Peter SmytheA Different Kind of Word Preacher

for Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to share their resources with the poor among the saints at Jerusalem - (Romans 15.26, NRV)

The office building where I have my law practice is a model of supreme efficiency. The owner is an accountant/finance genius who took pains to efficiently use every square inch of space - cabinets fit snugly in recessed walls, furniture was expertly designed for each office space for maximum use, and even the copiers were strategically placed so as to reduce the amount of time employees had to get out of their chairs and get their printouts. While the building won’t make the cut for Architectural Digest anytime soon, it is a model for extreme efficiency.

In the next town over, a law school friend and his partner also decided to build a building from the ground up. From the outside, it is a lot more pleasant on the eyes than where I work. When you step in, however, you begin to get the sense that my friend and his partner weren’t the best choice for building design. The building has one of those grand staircases that you might see in the old Hollywood movies of the 1940’s and 1950’s. It takes up a huge amount of space and is virtually unused because everyone takes the elevator. When you go up to my buddy’s office, you see that his secretary has to work around a huge support pole that impales the middle of her desk. Because of this pole, she needs a lot of extra desk space. All around the building there are unusable empty spaces.

If you didn’t notice these design flaws, you sure wouldn’t miss the train. The building was built just a hop, skip, and jump away from the downtown railroad tracks. Before putting their money on the plot of land, my buddy and his partner didn’t check the train schedules. Now, at least twice a day, everyone in the building has a moment of silence (actually several moments) when the train roars by. The building is so close to the tracks that the windows shake and you can see ripples in your water glass (my buddy says that he has the best time when opposing lawyers try to talk over the train in depositions).

My law school friend is a terrific lawyer, but he is an abysmally poor building planner. I believe a corollary exists with ministry and what you might call ministry culture. The man may be called of God to be an apostle, but that doesn’t mean he knows how to swing a hammer or balance a checkbook.

In our town, a few years ago we had a new church begin a campaign to purchase a humongous set of buildings and tract of land at the intersection of two major highways. According to the pastor, the vast property was needed to fulfill God’s vision for the church. People jumped on board and the church committed the congregation to paying $25 million for the property and renovations. Today the active congregation numbers less than 3,000 members. That equals $33,333.33 for every family of four or $8,333.33 for every man, woman, and child ($100,000 for each family if we count the mortgage amortization). Word on the street is that the church is running into financial trouble.

Just twenty minutes up the tollway (a short time for the Dallas metroplex), another church has begun a building campaign. The church is two years old and the congregation numbers about 350 people, including kids (adult attendance on Sunday is around 170). The pastor has committed the congregation to building a $5 million+ church facility. The church is going to be built on some of the most expensive land in the Dallas area and the building is due to seat just 500. That translates to $10,000 per seat and $15,000 per congregant (the portion for a family of four would be $60,000 - triple that amount when you consider the mortgage). The pastor has justified the program, somewhat, by saying that the church is due to grow and the building could accommodate multiple services.

While I personally don’t have a problem with church buildings (once you’ve sat through some of those tent-meetings in the hot Texas sun you really can appreciate air conditioning), there comes the question of burdening the people. If every spare cent that a church member comes across has to go to the pastor’s huge vision (i.e., building program), how can he ever hope to live out Romans 15.26 on his own?

Kristen Ashburn is a photojournalist par excellence. She has created photographs for clients such as Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and Business Week. The cool thing about Kristen is her long-term project of photographing and documenting the AIDS crisis in Africa. No one sends Kristen to Africa; she goes it alone. She uses her professional editorial assignments to self-fund her trips to the Dark Continent. Her body of work from Africa is breathtaking.

I wonder how many of our kids have missed out of being Kristens because of lavish “vision” programs. I wonder how many lost their spunky creative drives of being witnesses of the Gospel because they’ve been taught that only the pastor gets the heavenly vision and that they, being benchwarmers, are just supposed to fall into line.

I live in the city where the Word of Faith Church building was supposed to be standing for generations and “until Jesus comes back.” Today it’s the home of a hockey rink.