The Satirical Truth As Far As I Can Tell…
Matthew 2:10-12 – 10 When they saw the star, they were filled with joy!
11 They entered the
house and saw the child with his mother, Mary, and they bowed down and
worshiped him. Then they opened their treasure chests and gave him gifts of
gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
The Wisemen
traveled from far, far away to come worship the Savior who was born king of the
Jews. They counted it an honor and privilege
to go to such great lengths to see baby Jesus and offer their precious gifts. Oh that we all were as determined to worship
Christ as were they.
I am always
pondering ways to get more people in church to worship the King. Football is king in the south. People go to great lengths to see their
favorite team play. Millions flock into
overcrowded stadiums each weekend. Maybe
what football stadiums do will work for the church. You think?
What if we sold expensive tickets for admission?
Attending church is free. Sure, we take up an offering, but
it’s totally voluntary. Maybe that’s the problem. The cheapest ticket you could buy for the Nov. 10 Auburn/Georgia game was $189/seat (and that was in the nose bleed section). Good seats on the home side of the 50 yard line were closer to $800-900/person. So you couldn’t get your family of 5 seats at the game for less than $945. With prices like that, our church could generate at least $100,000 per service in ticket sales alone. The only problem I see here is determining which are the best seats in the House. Most people want to sit up front and close to the action at the game, but usually on the back row in the church service.
What if we made people pay for their
programs?
We hand out church
bulletins for free and they usually end up in the trash or left in the pews
after the service. Last year’s Superbowl
program sells online for $17.99 + tax
and it’s a collector’s item. Churches
are tax exempt, so you’d still get a bargain if we sold ours at a comparable price. We could earn thousands from program
sales. (Now we just need to figure out
concessions—Holy Communion maybe?)
We’ll need to charge for parking.
People will pay $7 to park at the SEC championship game, but that’s 10 blocks away. They’ll have to pay $40 dollars or more to get reasonably close. Perhaps the church can be generous and just charge $20 for a spot in our lot and subcontract out the rest to nearby businesses. Those parking lots will only cost $5-10 depending on how far away they are.
What if a church service was as long as a football game?
Remember, God loves you and
so do I!
Since people are dying to pay these
exorbitant prices to squeeze into cramped stadium seats to watch sweaty
athletes chase each other, surely they will flock to our church to sit in comfortable
cushioned pews in a beautiful sanctuary to worship the Son of God who died on the
cross for our sins. Our sanctuary will
be packed and our parking lot won’t be able to handle all the cars. So…
We’ll need to charge for parking.
People will pay $7 to park at the SEC championship game, but that’s 10 blocks away. They’ll have to pay $40 dollars or more to get reasonably close. Perhaps the church can be generous and just charge $20 for a spot in our lot and subcontract out the rest to nearby businesses. Those parking lots will only cost $5-10 depending on how far away they are.
What if a church service was as long as a football game?
No one will pay football prices for a 1
hour church service. That’s just
dumb. The average football game last 3
hours (even though the ball is actually in play for only about 11
minutes). People deserve to get what
they pay for, so we’ll graciously extend the worship service to 3 hours. Preachers need a lot more time to go deep anyway. Think how fast we will be able to cure the
biblical illiteracy and moral decline in our nation when we commit so much
time, energy, effort, and money to worshiping and learning about Christ in church. Of course, I’m no expert and I certainly
don’t claim to know everything, but that’s the satirical Truth as far as I can tell…