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4.5 Obsession with Buildings

One particular effect of underestimating the corrupting power of money can be seen in the current obsession with putting up church buildings that is observable in many Christian communities of all denominations in the former communist countries.

It is true that under communism it was often very difficult, if not impossible, for churches to put up suitable church buildings and that now, under freedom, congregations have a legitimate desire to provide themselves with the accommodation they need for all their activities.

Yet not everything about this tendency is right. In the first place this frantic and compulsive building activity often leads to a neglect of the building up of the living congregation, which, after many years of oppression, needs at least as much attention as the external walls. Thus these demanding building projects frequently exhaust the congregation to such an extent that when the new church building is ready, what moves there is a mere ‘corpse’.

Example – About five years ago, the church in which I used to worship started a new building project, in spite of the fact that its existing building was perfectly adequate and that the sixty members of the church were mainly elderly pensioners or students without a proper income and, as a result, the congregation did not have the financial resources to sustain such a project. Yet a start was made on the building in the hope that the money would somehow materialise, most probably from the States. On top of this, in spite of our protests, the building was wildly out of proportion to the size of the congregation. It was designed to hold over 400 people. Today, after all these years of demanding effort, the building is still not finished, the church has been through a severe crisis when a group of troublemakers ousted the whole leadership because they wanted to get their hands on the building, and, to date, more than half of the members have left this deeply troubled local church.

Secondly, and far more importantly, these building projects often far exceed not only the real needs but also the financial resources of the congregation. Then, you may ask, on what basis do churches embark upon such huge projects? The answer is very simple. They do it on the basis of promises (or hopes of promises) from congregations in the west. Besides the total irresponsibility of this type of conduct, on both sides of the equation, we have to add that there is always a price to be paid. As the saying goes, ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune’. Consequently, by engaging in this kind of behaviour, indigenous congregations are in danger of losing their independence and may be pushed unwillingly in directions that they would never have accepted under normal circumstances.

In conclusion, the practice of starting unrealistically oversized projects (whether church buildings or any other Christian enterprises) is a dangerous one and should be avoided at all costs.

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