50 Million dollars? For a Church? Are you Serious?

The BBQ Pit
21

If you are not a Christian, who are you to judge another cultural/religious group as to how they spend their resources ?

If you are a Christian, whats with the judgemental attitude ? I might add for purposes of perspective on this issue that God approved the construction of Solomon’s temple which no doubt in terms of manpower and resources dwarfed the resources to be spent on the house of worship planned for Chicago.

-grienspace, who is a christian, but doesn’t even participate in a small church.

22

Some local churches develop an “Edifice Complex” where their building becomes more important than doing the work they were founded to do. This may or may not be another case of that. Church buildings can be outrageously expensive, considering the number of things an active church may want to include. (Having indoor basketball courts as an outreach to youth is not a totally stupid idea, for example; a sanctuary that can seat the whole membership at one time is a pretty good idea, and in some of these megachurches that is a big auditorium.)

My own parish built a new Community Center, which is used both by our Sunday School programs and by a wide range of community groups and programs we house and support. It replaces an elderly and decrepit parish hall building that had dysfunctional bathrooms, a kitchen suitable for an apartment not a large church, and an open area that would seat maybe half the parish membership. We were very careful in putting together the plan for it that it would not financially cut into programs and outreach efforts. It will take five years to pay off the mortgage, but it’s allowed us to do stuff we couldn’t before. For example, we started up a family counseling service devoted to the neighborhood, not to the parishioners, which seems to be doing a lot of good. We got a lot of stuff out of “there’s a nook here we could stuff it in” storage to a place where it can be accessible when it’s usable. And we kept partnering the homes-for-low-income-families program, the job-training program, and so on that we had been funding with other area churches. The structure, if not totally needed, was definitely a cost-benefit plus in doing the sorts of things we believe a church ought to be doing.

23

Ah yes, Six Flags Over Jesus. Seats more people than Freedom Hall. Requires traffic cops on Sundays to get people in and out. Part of the reason churches like this don’t appeal to me is they seem so impersonal. Southeast has a membership list larger than the population of the town I grew up in. I have trouble wrapping my head around that. Not to mention my theological and philosophical differences with them, but that’s neither here nor there.

24

Only 28 drinking fountains?

Doesn’t that seem like not so many for 10, 000+ people?

I’m thirsty thinking about it.

At least there are more female lavs than male.

Personal opinion-I don’t care for mega-churches. I think that they are corporate (not corporal) in outlook and slick and sanitized in character.

But this is not my community. I thank God for my slate roofed, granite church with old oaken pews and stained glass…seats about 500 on a good day.

Someone raised a good point–the cathedrals of Europe are objects of beauty and veneration and history(and tourism). Who will lavish devotion on these American drywall dinosaurs in 100 years? (or will we just keep tearing them down and rebuilding them?).

25

I like it. The more the merrier. It makes Sunday the best shopping day, because while all the morons are in church, I’m zipping through stores like a motherfuck.

26

As long as the facilities are used by the people forking over the money, I see no problem with it.

27

…and who’s going to be using those basketball courts and kitchens and all? Maybe community groups? Maybe local kids from that not-so-great neighborhood? My church is a giant 1885 edifice on the Upper West Side and it uses its downstairs spaces for a homeless dinner every week and a shelter. As well as yard sales, immunization drives, AA meetings, performances, Dignity meetings, etc. Believe it or not, there are still plenty of poor people in housing projects and rent-controlled apartments out there and they use the facilities same as anybody. I see no evidence that the preacher is not going to use the church to help the community it’s in once it’s built.

And there seems to be a fundamental fallacy here–I don’t think that there was a bag of $50 million sitting there that could be used to do 1) Good things or 2) Build this church. Seems to me the preacher is generating the money to begin with, and while I must admit a church this size does give me pause, it’s not my money, not my tradition, not my city, etc.

28

Both of you completely missed my point. One of you missed it so badly I’m not even going to scroll down to look at your name again.

grienspace: I have a hard time seeing this as anything other than pure, unbridled hubris. The sports courts could be used for good works, but is that auditorium-style sanctuary ever going to be used for, say, adult education courses? Will anyone get his or her GED sitting in one of those 10,008 seats? Maybe I’m simply being cynical, but I can’t see any group, religious or not, opening the massive doors of that expensive new building to anyone who might be the least bit déclassé.

It wouldn’t rankle if it was Donald Trump building yet another extension to his bewigged penis. Donald doesn’t share a religion, even in name only, with those who have taken vows of poverty and actually gone to places most Westerners only see on the evening news.

If they do open their doors to the unfortunate in a big way, if they justify the money they put into the building with the use everyone, not just the flock, gets out of it, then I will retract everything I said here. But it seems that there is a fundamental disconnect between calling Pride a Deadly Sin and building the newest Astrodome.

