Monday, January 02, 2006

Quick thought on church & money

Steven, who is serving the Lord is S. Africa posted some great thoughts on his blog. As I look forward to what God has for me via the church world, I've been thinking how can we make a difference, without spending so much cash on staff, building, and programs...I think the average church of 1000 spends more the 75% of their budget on building and staffing. Anyhow, below is a quick glimpse; go to Steven's blog for more info:

What did it cost to start these 100,000 churches? Churches with no building or parking lot, no paid pastor or youth leader, no overhead projector? Totaling the costs for all the travel required, seminars, training, research projects, equipping of the few key people and multipliers, plus emergency welfare assistance, we arrive at no more than US$30 million per year, or around US$300 million over the past decade. In comparison: traditional Christianity, with its countless programmes, mountains of paper, training, permanent evangelistic events, church buildings and maintenance costs, salaries of church employees and budgets for welfare and mission, cost an incredible US$286 billion per year, according to Dr. David Barrett, or US$2,860 billion over the decade. US$300 million is one ten thousandth of that sum! What would happen if Christians changed their giving habits over the next ten years, so that instead of 0.01%, 10% of Christian finances were invested in strategic multiplicative church planting movements? It would lead to a missionary explosion of incredible proportions.

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