Given that we have many small churches where a large proportion of the budget goes to the building, or to the comfort of the building I don't buy the premise.

Jesus built an uncomfortable church, not a comfortable one. (See Sunday's gospel.)

Mega churches achieve economies of scale that allow them to get more for their per dollar spent on comfort, but I'm not sure that proportion of their budget going to building/comfort is any greater. Which means they are less wasteful. Hmmm.

The point about the shallowness of this type of Christianity is well taken. However, evangelicals are not the only Christians who like and look for comforting, cheap grace.
Pierre Whalon

From a Christmas Eve sermon:

"We find no room at the inn. We find no welcome that can be bought with cold, hard cash. Only in the place that God provides—a simple place offered by human love—a poor place among the animals and those humble people who remember their Maker—only in such a place as this, does the world find room for Christ to be born. Here, in this place, we find the desire of the nations—the source of true and lasting peace.

From St. Bernard's fourth sermon on the Lord's nativity:

Today, he writes, how many altars are aglitter with gold and precious stones!…Do you think that the angels will get sidetracked to these and turn away from the tattered poor? If it were so, why did they appear to shepherds of sheep rather than to the kings of the earth or the priests of the temple?

To me, it's not so much whether the church is large or small, but how much of the church's resources go to creating a comfortable place to worship. Platt makes a good point in that perhaps we need not be so comfortable in our places of worship.

I've thought about this quite a bit, since my church is struggling financially, and the expense of maintaining a 166 year old historic building continues to take a huge bite out of the budget. Although, I love our old church building nearly to the point of idolatry, I must ask whether the cost of its maintenance is the best use of our limited resources.

Christian churches in the US remain, in great part, relentlessly middle class. Why don't we see more of the poor, the sick, the lame, and the blind, whom Jesus calls us to invite to our parties?

June Butler

This evening, I'll be worshiping at our midweek Eucharist at the Good Earth Farm. While the weather is nice, we'll be outside. Otherwise, we move into the farmhouse. The liturgy has outgrown the living room, since we started it last summer. We now routinely see 16-24. They've broken ground on a chapel.

commonfriars.wordpress.com

I really loved the line about a Christian spin on the Amercian Dream. We really have to be careful that we don't recreate God in our own image.

This afternoon the priests from my deanery were talking about how our buildings are killing us as parishes. We serve the buildings that other people in another time built for us. What if we just got rid of them? What if we began to establish house churches again? What if we divested ourselves of our stuff? What if we stopped arguing only the parts of scripture that underline the sin of others and start looking at the hard stuff like getting rid of our many possessions (which, in fact, possess us)? Would we find the new life that Jesus promised?

Personally, I have less problem w/ the upkeep of small churches, than the amount we spend, each one of us, on ourselves (houses, cars, clothing, electronics, travel, etc etc etc)

JC Fisher

I guess it's due to Brooks, but Radical is #23 on Amazon's best selling list today and it's priced at 41% off.