Okay, so I ran across an article today that made me upset, yet excited, angry, yet hopeful, frustrated and yet excited about the church. It’s a long article, but definitely worth a read! Here’s a little taste:

While reading some patristic documents recently I was startled to discover that the Church Fathers are univocal in their insistence that the bulk of the revenue collected by a local church belonged by right to the poor. There was no expectation among them that a large percentage of what was collected by a local congregation would be used for its own maintenance and ministry. In fact, to do so would have been viewed by them as a misappropriation of funds.

If the early church had possessed the political freedom to build churches, employ staff, and run programs they probably would have done so. However, with the exception of supporting those who preached the gospel—which we will come to later— Jewish believers would not have seen building churches and employing staff as a valid use of the tithe. Revenue would have to come from elsewhere. How to use what was “holy unto the Lord” was not theirs to decide. Their decision to give it to those degraded by hunger and disease had a huge evangelistic impact but this was not the motivation for their actions. However pressing the need or valid the cause, the tithe was not seen as theirs to redirect as needed. They gave it to the needy because they understood it as belonging to them by right. The bulk of their funds did not even go into the missionary enterprise for which they both lived and laid down their lives—it went to those lacking the basic necessities of life.

“The sieve-maker’s daughter, Zeinabou, has half a face, the rest has been eaten. She has been visited by the sickness the ancient Greeks named the Grazer, for it grazes steadily through the muscles, the tissue and the bones. The Grazer was last seen in Europe when it visited the children in the Nazi concentration camps. In Niger there is no war, famine or pestilence, but the Grazer is kept supplied with children by the starvation diets and a collapsing health system caused by the pressure of international debt. In the beginning all she needed was antiseptic cream and a mouthwash. But without them the Grazer ate through her young face; first her lips and gums, then tugging her eye out of shape, sucking on the edge of her pupils, threatening to steal her sight. One day the rotting flesh fell away, leaving her baby teeth and her pink, healthy tongue exposed. The Grazer likes children around two years old: gentler skin, softer layers of tissue, easier to settle in. It’s carried by ordinary bacteria in ordinary mouths and could be kept at bay by the sort of medicines a child in the West is given for a cold. Eighty to ninety per cent of them starve to death fairly quickly within a year because the muscles in their jaw are eaten away, and they can’t eat, so they just disappear.”

Such things should not be, and such things need not be. It is within our power as the Church to do something about it, and to not do so is to ignore both the directives of the New Testament and the example of the early church. “The Grazer was last seen in Europe when it visited the children in the Nazi concentration camps. In Niger there is no war, famine or pestilence, but the Grazer is kept supplied with children by the starvation diets and a collapsing health system caused by the pressure of international debt.”

Link

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1. Grow some balls will ya!
2. Children Want to Make a Difference Too.
3. 5 year old arrested at school
4. The Next Reformation
5. Separation between Church and State…

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