I crave your indulgence…
I’m still trying to get my head around this.
A couple of days ago I saw this picture on social media.
Back in the 16th century Protestant reformers objected to the Roman Catholic Church raising money by selling indulgences to penitents, but here is a Protestant church selling tickets to worshippers for a worship night.
What’s the difference?
I realise that churches need money to do their work, but putting a price on worship really seems a bit much..
It seems that the public image of Christian churches is that they are now primarily money-making businesses. On the question and answer site Quora people ask questions like How much do pastors make and what do they do all week?, and How much do mega-pastors make?
I suspect that a lot of people who ask questions like that are doing so to judge whether being a “pastor” is a sufficiently lucrative career. Someone once asked me how to become a church marriage officer, and I’m pretty sure that was because in some parts of the country church marriage officers of different denominations have set up a cartel, where they have agreed among themselves to charge certain fees, and agree not to undercut each other.
Back in the 19th century some Anglican parishes were actual businesses. They would raise the money to build a church by forming a limited liability company (a for-profit company, not a non-profit) and would sell shares in the company, and then pay dividends out of pew rents. But eventually people got embarrassed by that practice, and it stopped, though I still remember seeing notices in St Mary’s Anglican Cathedral in Johannesburg informing worshippers that “All seats in this church are free”/
It is things like these that contribute to the image of Christian churches as being primarily money=-making organisations.
Yes, I realise that churches need money to function, that bills have to be paid and all that, but putting a price on worship? Eish!
