The Business of the Church

I am sure that my first responsibility is to take care of my soul, to deal with my own frailties, my own faults, my own......And it is not my job to judge others...in the sense of determining who is saved and who isn't.  I happily leave that to the Lord.  But beyond all that, the NT does talk of the church, how the church is structured, who gets church support, how money is raised; much is said about the church and the church's business.

In today's world, we see churches getting into all manner of business that has nothing to do with spiritual matters.  I received word today that the Mormon church is buying 350,000 acres of forest land in North Florida.  I didn't seek out this information and didn't really want to know.  But what business is that of the church?  This is just one example of many that could be cited about other denominations and their work.  It isn't biblical.

The only example of churches raising money is given in the NT regarding the collection weekly of money to meet the specific needs of the church and the individual Christians in need.  I Corinthians 16 says, "Now about the collection for God's people; Do what I told the Galatian churches to do.  On the first day of every week, let each one of you set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made."

If we just do things the way the NT churches did them, we do much better.  The church is to be funded by individual collections, not by running big business.  It was always that way in the Old Testament with all funds being raised through individual giving; and it is that way in the NT as well.

Perhaps we don't like hearing that there is a pattern to follow, but it still is the truth.  If we don't follow the pattern of the Bible, we drift, we divide, we denominate, and we start to not look like the original church at all.

Now I will go back to worrying about me, my soul, my weaknesses.........

Thanks for reading.  I hope your week is great!