Build a church somewhere?
Right now, I'm being thrifty to keep up with helping wife and ten children (no kidding).
:)
About building churches - the church we've been involved with last few years has an
interesting approach. No building. We make use of local public elementary school
cafeteria and in exchange, the church that helped this one get started lets the public
school system use their facilities for meetings during the week. That frees up funds for
doing other things. One guy in church has started a halfway house ministry for men who
have been released from prison, to make the transition back to an honest life in society.
It is something the church couldn't have afforded to do if it was tied down to a building
and the associated expenses.
We are also working at meeting in homes during the week. I think the idea came from
the book Paul Yonghi Cho (quite likely mis-spelled) wrote about "Home Cell Groups"
like they have in S. Korea. The Korean Christians are a lot further along with the home
cell groups, but they have more incentive, with communist N. Korea breathing down
their necks. If the communists ever take over S. Korea, they won't be able to go to a
few locations and destroy the church, because it is spread all over the area, in people's
homes, networked together.
The home group meetings don't work as well here as in S. Korea, because we are too
spread out to get to each other's houses easily without driving a ways. We meet once a
week in homes and every Sunday in a school cafeteria.
Acts 2:46
John |
