In the age of social media, many people get their education about politics and religion from various ridiculous memes floating about the internet. This is demonstrative of our culture’s short attention span and lack of critical thinking. A meme pops up, it seems wise, and it gets reposted.
Here is ridiculous meme #1:
There are so many things wrong with this meme, so let me start with the most obvious: a building of this type would not cost 130 million.
Here is a photo of a new school in our town.
It’s state of the art, very large, and very well built. What was the cost to build it?
20 million dollars.
There’s no way the church pictured was built for 130 million. This is a deceitful, straw-man argument.
Second, when scoffers attack Christianity, they always include some sort of vague statement about what Jesus would do or think.
According to the meme, Jesus would rather have us help people instead of building a structure.
Where, exactly, did Jesus say, “Don’t build a building. Give all your money to help people!”
I haven’t been able to find that verse.
Third, our church recently bought a building. We paid 130,000 for it. It’s a pile of junk, but it’s our pile of junk; and we’re already renovating it.
Guess what we do at this building?
Help people!
Narcotics anonymous meets 5 days a week (rent free)
A seminary uses our building 1 night a week (rent free)
A Hmong church meets at our bulding
An Hispanic church meets at our building
We have a Vacation Bible School every summer (for free)
We put on Fall Festival for the neighborhood kids (for free)
We have a yearly Thanksgiving Dinner for the community (for free)
We have a Christmas Eve music service every year (also free)
This is, of course, aside from all of the regular weekly activities and Bible teaching, which includes encouraging people to…
Get out of debt
Stay faithful to their spouses
Invest in their children
Work hard and succeed
Help people
All the other positive teaching of the scripture
In ten years our building will be paid off and we will be in an even stronger position to bless our community.
Churches can certainly thrive without a building, but owning a building provides a church with a stable administrative and community center with which to fulfill its purpose.
Even the largest church in America- Joel Osteen’s Lakewood (yuck) – the former Compaq Center would only cost 81 million dollars to build by 2015 standards.
True that!