Money for Nothing…and Your Church for Free
- 11.04.09
- Christian Cheese, Church, Money
- 15 Comments
I’ve heard of lots of corny gimmicks designed to get people into church, but this one tops them all. At Lighthouse Church of All Nations near Chicago, if a lucky — or “blessed and highly favored” — churchgoer is in the right seat, they can win a cash prize. At each of the three Sunday services, the Rev. Dan Willis pulls a number of one seat from a bag and the worshiper in that seat wins a cash prize. Two of the churchgoers win $250 and the third gets $500. The church gives away $1,000 each Sunday.
The cash prize is part of Willis’ recent focus on helping his congregation pay bills and begin a debt-free life, he said. “We’ve had soooo many of our people displaced from jobs, facing foreclosure,” he said. “When people’s faith was high, their debt was down. When their faith was down, their debt was high. I realized the two are connected.”
Willis concedes the cash prize is a gimmick to fill the pews. But he’s unapologetic about the plan, because it’s working. On a typical Sunday, his church draws about 1,600 people to its three Sunday services. But since the money giveaway started, about five weeks ago, the congregation has grown to about 2,500 each week, he said.
The money for the giveaway comes from the church offering, which – in my opinion – is spiritually and ethically bankrupt, not to mention quite troublesome to Uncle Sam as well. How much lower can a church stoop? I rarely encourage the practice of church-hopping, but if the leadership of my church decided to give away $52,000 a year in door prize money (which they wouldn’t), I’d hop…and I’m the pastor.
I wonder if there’s a “minimum tithe” for entry . . .
Pretty ridiculous, really.
Crazy! It’s just a church sponsored raffle! I wouldn’t give my tithe money to that church if that’s what they were doing, that’s for sure.
Seriously?!
I take issue with this pastor’s premise that “when people’s faith was high, their debt was down. When their faith was down, their debt was high. I realized the two are connected.”
That is bunk. This is like the inversion of the Prosperity Gospel crap. People’s debt does not have a darn thing to do with their faith level. Rather, their debt, has to do with out of control spending, not being able to deny themselves what they want, using CC’s imprudently and not having an emergency fund. In other words, their poor choices, not their faith level.
Dave Ramsey would not approve.
Ok first of all I just want to say, clever title. This is pretty crazy stuff. I just feel sorry for those that were already regularly attending, because when the raffle started the odds weren’t that bad, but now they have a lot of competition for that peace-giving, debt-ridding, prize money.
Ronny. Thanks – first of all – for the acknowledgment of my Dire Straits reference in the title of this post. Secondly, thanks for the laugh. I laughed rather heartily at your comment!
At my church we’re waiting for someone to release a live pig during service and follow it with a mountain lion… Not sure why except churches seem to be getting so extreme lately…
Imagine how many beer, smokes, and wings could be purchased for 52K! I think these two ideas ought to be combined. They should have a raffle at the bar church for those who are drinking their troubles away.
Just curious as to why you feel like this is such a bankrupt idea spiritually and ethically?
Spiritually – the Church is called to help out those in need. Sure, having a drawing probably isn’t the best way to ensure that the person who needs the money gets the money. But the money is being given from a church to someone in their community (ostensibly) with the intent to help that person. And I don’t really see a problem with the money coming from the offering, either. Most churches’ offering goes right into a general fund of sorts, which is where I would expect missions-type spending to come from.
Ethically – I can only assume your criticism here comes from the fact that the people who get this money aren’t reporting it as income, or as a gift, on their taxes? If this church is being responsible, they would require the people to meet with a staff person to receive the money, at which time the staff member should inform them that their ‘winnings’ must be reported on their tax forms. Do you know if this church is doing something like that?
Again, it sounds to me like this church has a decent idea, but is executing it in a less-than-ideal way. It seems to me like finding and meeting specific needs in their community would be a better way to spend $1000 per week.
@ Joseph, I would say that this is a bankrupt idea for several reasons:
1) It turns church into a game show. Neither the church leadership nor the new attendees deny that the money alone is the primary draw for people to come to this church. The focus is therefore taken off of Jesus, and turned toward the cash prize givaway.
2) It doesn’t really engage or help those who need it. Rather than going through the hard work and effort of getting involved in congregant’s lives, and using wisdom as to how best to assist them in their difficulties, the leadership of this church appears to be just throwing money out, literally and figuratively. True compassion should be essentially relational, and this raffle
3) it rewards the opposite of what is being taught from the pulpit. The pastor says he’s teaching on financial stewardship, and encouraging winners to use the money responsibly. Windfalls of cash tend to have the opposite effect in the real world, however. Although they could certainly provide a one-time boost to a struggling family, raffle givaways that rely only on luck undercut the messages of frugality and contentment that should go along with good financial stewardship.
4) Technically, this giveaway *might* fall into the category of “legal,” but only just. Once you get into lotteries, raffles, and large giveaways, you really need to put a lot of controls into place to keep unscrupulous people from gaming the system. Sure, the church could put the time and energy needed to put those controls in place, but there’s no indication one way or the other. At the end of the day, why go through the contortions necessary to ensure a fair raffle when you could instead spend time discerning the true needs in your congregation and addressing them directly and personally?
Joseph: Thanks for chiming in. I think that this idea is bankrupt *spiritually* because while the church is called upon to take care of those in need, there needs to be wise stewardship associated with it. Randomly passing out money with no regard to the specific needs of the recipient nor to their track-record of financial responsibility seems to be very unwise and spiritually irresponsible. I say *ethically* for some of the same reasons, but I’ll also add some the issue related to the IRS. There are strict IRS rules related to how a 501c3 organization (the church) handles its money. While the church receives some great tax breaks, there are rules and requirements that go along with them. To take the tax-deductible gifts given to the organization and then give them away with no rhyme or reason seems like it would be very problematic to the IRS. I know that if I were to bring an idea like this up to the financial secretary of my church – who is a student of the IRS codes for churches – she’d probably have a coronary!
Another reason that is seems like a really bad idea is that it’s increased the weekly attendance by 900 people. It would be reasonable to assume that few or none of those 900 people are tithing anything. So you’re increasing your weekly operating budget by what whatever 900 people costs, without any significant increase in your weekly income. If I had time, I would make a really cool graph about this.
I’d quickly become a church hopper if The Foothills started doing this. I liked Darcy’s reply and what can I say about Ronny (except that isn’t his name). You can tell he’s my kid, can’t you?
Hmmmmm—–”you couldn’t pay me enough to go to that church” is probably never heard in the community. I think he figured out how much it would take to put more butts in the seats.
I’m going to side with Joseph on this one.
I agree that a less game show style might be in order, but this is God’s money, don’t you think God can decide who gets it? You’re not giving Him very high marks for attentiveness.
My church did something similar, though with a more stewardship focus. They put $10, $25, $50, $100, and $500 into envelopes. My pastor taught on good stewardship, then he said to come and pick an envelope. The goal was use your money to do something, make something that would increase your money. Then you tithe and keep the rest.
Considering that many people feel like their churches could/should be helping them but don’t know how to go about asking, I think this is a semi-fair solution. At least this gets the money to the people instead of letting it languish in an account. And again, I think God can handle whether or not the right people are getting the money.