Prayer journal and thoughts regarding Building and Relocation issues.

Outline with Links:

Opening Prayers:

Whether to share these thoughts

For open-mindedness and humility

That we seek wisdom primarily in Your word

For global perspective and stewardship

For true unity as opposed to simple majority consent

Thoughts on the Issues:

Factors in favor of building/moving:

Factors against:

Moderating factors:

Closing prayer, end of day.

Meditations:

5/14/01: Noon: Prayer: Father, the elders of our church are meeting today with architects and planners regarding the development of the land we purchased last year. We the congregation have been asked to fast and pray for wisdom for the elders and for the people, and for unity. Barb and I are participating in this day of prayer; I have off today and may devote large portions of my time to this worthy activity. As I often do when considering an important and complex decision, I have decided to pray and meditate “on paper”, which for me focuses the mind and creates a thought-trail documenting the development of ideas, the evolution of concerns and inclinations, and a clear record of what, exactly, I prayed for and when. It also helps me to order my prayer, to do some mental work at it, rather than simply tossing up any idea that comes into my head. Lord, I am considering sharing these thoughts with the pastors and elders, and with other brothers and sisters in the church, so I am typing them onto a document rather than writing in my journal.

First, I pray for guidance regarding whether or not to actually share these thoughts in a public way. I do not wish to increase dissension in the church, nor to air our family issues to the general public. Yet, there is little opportunity afforded in our church for true discussion and exchange of ideas among the members of the church at large; our congregational meetings are focused on approving or disapproving motions put forth by the elders, with a strong cultural pressure to approve, and little opportunity to offer and approve new ideas, or to significantly modify the elders’ ideas and then approve them. The elders have been making an attempt to rectify this, but the inertia of past practice is huge, and it is generally still the practice of our church to seek serious congregational input too late in the process to make any difference. I understand that, regarding this decision, the night for congregational discussion and questions is scheduled for the night before the actual vote, preventing any opportunity for the elders to carefully consider what was heard and significantly change their recommendations. So, I am considering sharing these thoughts either through an email chain, or by posting them on my website for consideration by anyone with an interest. I pray that You would give me wisdom with regard to this idea.

Secondly, I pray that my past thoughts on these issues would not dictate or constrain my future thoughts or opinions. I have generally been against the unlimited expansion of this particular church, and am somewhat “on record” to this effect. These have been considered and honestly held opinions, and I have believed that they were based on a good understanding of both scripture and fallen human nature. Nevertheless, this is a time for reexamination. It would be great if I could honestly support such a large undertaking of my church. I would gladly lose the role of loyal opposition, I think. Lord, remove any pride that may attach me emotionally to my own past thoughts and stands.

I pray likewise for the pastors and elders. Pastor Dave especially is on record in favor of this huge undertaking, and has considerable emotional sway over the elder board and the members. I pray that he and the other leaders would be willing to release prior stands and hear other ideas, and especially any leading of your Holy Spirit or teaching from your word.

I pray that, in seeking wisdom, we seek it primarily in your word and not in our feelings or impressions nor in our modern cultural norms. It is too easy to simply ask for wisdom, then lean back and ask ourselves how we “feel”, or to open a Christian “how-to” book and follow the examples there, reasoning that if You blessed their actions, or if those actions “worked”, then it is OK for us to do likewise. Likewise, many of us are “high-powered” modern technocrats and leaders in our secular jobs, and have learned how to use modern business theory and modern psychology to accomplish our ends. However, regarding the first error, You often prosper us in spite of our poor decisions, even in spite of sinful decisions, so we cannot rely on something having “worked” for someone else as an indication that it is the best course for us. There may be consequences, indirect and long-brewing, which we do not yet see. Consider that large church in the Midwest whose growth through appeal to popular culture has led to emulation by so many churches, including ours, yet which is now using gender-neutral scriptures. We are appalled at this, but does it not logically follow from their premises, the same premises that supposedly led to their phenomenal growth?

