How Rich or Blessed or Fortunate Do You Feel?

The Largest Churches in America

Image by ChicagoGeek via FlickrThis is a list compiled by LifeWay Research and Outreach Magazine.

Top 5 Largest U.S. Churches

1. Lakewood Church, Houston, Texas, Joel Osteen, (43,500)

2. North Point Community Church, Alpharetta, Ga., Andy Stanley (24,325)

3. Second Baptist Church, Houston, Texas, Ed Young Sr. (24,041)

4. Willow Creek Community Church, South Barington, Ill., Bill Hybels (24,000)

5. Southeast Christian Church, Louisville, Ky., Dave Stone (19,230)

First, take a look at Joel Osteen's church attendance in comparison to the others.  That's huge.  I guess a prosperity theology, where you believe that wealth and power are rewards for pious Christians, is about twice as attractive as a more orthodox belief.  Perhaps this says something about the lure of wealth in our society.

Second, Willow Creek is still up there.  I've attended conferences there and have paid attention to Bill Hybels' work over the years.

Third, I noticed that Girdwood Chapel didn't make the list...yet.

America and the Third World -- Quote from Andrew Peterson

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Andrew Peterson is a Christian musician.  He wrote a post about money over at Rabbit Room, reflecting, in part, on his experience in going to Bolivia with Compassion International.  This is just a small section of it.  I've highlighted what I think is a very cool part of it.

What I envied about the Bolivians wasn’t poverty. It was simplicity. They didn’t choose it. It’s a necessary result of living in poverty, the silver lining on a dark cloud. That’s why people come back from Africa with that infectious gladness–not, of course, because of the terrible smell or the sickness or the injustice–it’s the simplicity. It’s a life uncluttered by television and power bills and traffic jams–a life enriched by the intense joy of interacting with other souls at a profoundly deep level, which is what we were meant for. What we miss when we come back from mission trips and church camps and spiritual retreats is life at its simplest.

American culture is one extreme (a land of plenty at the cost of simplicity) and the Third World is the other (poverty with the gift of simplicity). Each has its blessings and its curses. This point of this isn’t to get to the bottom of which of these extremes is better, but to propose a better way. A Christ-centered life of intimate fellowship unharried by either sickness and starvation or the chaos of a capitalistic rat race might be a good picture of the order of the day in the New Jerusalem. We don’t want to thrust electronics and trinkets and McDonald’s fries on Elba’s family any more than they’d want to thrust their dirt floors and malnutrition on us. What I wish for Elba is clean streets and sturdy houses, good food and warm clothes: hope. What I wish for us is walks in the woods, good friends, a tight community with a loving church at its heart: peace.

Praying for $1,000,000 (A reflection based on on Mitch Albom's Book, "Have a Little Faith")

Cover of Have a Little Faith: A True Story

I was given Mitch Albom's book, "Have a Little Faith: A True Story" to read by a new friend in Girdwood.  He thought I'd enjoy it and, being told it contained "a church with a hole in the roof," I thought I would be right at home in reading it.  I haven't made it through all of it yet, but there are moments of great inspiration here as the author weaves the story of being asked to do a eulogy for his childhood rabbi with the story of a church in Detroit.  There's a lot of grace here.  There's a lot of love.  And there is a lot to learn from both the main characters.

There is a whole chapter about Reb (the rabbi) which asks the question, "What is rich?"  It's a question I've asked myself and I struggle with (as anyone who reads this blog knows).  I struggle with wanting more than what I have.  I struggle with wanting to know how much money I'd have to save to be "OK" later in life.  I struggle with wanting to give more to my church, for its work and for its construction.  There is so much to give to in this life and the voice of the world keeps telling us that we don't have enough, even just to get by.

What is it that I've heard?  Everyone, no matter what their income, believes that if they JUST had 20% more than what they had now, they'd be OK.  20% more for the welfare family.  20% more for the millionaire.  20%!

According to Albom, "The Reb had never been big on stuff.  But then, he'd never had much of it."



