It creates the impression on the world that the great aim and struggle of the church is for money.

There is no question in my mind, but that if many churches showed as much activity and unanimity in the work of saving souls as they do in selling oysters, more people would join our congregations and there would be no lack of money. I grieve to say that most institutional churches have a financial look in their eye, a kind of mental summing up of an individual’s financial worth, as though men were precious according to the amount of money they were willing to contribute. Nothing is more calculated to disgust men than this.

Let a man feel that the church yearns over him in love, for his immortal spirit, and you bend him as the winds do a weeping-willow. When the church swoops and moves down upon the masses with the smell of the kitchen upon it and with the invitation not to come to fellowship, but rather to come and stuff a saucer with money, then the world is nauseated and says of the church, as a certain prominent gentleman said recently of Kirmess: "If that be the spirit and fruit of Christianity, then God save me from Christianity!"

I remember an exhortation given once by an overseer to a class of young preachers: "Let me beseech you," he said, "not to labor for the fleece of the sheep, but for the sheep themselves!" It would be well for every church to take it as a motto. I knew a church once where, whenever the pastor took in a new member, some of the members and officials would ask what he was worth. It was not enough that there was a soul for which Christ died. They were thinking of something else altogether; so that the child or poor person joining never elicited the least interest.

Does anyone wonder that people were slow to unite with such a congregation, and that God literally dried it up as an organization by removing his presence and blessing? Sad and great is the change that has come over the church! There was a time when it stood and wept, saying "How often I would have gathered you as a hen doth gather her brood under her wing!" Now it seeks to gather sinners for a different reason, and with a different spirit. It is not souls she wants so much as dollars. It is not to get men to write their names in the Book of Life, but to write them at the bottom of bank checks for dollars.

I charge this upon those who advocate and foster 'church' entertainment, that they are creating this impression. They make the world think that the aim and end and consuming care of the church is money when it should be souls.

Please feel free to send feedback concerning this article. Also, please include the title of this article in your feedback. Thank you for visiting Central Truth Ministries.