The Hopeful Skeptic by Fiedler Nick;

Author:Fiedler, Nick; [Fiedler, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780830878369
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2010-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

Open Source is Free

My immodest proposal: I personally think (brace yourself; this is crazy) that all churches need to close their doors for the next five years.

Harsh, right?

Maybe, but if we carry the idea of “open source” into our communities, we should acknowledge that open-source software is free. I think that money ties into our idea for a church that is an open-sourced environment. But imagine this: a recent poll said that if all the evangelical Christians in America would give 10 percent of their income to the poor, then we would eliminate extreme global hunger immediately. So if churches closed their doors for five years and American evangelicals directed 10 percent of their income toward a solution to the global hunger problem, then extreme poverty would be eliminated. Maybe then we could put in place measures to guarantee that it would stay that way.

The problem is that we are institutionalized. The church has buildings. They use them for gatherings, and they also use them to help the community. But with the amount of debt and bills that the average church has to pay, they can’t just close the doors—nor could all churches find ways to operate without a building unless they restructured.

So my proposal isn’t an actual proposal, and I know it won’t happen. However, it does provide an image of why I am skeptical about giving money to a building. I like to give money to causes, to people in need, but I have problems giving money to buildings. Understanding, of course, that all organizations have overhead, when I give I want to give to places that can make my money go the furthest.

There was a report done by the one of the guys over at Relational Tithe (http://relationaltithe.com) called “The Embezzlement Papers.” In these papers, there is a startling statistic that says about 90 percent of a church’s budget stays inside the church. From working in a church I understand where that money goes. The money disappears quickly through salaries, utilities, mortgages, resources, mailing stuff, Sunday-morning handouts and so on. In fact, it is similar to what happens in our own homes with our own paychecks; they disappear on the necessities before we have a chance to spend any of it on something other than living expenses. I am not saying the church is hoarding money, but I do have a hard time giving my money to help a building stay afloat when there are options to giving my money to places that can use more than 10 percent of it to help those less fortunate than I am. In fact, there are some groups that can use all or most of my contribution for purposes other than interior bills: groups like Blood Water Mission, which is setting up wells in Africa; Kiva, which makes microloans for impoverished people working to start a business; International Justice Mission, which hires lawyers for those who can’t afford them; or Bread for Life and the One Campaign, which are working to eliminate hunger.

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