As far as I can tell, after a building program, a lot of pastors burn out. It's a tough process and if you don't have the right people involved it can go very badly. If you're really lucky they built with cash.

If a building can help you reach souls, Gid, isn't that a good thing? The amount of people coming to our church, the programs we can now have that we couldn't before due to space limitations and no yard, I think that buildings are very important. But if God wants you to build, he'll put the right people into place, and he'll give the Pastor the right leadership for the time and the right mind for it. Pastor had been leading our church for 16 years before it was the right time to build. He didn't spend those 16 years stressing about buildings, either.

Does it help you reach souls, though? I don't think so. I think oftentimes (not always), a building project comes in direct conflict with our mission to go and make disciples, jythier. We try to make fortresses, sanctuaries against the world rather than living IN the world, as we were called to do.

If a building helps reach souls, I have to wonder about the sincerity of their commitment.

Please don't take this as an outright disagreement, jythier, just food for thought.

sounds like G-D put you guys there for a reason.. the reason became apparent.. it's always good when you listen to G-d.

As far as I can tell, after a building program, a lot of pastors burn out. It's a tough process and if you don't have the right people involved it can go very badly. If you're really lucky they built with cash

Back home we have a great group of committed people who will make this happen. But my husband is more concerned with saving souls than building buildings so this had no appeal to him. He's not the "norm" when it comes to Pastors. He could care less about money and numbers. It is quite an ordeal tho and I'm surprised with the burnout factor although I'm not aware of this since we've never been put in this situation.

I think He cares far more about souls.

exactly Gid. We'd just as soon meet in a nice big tent. It doesn't really matter to us. A nice building is nice, but we must not lose our focus.

I'll put in a prayer for you guys, KFC. This sounds like it could be a remarkable opportunity!

Thanks Gid. I appreciate it. We'll see what happens here. I still can't get over this whole thing....as I'm listening to Charle's CD's..hahahahah.

If a building helps reach souls, I have to wonder about the sincerity of their commitment.

I don't have a problem with a nice simple type building but what gets me sometimes is the money spent on lavish monster structures when so many people are hurting and starving. I know this is a debatable area I'm in, but it just gets me to wondering. The Temple of Solomon comes to mind.

I feel the same with these Taj Mahal's we build today for our schools. I've seen too many in Maine that just made me shake my head and wonder what the heck we're doing.

sounds like G-D put you guys there for a reason.. the reason became apparent.. it's always good when you listen to G-d.

yes, and we're on an exciting adventure. Stay tuned!!

My church isn't a monster structure, it's got enough room for the church now with a Phase 2 that will make it bigger if we need it, so there's room to grow. But the space for events is what I was excited about. However, the inside IS lavish. State of the art sound equipment, lights, a stage... I know they want to make it look nice and sound nice. But if people are just there for a show, and aren't even worshipping, what's the point? If the room went from being filled with the sounds of worship to a silent crowd, why did they bother? Sometimes I think that, although the Pastor seems to be on the right page, the church as a whole is missing the mark somewhere - and I wonder if someone didn't convince Pastor that all that equipment was needed to get people into a church these days. So what if it is needed? If people need a church, they're going to come to a church regardless of the sound quality or whether there are lights. Or whether there are projection screens in the front that have movies playing behind the lyrics - what's up with that, anyway? It's distracting. Why can't we just have a screen with the words on it?

I don't think I really want to be attending my church anymore, and I've felt that way for a while. I'm a simple kind of guy. I don't need all that fancy stuff, I don't need fellowship to be filled with conversations about nothing.

On our fancy projection screens the other day, they showed a clip from Schindler's List (never seen it) where he notes that he kept a car, which was worth a certain number of lives, and a pin, which was worth 1 or 2 lives... and I'm thinking, we have this projection screen, the projectors, the lights, the massive amounts of materials possessions that probably don't enhance the experience of corporate worship at all, and we could have saved how many souls? Met how many needs? Or is it better spent invested in getting people who are worried more about a flashy church into a building so they can hear about Jesus? I don't know, but I know God knows what He's doing and He'll use the building to the best of it's ability to reach people, just like he would have used all that money for whatever other purpose it might have gone to. And that's really the point.

See, and I've been saying this for years, but have gotten a lot of hostility for saying it.



I got in trouble in one church because I was managing the church library and would not put "The Prayer of Jabez" on the shelf because I didn't agree with the doctrine. My feeling was that if I am running a church library, every book in there is implicitly endorsed by me, and sonce that book was readily available at the public library, I saw no need to put it in mine.

Our church got heavily into the Saddleback programs, but recently distanced from them again.

I think alot of churches got sucked into this including Liberty. We never did. One of the reasons is we are far from the South which just jumped on board and another is we know somebody who knew something about a program in this church which was stolen from another. Long story.

The movie was used to illustrate a point at the end of the sermon, but Pastor does use a lot of movies to illustrate points at times. He definitely speaks out of the Bible but then uses whatever illustration he can find, which I think is OK. He didn't preach a message on the movie - the movie accentuated the message. Why is that bad?

I'm not saying it's bad Jay. I've never heard of this done before but my son said he has. I'm just not sure about using the entertainment industry in a worship service. I'm sure there are pros and cons to such a thing. I'd worry a bit about abuse of this and also the image that maybe God's word needs a boost to impart a thought or teaching. I guess this would be one of those things that is very subjective and debatable but not necessarily unbiblical.