An INCREDIBLE Church!

That sounds wonderful!

 

Interesting idea.

 

Wow! That IS awesome! Don't you just LOVE IT when churches do kind things for people like that? God bless that pastor!!

 

Many churches provide financial counseling with the purpose of developing a Christian’s witness. We are stewards of all that God has given us. I would like to see the results of this experiment in a year or two.
Currently, we can barely make budget in our church. Can our whole church attend there?

 

That must be a great church. Well, I am trying as much as I can to stay out of debt, but that is a sacrifice. You won't live in a nice new 2-story brick mansion as they are so popular here in the Nashville area. Now we live in a 50-year old fixer upper. You won't put it the best carpet, but instead those cheap vinyl tiles.
The real cause of all that debt here in the South is the poverty and the high share of cost that an individual has to bear. So many empty factories here, lay-offs, closings, and low wage slavery. Now you tell me how can you support a family with kids, tithe, pay off a mortgage, put food on the table at $11/hour wage and have the mother at home and the father taking the breadwinners' role? This is an enormous challenge. But let me tell you straightforward: the solution will not be the feminist notion of putting the wife to work and leaving the children in some day-care place. That's the easy way out, but it's not the straight and narrow Bible way.

http://www.solidrockfaith.com/partialbirthabortionban.html

http://www.solidrockfaith.com/littlefeet.jpg

[ October 25, 2002, 10:03 AM: Message edited by: Barnabas ]

 

Helen,
Its a wonderful idea. There is only one church I know of who does sorta like you mentioned--a mid-size church in Baton Rouge. I have been pastoring now for over 15 years and would love to give this program a "look over." I have been in my present church almost 2 years--and as far as I know--no one is in debt--as described in your post--Oh! some have bought cars/trucks and other play things--which I wouldn't class in your reasoning to help. I just can't see taking the church's money and paying off someone's new bass rig!! Other churches I know have food banks, etc.--which--sometimes some selfish soul is asked to run the program--and they wind up "guarding" the food bank as if they were guarding Fort Knox!

I'll do some praying and see if I can impliment some sort of program like that here in Wesson.

Your friend,
Blackbird

 

At first thought using church funds to help keep its people out of debt is a good idea. Yet I can see many problems that could come up in trying to evaluate each specific case. On a very small scale, a similiar situation came up in a church I attended. This was simply that one of the members was behind in paying an electric bill. The church was split about fifty-fifty but finally decided to pay the bill. It wasn't too long after the same person brought up the same problem, only this time is was declined. Some time later we learned that this person had previously used some of the same tactics in other churches. It's a tough one.
On the other hand I recently read that there are some churches accepting credit cards in their offering plates, some even having arranged to debit a persons checking account. So this goes way the other way.