Regarding the second error, that of confusing wisdom with our business savvy, it is simply a form of self-reliance. Again, You may let us get away with it…you often do. It seems best to our culture today to work Sunday; it must have seemed so even to the ancient Israelites. How much more farm work can be done in seven days as opposed to six! That’s the way to prosper. Yet You, who know more about both human nature and the land than we can ever hope to, established Sabbath rests for both. Our modern wisdom is likewise sure to be found wanting when compared to the timeless teachings and wisdom of scripture. I pray that we would work out from your scripture, in exegesis, and not backward from our confirmed opinions into scriptural proof-texts.

I pray that, in considering this project, we would retain a global perspective and a sense of proportion and stewardship. It is so easy for us to accept our opulent culture uncritically, and lose perspective on its excesses and faults. I never sat on upholstered pews in my life before our new building, and even now our moveable, stackable seating is of better quality and higher cost than anything either I myself or the hospital at which I work would buy. Our church buys only the best. We are considering spending $20 to 30 million on our own “digs”, at the same time that $1400 can send a Turkish student to seminary for a full year in Moldova. The justification for expansion seems to be that we “need” more space of our own (ie, owned and not rented), and the justification for expensive appointments is that it is Your house and You deserve the best. Yet we are aware, today, of brothers and sisters with greater needs of space than our own, and your true temple is our bodies and that of Jesus’, not our buildings. For centuries, the Catholic church built the largest and most opulent buildings of its time (most likely with the same justifications) while its heart was rotting and the poor starved outside. I pray that we would do as Paul was told to do, “Only, remember the poor (the very thing I was eager to do).” If we are inconvenienced thereby, we are simply following the steps of our Lord.

I pray that there would be true unity regarding this project, not simply general consent. We regularly confuse consent with agreement in our church. We like to be able to say that a decision was unanimous or almost so. Our church’s culture has set a premium on this over the years, so much so that it is very difficult, emotionally, for members to vote in opposition to the elders’ usually singular proposal. It is not worth debating an issue, as the only options are an up or down vote, and to vote down the elders’ proposal seems (and is made to seem) like a no-confidence vote, or a failure to submit to our elders, or a waste of their time. Hence, unless a member feels very strongly opposed to a given proposal, he will likely vote for it, even if he does not really agree nor feel any commitment to it. An example is the vote to buy the land on 743. The motion passed by an overwhelming majority. However, when it came to paying for it, there was no commitment. The vote to buy did not equate in most people’s minds to actually, personally, wanting the land enough to give extra money toward it. It was easier to just vote “yes” than to make an issue of it at the meeting. But the vote did not really mean support, only that we would go along, albeit passively. If you don’t care, it’s easier to just vote “yes”. If you are strongly opposed, and the issue is important enough, it is easier to simply leave the church; no one will come after you.

The danger in this is that the elders cannot rely on a congregational vote to reflect what the congregation will actually support, only what they won’t stand strongly against. This, it seems to me, is not enough when making decisions of this magnitude. I believe we have the cart before the horse. I would pray that we have true unity, which means more than just going along. We need to find a proposal, and a course, which a significant majority will actually agree with and support, not simply tolerate. We should probably consider the results of the pledge drive to be the only real vote on this issue, and avoid irreversible actions till that vote is known.

3:00 PM: Thoughts on the Issues:

Factors in favor of building and moving:

