I've attended such small churches that the idea of a billionaire attending and making a 10 percent offering doesn't even make sense. The one church would have liked to have had a paved parking lot for it's 60 members. My current church would like the same for it's 300ish members. Giant churches with giant budgets just creep me out. Money and Christians don't go well together.
Me too.
However, I think Christians and Money are not necessarily evil or wrong in some way.
I don't know the origin of my visceral reaction to large, monied Churches, but it's there. I guess it's the Biblical admonition to help the poor and stay focused on the Word.
Otoh, some of the rich and the rich and famous just quietly do things that need to be done and purposefully avoid recognition for it.
Speaking of church parking lots and the rich and famous, have you heard the Dale Earnhardt "Church parking lot" story?
As the story goes (from professional wrestler Bill Goldberg), the elder Earnhardt was driving around one rainy Sunday -- presumably not during race season, of course -- and he passed a church. The kind of church where people still get dressed to the nines to show off their Sunday best.Trump's a lot of bluster, but if the stories of how Trump treats "the little people" around him are true, then I wouldn't be surprised if he has a few stories like Dale Earnhardt's."It was pouring down rain and there was no parking lot," said Goldberg. "He was watching these people walk from the church, through the mud, to get to their cars.
Nobody asked him to do anything. He never said anything to anybody, but lo and behold, one day a buddy was driving by that church and there was a brand new, paved parking lot. Nobody knew who did it.
You don't do it because you get the adulation for it; (not because) you get the pat on the back for it. You do it because it’s the right thing to do