The Green

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.