“Let’s get ready to HUMMM-BLE!”

29

Why so large? Makes for a strong power base, which in turn makes it possible to insist on local change (e.g. shutting down local Chicago alcohol retailers in 1998), to play a major role on the national stage in Rainbow-Push along with the likes of Jessie Jackson (who’s sons bought a couple of Chicago Budweiser distributorships in 1998), and to hold senatorial office (which raises the question of growing US theocracy).

30

Imagine what the taxes alone would be on that structure…

31

Huh. Paul*Mart.

Had to happen, I suppose.

32

Next time Stryper comes to town, maybe they could play this venue!

What they’ll do with the leftover 9,500 seats, I don’t know.

33

It’s not like they burned the money. All that cash got plowed back into local construction companies, plumbers, contractors, rug merchants, etc., providing jobs for the community and more tax money for other things.

34

Derleth, you should bust in there and be all like:

I kinda see where you are coming from. While I was at college my church threw together a couple of add-ons (new speakers, college auditorium style projectors and projection screens, etc.). At first I was p.o.'ed, but it makes church more enjoyable especially for the older members (going blind and deaf).

Others have made good points (cf European cathedrals, community outreach, etc.) but I’d like to repeat the false dicotomy one. Using your logic I could question why you are wasting your time on a messageboard and not helping the homeless in your area.

35

Now that hardly seems fair. I am sure a number of people here spend a large part of their energy, money or time on charitable pursuits. And, of course, there is a difference between an indivdual and a religious entity. Even though it has been noted that the building will be used for the community, I still think it sounds tacky.

And isn’t posting and fighting ignorance a noble cause? :smiley:

36

I think we citizens are supposed to care for the poor and sick. I see no reason to pass that off to the church.

That said, I think this is a huge waste. But since it isn’t my money (or tax dollars), it isn’t my business. YMMV.

37

For the third time this thread:

I’ve never said that my goal is to help people. The Christian churches have. The Christian churches have been shoving this basic message down our collective gullets for something like the past two thousand years: “It is the mission of Christian churches to help people.” If all Christian churches share one common mission, it is helping people.

I’m not ragging on anyone. I’m not associating myself with anyone. What I am doing is pointing out a seemingly hypocritical usage of a large sum of money.

38

Christian churches should make it their goal to help people, but often times they just want to help themselves and make themselves more comfortable.

This may help the community in some ways, but I still don’t like it. It reminds me of one of my christian friends telling me about how one of his christian friends went to India and literally became sick when he saw a huge, extravagent temple in a town full of starving people. Sounds similar to me.

To me, 10,000+ seems like way too many people. Heck, more than 500 seems like too many to me. It seems like less of a fellowship and more of just a big air conditioned building with comfy seats where you listen to a guy talk about God.

39

And the minister of that particular church apparently thinks that the best way for him to “help people” is by having a church building that’ll knock your socks off, that he can then rent out as convention hall/concert venue/community center, thus generating even more resources for the ministry to do its thing and some economic movement in the community.

Sure, we may make this face :dubious: over whether some of those generated resources are not likely to go into getting the church leaders some fine new wheels and digs (and that their religious status allows them to (a) charge lower rent, due to the tax exemption and (b) discriminate about whom to rent to). But it’s not taught that it’s intrinsecally offensive to God to be grand and ostentatious in worship – to seek to make others think that your worship is superior just because it’s grand and ostentatious, that’s anotehr story.

40

I say judge them by their works in the community, not the size of the church.

Remember, you are talking about a church of 20,000 people. This is the equivalent of a $250,000 church for a congregation of 100. I don’t know what real estate prices are like in Chicago, but it seems a reasonable price to me.

Don’t forget, they didn’t move to the suburbs to create this place, they stayed with their congregation in the inner city. Those basketball courts can help keep neighborhood kids off the streets.

I have worshipped in all sizes of churches from 50 people to the one I am in now, which has 2,000 congregants. There are some advantages to larger churches, the one that affected me was a support group for those who have gone through divorce. Not too many smaller churches can support those type of groups, since they have fewer people in those type of situations.

The kids in larger churches benefit from having more kids their own age participating. I remember being one of 3 kids in a Sunday School class in a small church, it wasn’t too good.

Someone mentioned having police directing traffic outside the church. Really, this is a service to the community. The church pays the police their overtime, and the community doesn’t have to deal with a worse traffic jam.

You might think that a large church is more impersonal. It depends on the church. If you want impersonal, sure it’s easy to get. But if you want the personal you can join any of the small groups or bible studies, and get to know people on a one-to-one basis.

If they went from 700 to 22,000 people in just 15 years, they must be doing something right. Hopefully, this is not just a cult of personality, and that all of the credit is being given to God. But again, judge them by their works and not by their size.