Our church continues to grow numerically, and to develop additional identifiable ministries that need facilities to varying extents. I would like to see an actual graph of our growth over the past years, as it seems to me that growth has leveled off somewhat, or at least the rate of growth has leveled off. Our family is always late for first service, yet never has difficulty finding either parking or a seat in the service. However, even if growth is leveling off, that could be because our facility is limiting further growth. Let us grant this last idea for the sake of discussion. If we accept the idea that the ideal is for individual churches to expand indefinitely, then we need a way to accommodate more worshippers on Sunday. One of these ways is to run additional services in the existing facility, and the only other is to build a larger worship facility. Our pastors believe that we have tried the first and found that it failed, even though it works for many other large churches in PA. Hence, if we believe that God’s ideal is that our specific church keep growing numerically larger, and that there is no way to develop practical additional services, we should build a larger facility for worship.
We continue to develop additional identifiable ministries that need facility. Furthermore, as the church and its ministries grow, we need more pastoral and support staff, who in turn need additional office space. If it is assumed that all ministries, all pastors, and all support staff should be in the same contiguous buildings, and that those buildings all need to be on the same land as the sanctuary and worship center, then we need to build a larger group of facilities on a larger campus.
Our Sunday School and youth ministries continue to grow, and need larger facilities. The Sunday school issue is clearly tied to #1 above, the general growth of the church. If we stopped growing because the sanctuary would hold no more, then there would also be leveling off of the number of children, unless larger families come back into vogue or there are other demographic shifts. If we allowed for growth in the worship center by adding services, then the population of each service, and the facility, should be able to handle the kids in that service, if there is a good match between Sunday school / nursery rooms and sanctuary size, which there may not be at this time. Hence, even with the current sanctuary, we probably need more rooms on-site for elementary Sunday school and nursery, so we need to vacate offices to another site or add rooms to our current facility. This argues for, at least, relocation of offices to another site or additional building here.
The Junior and Senior High School youth groups need more space. If it is assumed that these ministries must involve sports and lots of play, and that the number of families in the church continues to grow for any reason (ie, even by additional worship services), then larger facilities may be needed. If the ministries were primarily oriented toward teaching, discussion and worship and did not require such now-popular activities as overnight lockups and indoor games, the need for new facilities is more debatable.
Our existing facility is booked and overbooked by various worthy ministries and services (such as weddings and funerals and educational work). We can only have so many weddings on a given Saturday and some couples are unable to book our church.
Education of the young is a critical ministry of the church, and further development of another Christian school is very important. A larger facility is needed if Hershey Christian School is going to grow.
If we had more members, our giving to other ministries and missions would go up.
We are an affluent congregation who can afford to build a megachurch. If each of 2000 giving families would give an average of $10,000 additional, we would have $20,000,000 to build this. Assumption: This is the best use of this $20 million; this money would not have been given to other of God’s works anyway.
A larger, integrated physical plant might allow the development of a truly functional social center, as did ancient churches and synagogues. We could have a café or social center that families could drop in on, or go to meet in the way that they may now use Cocoa Perk or similar commercial cafés.

Factors opposing the proposal to build:

First, considering alternative views or approaches to the ideas above, then considering other issues:

