Link: <a title=”First Baptist Dallas leader Robert Jeffress calls for new worship center |
Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas
| Religion | The Dallas Morning News
” href=”http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/religion/stories/010708dnmetfirstbaptist.24cd30e.html”>First Baptist Dallas leader Robert Jeffress calls for new worship center |
Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas
| Religion | The Dallas Morning News
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The above link is an interesting article about one of the most influential churches in our nation and their movement toward building a new worship center. Now, I enjoy Dr. Jeffress’ teaching (while not completely agreeing with his theology), but there is a disturbing line in the story that I wanted to highlight.

Near the end, the pastor gives one of the reasons for building the new center (which I am sure will be in the 10s of millions of dollars) as:

But on Sunday, he also challenged the church to consider building a new youth and children’s center. First Baptist can compete with suburban megachurches, he argued, but it has to be a fair fight.

“We need to level the playing field with our facilities,” he said.

Is the reason to spend the GDP of a small third world country on a worship center and education spaces that will be used a few times a week max really to keep up with the “Jones’ in the burbs”? Is that what we as “churches” are really to be about; competing with each other for congregants? I think not.

My gut tells me that he was misquoted on this statement. For our sole focus is not on internal competition, but on glorifying God through building his Kingdom. If he would have said, “we need to compete with other things that draw people away from church on Sunday morning”, I can almost live with that. But to be competing with each other is counter-productive to the Kingdom.

Are facilities important? Yes. Do they help create an environment that reaches out to the community and allows the church body to share the love of Christ? Absolutely. Are they strategies to help draw people away from other churches in order to make ourselves look and feel better? No.