot… But if you do meet in the big, and you want to do this every week… I guess i’d ask 2 questions: Is it really necessary to meet in the big every week? And is this ‘luxury’ really worth it, when you could be doing so much more with that money?
As you can tell, I don’t think MOST church should own their own building – but the truth is MOST churches either do already, or desire to… To me this seems crazy! But what’s even more crazy, is when my church leaders friends (whom I love!) announce “We’re looking to buy a building”, everyone present makes noises of approval and no one, not one, ever asks “Is that a good use of money?”. Now that’s crazy!
Thanks for this Nat, though I think you misunderstood a little. I was trying to bring the exact same focus you just have:
This is not a question of ownership versus renting; it is a question of whether we should meet regularly in the ‘big’ at all.
I think we can have a more fruitful debate if we recognise that this is the issue at stake here. What is interesting in your latest post is that finances seem to actually be a deciding factor in the “big (meeting) or many (house-based communities)” question.
In contrast, I imagine many would argue that we simply look at the Bible for our model of church meetings. They would then look at the OT and say ‘we need to worship in the big’; the Psalms and say ‘we need to sing’; and some may even read 1 Cor 14 and say ‘we need to experience the Holy Spirit and allow the use of spiritual gifts’. Then: “Therefore, we need big meetings!”. From this point, I am suggesting renting is generally not economic.
But the terms you set for the debate equally seem to stem from otherwise overlooked New Testament values: Jesus cares about our wallets, and He also has a bit to say about the poor. In an age where anyone reading this has unprecedented wealth compared with the vast majority of our world, yet where those sponsor-able children are only a few mouse clicks from receiving our money, the question you pose is vital for consideration. Why do things the way we always have?
Then outside of the financial, we might also comment that Jesus spent His ‘ministry years’ mainly investing in 12 guys, and three in particular. But I think there’s plenty written elsewhere on Brimming Over about that particular question.
One question, really just open-ended as it just occurred to me, is whether the New Testament provides a model for believers to meet in public. And if so, how do churches do this best if they have no building? Be great to get people’s thoughts on this and the rest too!
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Thought i’d keep this going… James, appreciate your gracious reply.
The knock-on question “Should we meet in the big?” is a really interesting development. I hadn’t considered this at all as an outcome when I first designed the above graphic. However, it is a valid one. Thanks for bringing it up.
So, big meetings? I’m not convinced they’re needed. At least, not as often as we currently want them – every week – how about once a month? Or once every quarter? Why not?
I don’t think the Bible sets a precedent for big meetings each week. In response to those who say what about the temple/OT model, I don’t think we should be looking at the OT for what church should look like (otherwise there’s a lot there we’re not doing). And simply put, you don’t need a big meeting to sing and exercise Spiritual gifts, this can be done very well in the small (in fact i’d argue that once you reach a large number of people, exercising Spiritual gifts in a public meeting – where the Mic is open to all? – becomes very difficult).
I’m not against meeting in the big occasionally – in fact I think we should! But I genuinely think most of the stuff we do, and want church to be about, is better served by multiple small communities rather than a big weekly gathering.
James, your question… Do we have to meet in public? Public buildings I presume (rather than the local park?). Does the NT say we’ve got to do this? I don’t think it does (but i’m happy to be corrected on this). One of the reasons people give me for having a public building is that ‘anyone’ can walk in. But how often does that happen?
….However…. I would like to return and drive home the main point of this graphic again, that is, vast sums of money are stored up in church owned property… I think this is wrong. The more I think about it, how much do you suppose could be raised by selling all the property that the collective church owns? Several billion pounds? Or do you think that’s too high? Anyway, it’s a LOT! Imagine if the church then gave all that away…
I’ve been thinking about this for the last few days as, being an accountant and all, I find myself very drawn to and convinced by the economic and rational argument James presents about why it is better to buy a property than rent it.
I was quite ready to move onto the ‘real’ point that was being made about big vs small church meetings, when it struck me and challenged my professional judgement that there was actually a very real and fundamental point about asking the question whether to rent or to buy a church building. The point is how does buying or renting a chuch premises answer this question:
When do we expect to see Jesus come again and the kingdom of God realised on earth in all its fullness?
I would suggest one approach answers this question less expectantly than the other.
What a great couple of posts, gents!
Nat, thanks for clarifying on the questions of big and small, think this is the really valuable stuff and can’t disagree very much with what you say here. Your point about exercising the spiritual gifts is particularly pertinent, I feel. (Though I also think we can see spiritual gifts operating in bigger situations than we currently expect is feasible, such as in meetings of 250 people.)
On the ‘public’ question, it’s interesting you ask ‘Does the NT say we’ve got to do this?’. It seems to me that much of the “church modelling” we are doing on this blog is based on our inferences from Scripture rather than direct, clear commands. I was trying to ask if this is an element of the churches we see in the NT which we should continue to reproduce today; but guess your answer is ‘no’?
If we are looking for more direct commands however, singing to Jesus (and each other!) comes up in 1 Corinthians, Ephesians and Colossians. Probably needs a new blog post, but how do we make this culturally relevant in our British context? And especially in smaller communities. Would love to hear thoughts on this! Let us now forget however that “singing in church” is a part of our history and our wider culture as the UK, even though many do not associate with this element of culture today. This is a different setting to that in which singing churches have never been established or heard of. Does this change the answer / questions?
James T, thanks for your input. The immediacy of Christ’s return, and our expectations of knowing when it will be, certainly seem to be involved here. My own view is that given Jesus’ declaration that it will come ‘like a thief in the night’, and that the early disciples probably thought it would be ‘soon’ but still owned buildings and worked jobs, I don’t think we today should be homeless and living off cold baked beans. Certainly some money is ‘tied up’ in property for building-owners, but given that we don’t know when He will come again, I think being a wise steward involves making long-term investments (including financial ones) in the locations to which God has called us. Not to mention saving for a pension (in Western cultures at least).