Individual churches should not grow indefinitely larger, or at least, there is nothing inherently preferable about such growth when compared to growth in number of smaller churches. Having been an elder in a very small church for five years, there is clearly a “critical mass” or size at which a church can offer a full set of ministries, and below which it cannot. However, there seems to me to be very few, if any, ministries that only a huge church can offer. Regarding large educational meetings or speakers, other organizations routinely host huge national assemblies at rented facilities designed for just such purposes, and which exist (in spades!) in the Hershey area. None of these organizations thinks it to be worth it to build their own conference facilities. On the other hand, there are clearly many problems introduced by the sheer size of a huge church, some of which we already wrestle with. Communication is more difficult; elders become board members concerned with governance and personnel rather than true overseers of individual lives and families; an institutional mindset develops (whereby we, for example, do not think it worth committing a pastor’s Sunday evening to leading “only” 30 or so people in worship, whereas that constituted the entire main service in my former church!) How many couples I know in our church whose marriages have been breaking up for years without notice of any elder or pastor. I already meet former church members in other churches, and never realized they had left. Often it is because “the church got too big”. How I personally miss the intimacy of spontaneous song during Communion, or the introduction of visitors. To me, it is not obvious that the church should keep growing numerically. It is probably true that the facility will limit the ultimate size of the communicant body; perhaps it should. This routinely happens in urban churches that do not have the option of spreading out, such as 10^th Presbyterian in Philadelphia, a solid church whose ministry reaches far outside its immediate circle, but not by force of numbers. In fact, we have already given birth to several local churches, and the pressure of size and the existence of a “cap” on our own size help to squeeze out these daughter churches. What is wrong with that?
We have not persisted in the offering of additional services. Barb and I have met (at Sandy Cove) brethren whose large churches offer no less than 5 services a week: Saturday evening, two or three Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Monday evening, so as to be better stewards of their facilities. We tried one model for a short time and decided it didn’t work. It is said that people won’t come to our church if they can’t come exactly when they’d prefer to. That may be so, but does such an observation rise to the level of an argument for spending millions to accommodate these attendees? I work with nurses and doctors whose schedules require them to work every other Sunday AM or over Saturday night; the Medical Center is likewise full of such brethren. They must miss our only Sunday services. At our church, there is still no regular Sunday evening service, because “attendance is too low” and because an elaborate musical offering would not be practical. This is a very large-church attitude. For just the interest on $20M, we could reliably have $200K per year for additional pastors and staff to lead additional services, if our current people are overworked.
In regard to the issue of additional services as well as children’s ministries, it is often said that we do not have the personnel to support another service. This seems to me to demonstrate the very low level of commitment that our average attendee has to the church. If there are not enough concerned people in a given service to care for that service’s children and infants, or to otherwise support the activity of that service, what do we think is going to happen when we simply pack more unconcerned and uninvolved attendees into a larger facility? Does that somehow make more volunteers? If we really want to serve these people who won’t serve themselves, it would be more cost-effective to take some of that $20M and outright hire nursery workers or musicians.
Many ministries could be based off-campus. Again, this is quite common in the secular world. Our hospital owns many buildings throughout Lebanon and has various services and offices located off-campus. Those that require daily, immediate interaction are closest in location, while the more independent ones are located many blocks away or even outside town. The stewardship advantage of this (which is, of course, why the hospital does it that way) is that expenses are incurred incrementally in the growth phase, and can be shed incrementally if there is reason to downsize or eliminate the service. The sites may be owned or leased, but remain marketable properties, which allows great flexibility and avoids huge commitment to a particular future vision.
Regarding Sunday school physical plant, it may be true that we do not have sufficient space for the children of any given worship service. If so, we would need to relocate our administrative offices and probably add some classrooms to the current building. This does not appear to mandate a wholesale moving of the entire church and all its functions to another site. It may mandate the creation of a pastoral and administrative center on the new property.
Given a global perspective on stewardship, the building of additional chapels simply to accommodate weddings and funerals does not seem a strong argument for such huge expenditures, especially as there are so many quaint chapels and churches in our area. In any case, the ultimate building of chapel on the new site would not in any way argue for the relocation of the main sanctuary to the same site; in fact, it might argue against it, as keeping different wedding and funeral parties apart.
Likewise, in a community full of athletic fields, the ownership of our own fields, simply to avoid the logistics of bus transport, seems an excess to me. On the other hand, the leveling of some land and the purchase of some goalposts is probably a miniscule part of the cost of this project…we already own the land.
Regarding our youth program, I would argue that we need more depth and less emphasis on entertainment and ‘outreach’. In teaching a Bible study in my home, to some of the most serious youth in our congregation, I am surprised at the shallowness of their Biblical knowledge. They uniformly complain that there is too much attention paid to fun and too little to study and fellowship. What effect would such a shift in emphasis have on our “need” for athletic facilities and dedicated youth centers? I suspect we sell our kids short, even the “hard” ones, and in a sense have not given them the respect they deserve as emerging adults.
On the stewardship issue, I don’t believe for a minute that the $20 million addition dollars given to our church building program won’t be shifted from other giving. I don’t think most people will stop giving to works they currently support, but I have no doubt that such a commitment to our building program will cause them to either decide not to pick up, or be unable to pick up, the support of new works or new missionaries. Therefore, relative value issues must be considered. Would I rather our people commit another $1500 to $3000 a year to a new building for us, or for twenty or more new buildings in South America, or libraries for poor pastors, or to train new ministers to the unreached or under-reached people of the world?
One of my chief concerns is how much this project will consume our attention and our efforts for the next many years. How many times will we hear appeals for money from the pulpit, or see skits and videos about the project in our worship service? How free will Pastor Dave feel to preach a really convicting sermon (already fewer than they once were) that might offend people, especially the big givers? How much will our debt service become a club to beat the congregation into giving more? How many reminders to pay on our pledges? How excited will we be about the project, versus about the other work of the Church?
To what extent will we have yoked our vision of what God can do to the works of our own hands? There is no question that we can do this thing, especially if we rely upon debt. We can get the loan, we can pay off the loan over the years, entirely on our own strength. Can the Lord not work mightily with our present possessions and our present facility? How will we really see the Lord’s hand, and distinguish it from our own?

