Faith Works 4-12-24

Faith Works 4-12-24
Jeff Gill

Advice can be answering questions, can't it?
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Not that my goal was to turn this into an advice column, but the reaction from last week's question and answer installment got me a different set of responses than perhaps I'd hoped.

What I heard were mostly questions I get fairly often. If you speak up about faith related matters on social media, you will hear pretty quickly from a cohort of fairly anti-religious voices, some of whom I'm getting used to bantering with.

You can overestimate the numbers versus the volume, or as Pew Research found almost five years ago, there were fewer than 50 million US adults on X (or Twitter), but only 6% of them put up 73% of the political content. Which meant fewer than 1% of us were frequent fliers on platforms like that, and I don't think that's increased.

However, there are questions I bat around often on social media, as a voice for faith perspectives, which I think are worth putting up here, for what I think is a somewhat broader audience. Such as:

Question: Why don't more churches open up in cold weather for helping the homeless?

Response: It's a fair question, but there's a non-trivial issue here called insurance, and yes, religious people in general believe in insurance alongside of faith. And churches are finding it harder in general to get and keep property insurance. I could do a whole column on this and may someday, but it is a real concern for some faith communities who'd like to host but are told they can't by their policy carrier.

Q: Well, why have buildings at all? Shouldn't you Christians sell all you have and give it to the poor?

R: That's a point resting on a scriptural passage also worth a column on its own, and one many sermons have been preached on. I'll dodge it somewhat to go to a practical point. If you've been part of a new church start, which I have, and gone through years of setting up and tearing down on Sunday mornings in rented space, you know why congregations buy and own property. Renting a place to bring a hundred or hundreds together every week gets expensive, as well as a pain (literally, in the back and legs), which makes ownership simply good stewardship.

Q: Okay, but you church folk should pay taxes on your property like we all do. Why don't you?

R: In brief, the reason governments tend to not collect taxes from non-profits is that they're made up of people who choose to associate for purposes that are intended for the common good. So whether it's a church or private school or public museum, if you tax them, you're basically asking their supporters who are already paying taxes personally to then pay a second time to cover the tax burden on said non-profit. Your non-profit supporting citizens tend to be the most publicly engaged folk, as well, so it's been seen historically as a counterproductive course of action. We can change it, but if you tax all non-profits, beware of unintended consequences.

Q: Why are there so many hypocrites in churches?

R: I support having hypocrites in churches, because if you barred them from membership I'd have to leave. Seriously, I think (speaking as a Christian) we could do a better job of loving one another. Fair enough. I also think on average churches do better than the norm in society, but we should not be content with that. Tertullian said in the 2nd century he heard Romans exclaim about Christians, "See how they love one another!"

That should be our goal in the 21st century as well.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's still wondering if there are some advice column questions to be answered. Send 'em to knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.