BARN CHURCH SCARES BIG CHURCH

JUNE 08, 2006

I can't help but wonder if all the fuss with this Bedford area church-in-a-barn is all about money. The more I think about it, it seems like big places of worship in the Bedford and surrounding areas don't want their collection tray totals to diminish when supporting members of their congregation choose to pray elsewhere.

It would seem those select individuals lobbying for the big area churches are nitpicking and perusing lawbooks to cite and hurl any letter-of-the-law ordinance they can find at this barn church. They just refuse to accept the fact some people would rather pray and worship in a barn and not in a big, air-conditioned, architecturally-enhanced, plush-carpeted fancy church. Could that be it?

If conditions at the barn where these folks are meeting were so intolerable, people wouldn't be gathering there to pray. To hear how people choose to pray in, of all places, a barn, is a nice reminder of how prayer and worship used to be. We lost track of the humility and sincerity of prayer and worship. Somewhere along the way, we started adding all the eye candy we associate with power and success to our places of worship. Next time you go to church, just look around.

Do we really need the stained glass windows? Do we need the felt-lined collection trays? Apparently the big churches do. The lack of bills in the collection trays is what's got the big church scared. If the "chuh-ching" isn't dropping at the big church, then it's dropping somewhere else. And that's just unacceptable to the big church. Right?