(July 16, 2015 at 3:02 am)Spooky Wrote:(July 16, 2015 at 2:58 am)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Well, there is a lot of fixed costs that have to be covered by donations. Utility bills, insurance, mortgage, books, printing, stamps, etc. Then there's wages. Paul was able to steal from other churches but most churches today are small businesses operated by a couple of people. If they do it full time they have to make a living in modern day America and that's expensive. They don't have the guaranteed income fixed rules like the Levites had. A lot of the megachurches as well as smaller churches have gone out of business.
http://www.wftv.com/news/news/local/orla...ure/nf8pG/
The lutheran church I was formerly a member of nearly went under after spending a metric shit-ton of money on an elevator maybe three people used. (the olde one worked just fine). I was in the minority when I voted against it.
Begging for money never sat well with me.
Yeah, the church my brother goes/went to did something similar.
Three years ago, we all went down there for my nephew's christening. It was a 90F degree September day. The church itself had no air conditioning. Just a pair of ceiling fans that were 15-25 feet above us, doing fuck-all to alleviate the heat. There were a few christenings before ours, and the fucking reverend liked to hear himself talk, so he just droned on and on. They had a children's rock/folk band that murdered what I can only guess were modern Christian songs. The lead singer kid should go to hell for crimes against music.
Anyway, during the wrap up, they passed the collection plate around. The donations were supposed to go to repairing/replacing a chalice that church used because it fell and got damaged. It wasn't going for desperately needed air conditioning. It wasn't going for a search for a new lead singer, because, again, that kid sucked. No, it was going towards a fucking cup.
Needless to say, the first pass of the plate was met with little love. So, the reverend had his goons - a couple of young, buff-ish 20-somethings - pass the plate around again. My aunt, who's an old school (born in the late 1940's) Catholic, and I looked at each other with the same expression.
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Every time I go to church, bullshit like that takes place. If it's not people melting in the heat while being peer pressured to fund a fucking cup, it's some reverend on his way to retirement focusing on how much suffering my grandmother dealt with in her final days, even though he fucking never met her and had no fucking idea of who she was and what she actually went through, because, hey, what's more Catholic than masturbating to another's suffering? Or a bunch of other things along those lines, which quite clearly illustrate exactly what the church's mentality is for those with eyes to see.
Different churches, different reverends, same bullshit. Let them fail. We can do better in terms of community centers and outreach. Fuck 'em all.
"I was thirsty for everything, but blood wasn't my style" - Live, "Voodoo Lady"
