Of course, I’m in a predominantly rural area, where 20,000 people are considered the population of a fair sized city.

And I’m sure that small churches with aging populations aren’t raking in money, either.

However, large evangelical churches in populated areas are most definitely NOT hurting for money – or they weren’t before the last few months when we’ve had a sharp economic downturn in the U.S. The demographic tends to be a bit older, so you get a majority in midlife with established families, in the prime of their working careers, many/most professionals making decent money and a good number of wealthy seniors. Yes, we had some poor people in the congregation, but they were a small minority and I would imagine that’s the case at most mega-churches in suburban areas.

Many large evangelical churches have opulent facilities that rival any big hotel or convention center. I visited South Coast Community church to attend a funeral a little over a year ago, and it’s like a Christian Disneyland, complete with streams, fountains and striking landscaping on the grounds.

At the last church I attended, we had a staff numbering over 100. The top four or five pastors – at least – made six-figure salaries. Some of them were given loans from the church to purchase homes well over $1 million here in Southern California. We had a huge budget and often hosted popular events, concerts, plays, conferences, seminars etc that drew thousands of attendees all paying hundreds of dollars.

Some of the popular programs I remember were about biblical prophecy, End Times, improving marriage, raising godly children, Christian community development, missionary work abroad, and Christian psychology. They all brought in a good amount of funds for our budget.

So when’s Jesus gonna step up and heal the wounds?

And how would folks go about stopping “thinking in human terms”? ‘Twould be more than mildly difficult for humans.

And do you not think that pretty much ALL the people touting ALL the different ways of “fixing the church” would say that they are “turning to Jesus” and doing it His way?

And if there were any God behind all this “turning to Jesus”, and “seeking His ways”, and “listening for His voice”, and so on, wouldn’t you think someone would get it right? or manage to actually hear God and actually fix the mess?

Or is God just hanging loose, letting all flounder around in cluelessness, and so on? Does that sound like the loving, father who cares deeply about his children? Or like the God who is jealous for his name?

I’d say your info is reasonably good. Thanks for backing up your statements.

I also know that my friend Jim Henderson, who does the Off the Map Conference, paints houses the rest of the year since he sure doesn’t make any money off the OTM event.

Oh, and they just started charging a small fee for the annual Emergent Glorieta Gathering this past year, mainly because the planners were tired of losing their own money on it every year and thought they’d share the costs around.

BTW Leo, my information about whether EC authors are making much money off their books comes from first hand conversations on the subject with friends that work for evangelical publishing companies, and also with some of the authors themselves (e.g. Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, Brian McLaren etc.) Doug for instance donates all the proceeds of his books to charity, and Tony has to raise funds to support his position as National Coordinator of Emergent Village – and still is only at about 2/3rds salary… so he clearly isn’t independently wealthy from his books.

As for Brian McLaren, he is probably the only one making any decent money off his books, and yet, according to my publishing friend, probably only enough to replace the pastor’s salary he gave up when he stepped down from his church to devote himself to full time writing, speaking, and activism. He’s also invested quite a bit of it into doing an 11 city speaking tour that’s going on right now; and I happen to know first hand (since I’m on the planning team as a rep for Emergent Village) that it is not even breaking even yet.

So anyway, I can’t give you exact numbers Leo since I don’t tend to get into those kind of personal details with my friends about their income, but at the same time my statements are based on somewhat more than pure speculation.

You see, here’s the thing… the emerging church is basically an answer to countless other attempts by countless other churches to fix problems they saw in the church before them. That is both a description of and the problem with the movement.

The emerging church doesn’t like the way the “evangelical” church has handled things, and says, “OK, we need to revisit this thing called church. What is it? Why do we do it? What should it look like”.

Ok, now at first glance, that doesn’t seem like such a bad thing, right? But, the problem is, this movement will simply be another attempt by man to fix problems that man has created with man’s solutions, which cannot be done.

We cannot fix the church by having a conversation, we cannot fix the church by trying out new forms of worship or new methods of prayer. WE cannot fix the church period. God alone can fix the church. God alone can heal the wounds that men under the Christian name have brought upon the church and the world. God alone can save.

We need to stop thinking in our human terms, and turn to Jesus. He is the answer.

Jesus said “I am the way the truth and the life” – John 14:6

Instead of all this talking and conversing and trying to make our church palatable, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith” – Hebrews 12:2

In the end, Christianity is all about Jesus.

Thanks for reading!

Love,
nate

Decades ago, yes, the churches were full and money was spent on buildings, furnishings and ministry opportunities. Trust funds were established and the parishes chose to live happily and securely off of the interest.

Today, parish councils are reluctantly voting to spend those trust funds, deciding it is foolish to close while there is still money in the bank. They pray for a miracle and work to be welcoming to new people. They host workshops and seminars, realizing they might not even break even at the end of the event, in part to reach out, in part to minister to the community, and in part to state “we are still alive!”

When your congregation consists of twelve people, all over seventy, that affects the priorities.

A church may do something to make money, or not, but I’m always a little stunned to see the words “Christian” and “lucrative” in the same sentence. It’s just so foreign to me.

I belonged to a large evangelical church for nearly 20 years and I was on staff part-time for more than 5.

Hosting or co-hosting Christian conferences, seminars and workshops accounted for a lucrative part of our budget. We would never have hosted as many of them as we did if they were money-losers. I can’t imagine that Willowcreek would be in a different position than we were.