And to think it all began with The Church Without Pants

Monday, November 7, 2011

The Church of The Black Hole

A popular church in our community (an editor of our local paper suggests they just be called “Church”) is purchasing some vacant land near the university. More than 6 acres of vacant land. According to interviews published in our local paper the pastor of Church insists they are not setting up there to “take” but to “give.” They’ve raised $2,000,000 so far for this gift and anticipate that they will raise another $3,000,000 to build out the site. That’s $5,000,000 worth of “giving.”

When I think of giving, several things come to mind. One is that a gift is for the recipient, not for the giver's benefit or to further the giver's agenda. (Ask me sometime about the wisdom of giving that new toy you've always wanted, or a vacuum cleaner, to the person you share your home with …)

They say they’re not yet sure what all they’ll build, but so far they are committed to building a center for offering “Biblical counseling” and a place for their campus ministry. And it will be called “Church West.” It seems to me like they’re “giving” 5 million dollars in order to put their name on something else and then furthering their agenda by doing two things they already do: campus ministry and “Biblical Counseling.”

Sorry, but you sound like you're giving more to yourself and your own causes than to anyone, or anything, else on the west side.

Pastor, if you’re really open to suggestions, I have a couple of ideas. First, since you are so interested in giving, why not ask the churches and agencies that already serve the area what types of things they’re doing to make things better on the west side of town and offer grants to help them?

And second, right after the TV interview in which the pastor insisted that Church just wants to help make things better, the next topic in the news was about our county’s toxic waste disposal facility. Sadly, the buildings where we bring our poisons (damn those government regulations) are not OSHA compliant (double damn those government regulations) and the county needs more than $400,000 to bring the facility up to code (and triple damn everyone else). That’s about $300,000 more than the county can scrape up. So, here’s my thought, Church: Since $300,000 is chump change to you, how about giving $300,000 to the county so we can have a place to bring our toxic wastes?

That would really help make this whole community a better place for everyone.

I’d even vote for putting your name on the new facility.

The new sign could read, “Church Waste.”

3 comments:

  1. After thinking about this one for a while, I've decided that this is so much all kinds of bitter that I can get behind.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You know what a blog camel is? A blog camel is an animal that posts amazing blogs, but goes uncalled for amounts of time between posts.

    That makes you a blog camel and me a Hippocrate.

    ReplyDelete

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