Factors moderating or qualifying the proposal to build:

After working through all this, I cannot say that I am unequivocally either for or against this project. I voted to purchase the land. I can see lots of potential uses for it, especially with respect to educational and social ministries. Yet I lean away from the project as I expect it to be presented, as a big hoopla push for a major development of many elements of the plan right up front, financed by debt and presented as a matter of faith versus fear, and then maintained by regular doses of fundraising from the pulpit on Sundays. The moderating issues, the issues whose resolution would affect my overall support of this project, include:

Financing the project: I would be very much more inclined to vote for and personally support the project if there were a commitment to do it on a cash basis, without debt. There are several reasons for this:

Though not explicitly prohibited, debt is everywhere advised against in scripture. Early in the history of Israel, in Deut. 15:6 and 28:12, the very absence of debt (in fact, the ability to lend) is one of the indications of God’s blessing upon his people. Later, in Proverbs 22:7 we have the famous proverb stating, “the borrower is slave to the lender.” Prov 22:26 we are advised not to become “surety for debts”, not a direct prohibition of debt per se, but implying and recognizing the danger inherent in debt. The whole thrust of Proverbs pictures the righteous, hard-working wise person as living within his means, neither rich nor poor, financially prudent. Debt never appears except with negative connotations. Then, in Romans, Paul admonishes us to owe one another nothing except love. Again, his comment is not primarily about financial issues, but it casts the owing of anything except love into a negative light; humans being what we are, there are always dangers and complications involved with debts of any kind, except the debt of loving one another. In 2Cor 6:14, Paul advises us to avoid “yokes” with unbelievers. We commonly confine that comment to marriage between unbelievers, but we know that the principle is broader than that. Christians involved in business partnerships with non-Christians have experienced the stresses and possible compromises when thus “yoked” together. A debt to a secular bank is unequivocally a yoke, a legal binding of one party to another, whereby the lending party gains certain rights over the borrowing party under certain circumstances.
Debt is never held up as advisable in Scripture. While this may seem to be just more of the first point, it is really a different one. It might be that only certain types of debt are problematic, but some types are good. I can find no example or story in scripture in which it is portrayed as advisable, or an act of faith, to purchase something on debt. Debt is not always a sign of foolishness (sometimes it is simply misfortune), perhaps, but it is never portrayed as a sign of wisdom or blessing. Hence, I cringe when I hear people advocate going into debt as an act of faith. One might as easily argue for hanging around the adulteress’s corner as an act of faith, that God will get you through it even though you did what was portrayed as foolish.
In fact, in Scripture we have very explicit examples of the people of God building sanctuaries, with explicit information about how the effort was financed. There are many things for which we don’t have examples: how to build a house, how to plant and harvest crops; but of this we do have two examples, and both very explicitly describe the financing. The first sanctuary was the Tabernacle built in the wilderness of the Exodus, and its financing is described in Ex 35:4-9, 20-29 and Ex 36:4-7. The cost of the Tabernacle was collected from the people as it was being built, in the “currency” of the time: precious metals, marketable goods and materials, and the donated time of the workmen. We see in Ex 36 that the people donated even more than was necessary. Now that evidences both faith and the working of God in the people’s hearts!
Solomon’s temple was paid for by the king. The next example of the people as a whole financing the building of a sanctuary is in Ezra’s time, when they rebuilt the temple that the Babylonians had destroyed. (Ezra 2:68,69) Again, we see freewill offerings by the heads of households. No debt. Only the movement of the Spirit of God among His people.
The commitment to rely upon this movement of God among his people seems a much more Biblical way of demonstrating faith than asking God to bless an endeavor (borrowing money) which He advises against in his Word, and which is within our own secular power to secure. We are impressed with the faith of George Mueller precisely because he neither borrowed, nor even urged his needs upon supporters, but relied upon a sovereign God to both know his need and provide for it. If we say we are going to pay for it by free-will offerings, but have a mortgage as our backup plan, we aren’t really believing that God will move his people, nor are we sure it is his will.

Staging the Project: I would be more in favor of the project if it were laid out in multiple smaller stages, so as to move incrementally and allow the above pay-as-we-go financing.

