Last night my wife and I had the opportunity for the second time to join a group from church and man one of the concessions stands at the coliseum. We had helped the previous Friday at the first Mad Ants basketball game. Last night was the Casting Crowns "The alter and the door" concert.
I had speculated that we wouldn't be very busy for the concert just due to the fact that most Christians or music lovers like to do things as groups like catch dinner before or after the event.
Whereas sports fans would rather munch and drink at the sporting event while watching the game, boy was I wrong. The Mad Ants game was a slow steady business most of the night. People slipping out during the game to grab a slice of pizza or soda only spending a small fortune.
I was very surprised last night at the concert when hoards of people would flock to the stand and order sandwiches, ice cream bars, pizza, sodas (large ones), candy, popcorn and Cotton candy. I was simply amazed at how much they spent on JUNK. One guy bought 5 ice cream bars, a large soda and 2 slices of pizza and dropped $21.00. I could have bought lunch for a week!
What ever our booth brought in, we got a small (very small) percentage of the sales and it goes toward the church. Great way to make some extra cash for the church or for a fund raiser. So this was basically a secular event verses a Christian event, and here is my problem. The secular event brought in far less money than the Christan event did, and as I stood there taking hand fulls of cash for over priced junk food I had to ask myself, if these people, who most likely go to church, can spend this type of money on junk and over priced (and not so tasty) food, then why are our churches behind in budget and why are our ministries under funded.
After the evening was over I mulled this over in my head and thought about how much money was spent that night at our booth alone, times almost 15 other booths, and dreamed about what could have been done with that money had it been pout toward a ministry or tithing. Now I am not saying these people aren't tithing, that is between them and God. I do know this though, our church has been behind budget all year, our ministries are suffering due to lack of funds and we have had to cut back to bare bones just to operate, and I watched thousands of dollars being spent on junk food.
Now I know that buying food and pop at events such as the ones mentioned kind of go hand in hand, but I also have to ask where our priorities are. Do we really give God our first fruits or are we skimping a little off the top for ourselves as well. One day we will be held accountable for what was given to us and our Master is going to ask us what we did with what He gave us. I hope He likes popcorn and soda.
1 comment:
Wow, Chris, thanks for posting. Really enlightening.
Our church doesn't really have a budget crunch but I am not comfortable about our giving. When we let people know we are running behind people step up and make sure we are covered. I appreciate the willingness to give but I wonder what the thought process is.
I would like to say that we seek out what God wants our church to be doing, find out what resources are required, then have faith that people will be driven to happily give. The reality is that what we think we will receive is always in the back of our minds so that big step of faith is smaller than it should be.
I admit that the lack of faith is a problem. But I also know that the lack of consistent giving inhibits a church from really dreaming about the future and having the courage to go for it.
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