He goes on to recount Reb's childhood of poverty.  He didn't have fancy toys or fancy food.  He had two sets of clothes...one for weekdays and one for the Sabbath.  He recounts how reb was embarrassed to learn that the nice suit that he was given for his Bar Mitzvah was a hand-me-down from his cousin.  And his father, when questioned about this "injustice" answers in a singsongy Yiddish:

God and the decision he renders is correct.
God doesn't punish anyone out of the blue.
God knows what he is doing. (p. 115)

And Reb, from that day, never judged life by what he owned.

It allowed him to relish simple things.  He was easily impressed.  He was...satisfied.

And this carried over into his work at the temple.  Here's how Albom describes it:

For years, his wife had to pick up his paychecks, or else he'd never bother.  His starting salary at the temple was just a few thousand dollars a year, and after five decades of service, his compensation was embarrassing compared to other clerics.  He never pushed for more.  He thought it unseemly.  He didn't even own a car for the first few years of his service; a neighbor named Eddie Adelman would drive him into Philadelphia and drop him off at a subway so that he could take a class at Dropsie College.

The Reb seemed to embody a magnetic repulsion between faith and wealth.  If congregants tried to give him things for free, he suggested they contribute to charity instead.  He hated to fund-raise, because he never felt a clergyman should ask people for money.  He once said in a sermon that the only time he ever wished he was a millionaire was when he thought about how many families he could save from financial sorrow. (Have a Little Faith,  By Mitch Albom, Hyperion Press, p. 116)

It's that last line there that got to me.  I have wished that I was a millionaire over the last few years.  It's not been for a mansion for my family or a flat screen TV or even for complete college funds for our kids.  I've wished I was a millionaire so I could write over a big ol' check to Girdwood Chapel and pay off our building.  This has been a long road for our church and we really need to be in it.  It's been a long road for me as well.  And, if I just had an extra $1,000,000 lying around, I could come in and "get 'er done."

But such thinking does a couple of things.

First, I'm not sure that's really the healthiest for our congregation.   If "that which is easily attained is not worth having" is true, then this building is definitely worth having.  It should be difficult.  It should require the work of many people and many hands, both here and around the US.  While this process is hard, I do believe that this is good for us.

Second, there is a lot of sorrow in the world that could be relieved by $1,000,000.  I know that we plan on our church being a place where financial sorrow, among other sorrows, is relieved.  But we can't lose sight that we have a God who demands us to work for justice in the world.  Buildings can become idols.  And they can become idols while we're building them too.  I pray that the difficulty of the process keeps us focused on the larger purposes of God in this world.

Prosperity Gospel In Africa -- This Concerns Me

I'm concerned about what our American "Prosperity Gospel" -- which can, in some churches, teach that God intends financial prosperity for God's children.  It can be full of false promises and false hope.  And, from what I've read, it can have the benefit of encouraging better money management and a "Protestant Work Ethic" among its followers.  However, this concerns me in a region of such poverty.


The Prosperity Gospel from The Global Conversation on Vimeo.

Riches on Earth

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Yeah, I know. More stuff about money. It keeps coming at me, doesn't it? This was from Pete Wilson's blog, Without Wax. It's a quote from G. Cambell Morgan that puts a good spiritual perspective on our propensity to store up riches on earth.   The Biblical background is Matthew 6:19-21:

  ¹⁹"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ²⁰But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Here's the good quote:

G. Campbell Morgan says, “You are to remember with the passion burning within you, that you are not the child of today, you are not of the earth, you are more than dust; you are the child of tomorrow, you are of the eternities, you are the offspring of Deity.

The measurements of your lives cannot be circumscribed by the point where blue sky kisses green earth. All the fact of your life cannot be encompassed in the one small sphere upon which you live. You belong to the infinite. If you make your fortune on the earth,– poor, sorry, silly soul,– you have made a fortune and stored it, in a place where you cannot hold it.

Make your fortune, but store it where it will greet you in the dawning of the new morning…. We cannot lay up our treasure on earth, it is not characteristic of those in His Kingdom. It was characteristic of the Pharisees. In a sense He was saying to them, “This is just another indication that you are not in My Kingdom no matter what you claim. People in My Kingdom don’t lay up treasure on earth.”

Good stuff.