June 12, 2009

Judas

For $660,000 our congregation purchased an upscale facility for our new church home, however not everyone in the community is supportive. There are a handful of folks who think we have too many churches in the area and they really wanted to see the restaurant and bar resurrected. One citizen said, “For a church to pay that much money to obtain real estate is absurd. That money could have actually gone to helping people instead of towards a monument to someone’s ego.” Now let me think, I’ve heard that before…Oh of course, now I remember. At Bethany Mary anointed Jesus with perfume and it was Judas Iscariot who objected. “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” John 12:5 NIV

1 comment:

Steve Corey said...

Gail;

-----General Patton said that if everyone is in agreement about something, then someone is not thinking. Certainly your church would have fellowship without the new building. Certainly it would spread the gospel without the building. It would just do it differently. But your church chose not that difference and bought the building. Good that your church has a building! But wonderful that it still has the freedom to make its own choice!
-----These folks who think there are too many churches in the valley and this gentleman who thinks it is absurd for a church to spend so much money on real estate remind me of certain predecessors also, not to mention our current leader on Pennsylvania Avenue. These are the kind of folks who think everyone should be in agreement with them, and that the world just is not right unless it is patterned after their own ideologies. They are the kind of people who will seize an opportunity to make other people do things their way. They are the sort who will call anyone who disagrees with them closed-minded without opening their own minds enough to find any agreement with someone else. And when they get into positions of power they will use that power to make others subservient to their own will. Il Deuce, Wilson, Roosevelt, Stalin, Johnson, Chavez, Pelosi, Castro, Obama, and Sotomayor, to name just a few but not the most infamous, are all people who seek to level and polish the playing field according to their own ideas, battling any ideas of others off the checkerboard. Everything then suffers for the lack of variety in thinking and solutions available to problems. But Paul agrees with Patton, “Let everyone be convinced in his own mind.” (Rom 14:5b) It is Patton’s and Paul’s thinking that made America great. It is the thinking of the others that will buy into the Anti-christ.
-----Great that your church has a new facility! It will use it. Great that your church owes the bank money! It is business. Great that some want more restaurants! They will build them and people will have jobs. Great that our freedom is not dead by the arrogance of those who know what others must do! Multitudes of different things will be done. Your church will meet in a nice, large facility. Another church will meet in someone’s living room. Both will serve the Lord.

Love you all,
Steve Corey