Orphan Homes And Preacher's Homes
One of the old quibbles which continues to recur is the charge that we believe in churches' building and supporting preachers' homes but cannot build and support orphan homes. Because such quibbles never die we must continue to re-state the case, with emphasis upon the truth and exposure of their attempt at confusion of fact.
The word home has a number of definitions. The brethren who idolize the church support of human institutions use the definition which is applicable to their organization as they refer to the house in which the preacher resides. Some organizations may be spoken of as homes. Families or households may be spoken of as homes. Then, in an altogether different sense, the house in which people reside may be spoken of as a home.
The organization known as an orphan home maintains a house in which children reside. This organization may sometimes refer to this house as an orphan home. Then there are times when they refer to the children who reside there together with their supervisors as the orphan home. Now, when they begin to justify the church support of their organization they mix these three things as they speak of the home so that they can justify their organization by the house or the children. This is a base and misleading bid for sympathetic prejudice due to the sentimental concern which people have for the unfortunate children.
In similar fashion they seek to prejudice the people against the church support of the preacher by accusing him of avarice in taking that which the church supplies while denying the right of an orphan to the same thing. The church has an obligation to needy members, one of whom could possibly be an orphan. (Acts 4:35; 1 Cor. 18:1) The church has an obligation to give wages to the preacher. (1 Cor. 9:14; 2 Cor. 11:8; 12:13) Part of the need of the member, who in some cases might be an orphan, could be a house; hence the church be fulfilling part of her scriptural obligation by supplying the house. In like manner the preacher needs a house of some kind for himself and his family; the church is only fulfilling a part of her duty of paying wages to the preacher by supplying him with a house. One church built a house for an aged couple of Christians in need. Afterwards, when this couple had died, the preacher and his family lived in that same house still owned by the church. The supplying of a house for the needy is not the thing in question. No scriptural objection can be offered to the church's supplying the house either for its needy or for a preacher of the gospel.
It is base hypocrisy, however, for men to compare the supplying of a house for the preacher to the contribution to an organization of men who have decided to go into the business of providing facilities for orphans. The preacher may have a family, which is sometimes called a home. But the church has no right to be building or making families. That is the preacher's personal business. That is the kind of home which is not the church's duty or right to build and maintain. In like manner, it is not the church's duty or right to build or maintain some human organization calling itself a home. It is the church's duty and right to distribute to those who are in need, even if that need be a house in which to reside. The church has as much right to create preacher's families as it does to create human organizations; and the sentimental concern for orphans does not destroy or even mitigate the sinfulness of the church's contribution to such a human society.
The right of the preacher's family to exist is accepted by all and denied by none. The right of human benevolent societies to exist and function independent of the church is not denied. But when such an organization claims a relationship obligatory upon the church of the Lord it has made just as presumptuous and false claim as the denomination does when it claims to be the church of the Lord. The presumption is even greater and the hypocrisy more glaring when it claims the right to the contributions of the church on the grounds that the church supplies the preacher with a house.
It is a blind man, indeed, who cannot see the difference between an organization with its board of directors and a house in which either a preacher or a needy person lives. And the man is worse than blind who will try to blind the eyes of men and churches to their duty to the preacher and to the needy by such a play upon words as to make the human society comparable to the preacher's house by the misuse of the word home. It is the kind of sin which was condemned by the Lord:
"Full well do ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your tradition. For Moses said, Honor thy father and thy mother; and, He that speaketh evil of father or mother, let him die the death: but ye say, If a man shall say to his father or his mother, That wherewith thou mightest have been profited by me is Corban, that is to say, Given to God; ye no longer suffer him to do aught for his father or his mother; making void the word of God by your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things ye do." (Mark 7:9-13)
— 1932 S. Weller, Springfield, Mo.