My friend, @MichaelHyatt, posted on his blog this morning a disturbing video of a book burning Church which has launched a good discussion on the difference between faith and religion on his site.
While I don't think any right minded person would condone what this little 14 member Church in North Carolina is doing, there is a much greater issue between faith and religion that isn't being talked about much except in some of the emergent Church venues.
According to Barna Research in 2001, the average operating budget for Protestant Churches in the U.S. was around $115,000 a year. This may not seem like much, especially to our bloated lifestyles out here in California, but if you multiply this times the number of Protestant Churches in the U.S. which is around 225,000, you come up with over $25 BILLION dollars being spent each year in the U.S. to keep churches running. This doesn't include Catholic, Jewish or other denominations such as Latter Day Saints. It also doesn't include special Church fundraising for building projects, etc.
With over 1 billion people in the world today facing illness and death from lack of food security, it's time we made sure the money we donate to non-profits (including churches) goes to solving basic problems, not building more infrastructure. With an average of 16,000 children dying each day from hunger related issues, we need to question every expenditure we make personally, what our churches and organizations spend and what our government spends. This is unacceptable. One needs only to follow the money to see what is most important to us.
Can we do both-fund religious organizational infrastructure and give to the poor to meet their most basic of needs? Perhaps, but the number of hungry people around the world grew by 100 million in one year. Something isn't working.
Let the crazy book burners get their 15 minutes of fame if they must, you and I have much deeper issues to grapple with.
Simply,
Tim
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