I read this recently and was compelled to share it. It’s from The Irresistable Revolution by Shane Claiborne.
The background of this particular excerpt is that while Shane was doing an internship at Willow Creek Community Church, they embarked on a multi-million dollar building project, which he very much opposed. He was unable to talk the leadership out of it, so he came up with this idea as a sort of compromise:
In the vein of loving our global neighbors as ourselves, I have been able to propose to Willow Creek and to other congregations an alternative vision called a Jubilee Campaign, which would match dollar for dollar the money spent on building projects. The idea came after hearing of a congregation that consistently gave 51 percent of its offerings outside the walls of the church, ensuring that they are committed to loving their neighbor as themselves.
Imagine the ripples something like this could cause. For instance, we have close friends in El Salvador. Some of them are indigenous folks trying to build wells; an estimated fifteen thousand people died in El Salvador last year simply because they didn’t have clean drinking water. My good friend Atom, the scientist who lives on my block, and the water team he and his wife, Tara have organized found that it costs $2,000 to build a well for an entire village. What if evangelical megachurches became known around the world for things like providing water access for entire countries or fighting to end the AIDS pandemic? Imagine what integrity that would give to the good news we preach, especially the gospel that Jesus declares is good news to the poor.
(The Irresistable Revolution, pp. 331-2)
Later on, he says that Willow Creek did not go for that idea either, which was saddening.
His idea is phenomenal, though: it doesn’t err on the extreme of saying that we cannot spend any money on ourselves (which is unrealistic), nor the other extreme of saying that the building itself will promote outreach (which is misguided). Rather, it emphasizes the idea that we owe a debt to the poor just as much as we owe a debt to the bank for the building loan. Until a church can afford to give away a dollar for every dollar they spend on a building, they have no business starting the project.
It is easy enough for us as individuals to be caught up in the things of the world and to lose sight of the eternal. How much easier is it for the church to get entangled with these? We convince ourselves that our church needs new chairs, a new sound system, a new gym, and we spend God’s money before He even entrusts it to us. But we are already in enough debt to the world.
I dig the well idea. My cousin’s church does this in essence in a different part of the world; the result is that hundreds of people are able to get drinking water who would not be able to do so.
I also had this thought as I read this Claiborne excerpt:
“Imagine what integrity that would give to the good news we preach, especially the gospel that Jesus declares is good news to the poor.”
I think what Jesus was saying in some of the references to the “poor” did not refer to fiscal ruin. What we see with Jesus’ report he sent to John the Baptist was that lepers “are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.” In other words, Jesus did not give people money or fulfill physical needs but he rescued the poor by preaching good news – essentially: your affliction and inequality does not need to last forever if you will look to Me.
So, while it is completely idiotic to build a megachurch palace without caring for the poor, I also believe Claiborne bears down on a pattern of guilt, not gospel. Jesus was at a water well scene once, too. In the end he pointed her to living water – but not by giving her water, but by giving her open criticism of her sin.
Perhaps Claiborne will find justification in Jesus’ instructions to the ruler in Matthew 19:16-22. The ruler was instructed to sell all he had and give it to the poor. But he could not do this and would not do this, because he had great possession. Jesus was not making us see that we must care for the poor in order to get to heaven; however he was showing that we must not treat money as if it were our god. Jesus was not saying “abuse the poor,” either; but using that passage is not a good justification for “damn the rich,” but “in order for rich to enter heaven they must not act as if their money were more important than I.”
To his credit, in Claiborne’s effort to take the side of the poor he desires to use financial wealth (worldly goods) to introduce spiritual health (eternal glory). Maybe we don’t read about Jesus giving away $millions because Jesus himself did not have financial wealth. However, we do see that the early church elders, though poor in many cases, recommended full disclosure of financial giving and a complete giving of church members’ income to the amount that they were willing to give, and nothing more, and nothing less.
One of your comments was more than noteworthy: “It is easy enough for us as individuals to be caught up in the things of the world and to lose sight of the eternal.” I challenge you to consider that “things of the world” also includes not only buildings, but also includes water. We owe a debt to Christ and not to the poor; and that debt is completely mortified in Christ’s death on the cross. So there is no “paying it back” on our part; that is the gospel.
The message therefore to the megachurch architect and the thirsty village member is the same but with different inflection: “Your consumption can be quenched by nothing but Me.”
Keep up the posts; while I don’t comment on all, I read all.
From James 2: What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
From Jeremiah 22: Does it make you a king to have more and more cedar? Did not your father have food and drink? He did what was right and just, so all went well with him. He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. “Is that not what it means to know me?” declares the LORD.
The Bible is filled with texts instructing us to care for the poor. I don’t think good works are enough to save us, but I don’t think that’s the point here.