The purchase of the land did not quite dominate our attention because it was a manageable, step-wise action that did not in itself commit us to the whole enterprise, and was in itself a wise purchase that retained and even enhanced our flexibility. Likewise, the installation of the infrastructure (runoff management, sewers, water, other utilities and some roads) is another stepwise project that could be paid for as we go, and would not irrevocably commit us to the whole project within some particular timeframe. In a crisis, in an economic downturn, we would have a vastly improved piece of prime real estate, paid for, and we could pause without fear of defaulting a loan.
Staging the development in smaller, stepwise manner would better mesh with the avoidance of debt. If we start a large Phase which costs, say, $10M, and cannot be conveniently interrupted in the middle or at various stages in its development, then we either need $10M on hand or we are saying, in effect, that we’ll go into debt if we don’t raise the whole amount on schedule. If we don’t have clear break-points along the way, at which we could pause indefinitely without hardship, then we will be sorely tempted to borrow to complete the project.

Raising the funds: I would be more in favor of the project if we heard a commitment from the pastors and elders to fully separate fundraising and building discussion from the church’s worship services.

I will not argue that it is “wrong” to discuss finances in the worship service, though I see no example of anything like it in the regular worship of Israel or the early church, though there are surely admonitions to support the poor, poorer churches, and ministers in the letters of Paul. Whether it is wrong or right, it is not edifying. We do not serve real wine in our communion service, not because we feel that drinking wine is sinful, or that they drank grape juice at the Last Supper, but in deference to brethren who may have a problem with it, either personally or morally. If there is a stereotype of the modern evangelical Christian, it surely involves appeals for money, so prevalent on TV services and even on some radio programs. We must avoid unnecessary offense and misunderstanding in our worship service; the speaking of tongues without interpretation in the service is forbidden because it sends the wrong message to those who don’t understand. Regarding appeals or “reminders” to give, even I find them distracting, embarrassing and offensive, and I am a committed member of the church. What do visitors think?
A resolution not to speak of finances in the worship service evidences faith in God’s ability to provide quite apart from our own human efforts. Again, this is what strikes us about George Mueller. There would have been nothing wrong with his seeking emergency funds from friends and supporters when needed, but he chose to witness the recurrent sovereign hand of God. When he got provisions, he knew it was from the hand of God and not some really effective technique learned from the marketing people.
I have absolutely no problem with fundraising and reminders per se; I get them regularly in the mail. It is quite appropriate to communicate by any means: phone, email, snailmail, special meetings—to remind the members of the church of the financial status of their church. Even a special announcement after the benediction on Sunday would emotionally separate the appeal for money from the offering of worship.

7:30 PM : Closing Prayer

Lord, tonight the elders are meeting with the architects and fundraising experts of the Free Church. I pray that there would be a spirit of moderation and flexibility in the development of options for this property, and not an all-or-nothing approach. I pray that you would give Barb and I gracious spirits, that we would not personally campaign the viewpoints I have described in these meditations today, or be personally affronted if, as expected, the church goes ahead and builds the whole kit and caboodle on mortgage. Please give us wisdom about whether to support this project, to what extent to support it financially, and under what circumstances. If we disagree with the final decision, let us remain respectful and supportive of our elders and brethren in the church, not necessarily keeping silent but not beating a dead horse, so to speak.

In light of my thinking this through again today, I would specifically pray that the elders recommend that we develop the land in a stepwise (small steps, not two giant steps) manner, using concurrent raising of funds from the people of God as we go, and foreswearing debt (except as immediate cash-flow tool in the very short term and for very small amounts). If there would need to be debt, that it would be debt to the people of God in the form of bonds, so as to avoid being unequally yoked with a secular bank or S and L. Finally, I pray that the elders would commit to non-worship-service efforts to raise pledges and support, and a real effort to prevent this project from consuming all our best efforts for the next 10 years. I believe I could support the graduated development of this land in this manner.

I believe I will share these thoughts on my web page. It is not a publicly exposed page; to my knowledge there are no search-engines that are aware of it. It has only been used to post material for the use of my students and friends. It is non-aggressive: it does not come to one, one has to point one’s own browser at it. I’ll share its presence with some friends and leave it to their judgment whether to pass the information on.

Anyone who wishes to share his or her thoughts on these issues can respond to me by clicking here. Let me know if you are willing to have your responses posted here, with or without your name.