Deteriorate
Churches, too, Will Face the Moths, Rust, and Decay
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. - Matthew 6:19-21
How often we forget this command when it comes to our church buildings!
A good many Christians, following Christ by entrusting wealth to the offering plate, have given to ministers who took it upon themselves to store up their treasures on earth on their behalf.
The collective value of church property in the United States numbers in the Trillions, but for what yield? What is the rate of return on bigger and better?
The church is described as many things in Scripture, but ‘building’ is not one of them. At best you get “Temple of God” in 1 Corinthians 3:16, but I daresay no one would confuse being God’s temple with being the physical temple that abides in Jerusalem. Rather, the words to describe are living networks or beings: flock, city, household, body. These are all amorphous constantly-changing things. To settle on church as a building is to denigrate the image of God that is at the root of all humanity, for God is a dead thing of fixed size and stones.
Why do we set our hearts on our buildings when even the best ones often become wards of the state (like Notre Dame), museums, or pizza parlors? We like to worship in comfort and beauty, I agree, but I think there is more: the grandeur of a thing seems to instill some sense of awe that, in my humble opinion, too often shifts to the thing and not to the God it is supposed to urge us to worship. Churches become symbols of our own success, and we see in their building a reflection of what good we think God is doing in us. Being Christians, we often want to avoid the appearance of wealth, but we still appreciate its fineries. We do not want the attention of a big building or fine cars, but we do not so much mind the attention our church building brings.
I am stuck on the $trillions$ in real estate because I constantly hear: “the church should provide (insert) social service.” The church should help the poor. The church should help those with mental illness. The church should help the elderly. But beloved, I am the Board Chair of a non profit for people with developmental disabilities and I’ve never seen a church pay even 1 percent of our annual budget! If only our group homes looked like our churches! If only our day programs had the indoor playspaces and coffee shops that lay dormant all week in our big megasites.
I am not saying the church does nothing, but most of what the church does for the poor and the disabled and the elderly and so on happens within and by the body and not the building. The body is alive and serving the least and the lost. I simply think the body and those in charge of the buildings the body meets in often have great disconnects, and more resources get given to the latter instead of the former. Let us instead feed the body and recalibrate what we put into bricks and lumber, knowing well the body will last unto eternity and the building is here but for a moment.
