It’s All About the Size of Your Steeple
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There are many challenges to doing church in the 21st century. One of the hardest is learning to recognize the influence of our culture. We do things in American churches in certain ways, which is fine as long as we don't start thinking that our culture is the gospel. For example, most churches feel that a church building is essential. Having a church without a building is unthinkable. And yet, none of the earliest Christian churches had buildings. One wonders what we have lost by tying ourselves to expensive structures.
High Calling Blogger "A Casual Observer" points out this weakness in a very interesting piece called, "It's all relative to the size of your steeple."
Most contemporary Christians mistakenly view the church building as a necessary part of worship. Therefore, they never question the need to financially support a building and its maintenance.
The church edifice demands a vast infusion of money. In the United States alone, real estate owned by institutional churches today is worth over $230 billion. Church building debt, service, and maintenance consumes about 18 percent of the $50 to $60 billion tithed to churches annually. Point: Contemporary Christians are spending astronomical amounts of money on their buildings.
All the traditional reasons put forth for "needing" a church building collapse under careful scrutiny. We so easily forget that the early Christians turned the world upside down without them (see Acts 17:6). They grew rapidly for three hundred years without the help (or hindrance) of church buildings....Read More.