So I encountered a little challenge last week and spent some time musing over it, wishing I had someone to chat with about it. So here goes. We turned in budgets last week for the upcoming year. I'm new with the Saturday night team, so I kind of just observed the process, trying to learn the ropes. I looked over the worship celebration stuff to kind of give my opinion. In a few conversations that stemmed from this activity, I talked with some people about the kinds of things people were wanting to spend money on and the kinds of things we were already spending money on. A few things surprised me. My first reaction was that of a typical ignorant and arrogant college guy. I carried on about how ridiculous it was and how we had to fight against it. After I had screamed myself hoarse I calmed down enough to think that maybe I didn't know everything there was to know on the topic. Here are two issues that I would love your thoughts on.
The first is that of spending money on audio/visual improvements. How much is enough? I definitely felt the pull the first weekend I was on staff and was responsible for everything. I looked around the room and thought, "Oh what we could do if we only had..." I imagine no matter how stuff I bought up, I could walk in the room every weekend and find something else to add that would "enhance the experience." I could easily just start feeding the fleshly desire to have the shiniest, best stuff. But, there are some real, legitimate needs. Where is that line? Is replacing a perfectly good sound system with a slightly better one for the price of 6 missionary families' budgets for a year justified? How do we know when to stop?
The other question I have has to do with charging church members for "church services." I am getting married this August. As we started making plans for the location, I thought that my home church would definitely be the cheapest option. I expected to pay a tech guy and for a few things, but I was quite surprised to see the fee for using the room. I am told it's not for renting the room, but rather for the staff that will have to come clean the room after. Now I haven't seen the exact break down, but if that's really all it's going towards, and we're paying people that rate for cleaning a room, I want a job cleaning the church!
The problem is, sometimes I get the feeling that we, as a church staff, are providing a service to the people of the congregation, like some kind of business. Isn't this wrong? The church is the people, not the staff giving some religious service to the people. I wonder what Paul would say if he saw a young believing couple come and say to Timothy, "we want to be married before Christ and the church," but before Timothy would talk to them he handed them a bill? Why is the wedding celebration of covenant members of a church different than a regular worship service? We certainly don't set an hourly rate for people to come worship. I know the money has to come from somewhere, but it just seems to me like better ecclesiolgy for wedding services to be a part of the church's budget. Is it an easy out to say, "Hey, we're a little low on our maintenance budget. We can make it up by charging a little extra every time somebody has a wedding. After a few weddings we could make enough money to replace our projector bulbs" I actually heard a conversation one time, where the question came up of whether or not we had the money to do a certain worship event here in NWA. The suggestion was thrown out that we charge people to come worship, legitimately. It seems a slippery slope when we quit relying on God in faith for the money of the church and start charging people a flat rate to make sure we cover our bases.
I don't have a good scriptural backing for these thoughts, and my ecclesiology is pretty weak. I'd love to hear your thoughts. I know it's not immediately under the topic of worship and leading, but it's something I'm dealing with in that capacity, so I thought I'd throw it out there.
3 comments:
Nicholas, I totally understand where you're coming from on those points. For me, I think I've learned not to care about fancy sound equipment. It could be that in my two jobs at churches, we've had pretty meager sound systems but still been able to worship. At New Heights, we met in a dance/karate studio and at Austin Bible we meet in a middle school cafeteria. There's only so much we can do to "enhance the experience." Yet, both places, I've seen God encountered and I've encountered God. The early church didn't have electricity, much less a fancy PA system. As far as weddings, I can understand the idea of paying for using the room. I mean, electricity and maintenance and all that jazz does cost money. But, I agree that churches need to be careful that they're not charging to make money. We're not running a Vegas chapel, especially not to our members. Granted, this is a problem that doesn't come up at our church--not too many people want to get married in the cafeteria (plus we don't own it anyway). Regardless, I know people that have had their weddings at venues other than their church, because it would save them money. That's not a good thing.
We just went through figuring out how much to charge for a wedding at the Grove. Now that we have our own building, the requests are coming in. We landed on $400. That includes $50 for the sound engineer that will be there for rehearsal and the service. This covers any cleanup, electricity, etc.. Now, we know that our worship space isn't exactly a beautiful place to get married, but it gets the job done and I think we landed on a good price.
Guys, thanks for the thoughts. You know, I just wasn't aware that charging church members to have a wedding service was common practice. I can see that weddings cost, and I understand where Fellowship is coming from. I guess it's just something we have to bathe in prayer and be very careful with.
This weekend, we had a tornado warning go in effect in between services. We only had 15 kids show up, so I unplugged everything and pushed the stage back. It was a beautiful time of worship as we sat in a circle and sang to God together. I thought of what you wrote, James. It felt nice to strip it down and just meet with God.
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