Primary And Secondary Support
Jumping on Brother Gayle Oler seems to be in vogue these days. Perhaps everyone is doing it because he is so vulnerable to attack. Brother Oler's pen is pungent when sharpened by truth, but in recent years it has been blunted by the idol in his heart. The evidence of this is not lacking in the Boles Home News of September 25 under the heading, "When You Take Money Out of the Church Treasury." Brother Oler says: "When you take money out of the church treasury and give it to the preacher, you are not primarily supporting the man — but you are supporting the gospel which is your duty. When you take money out of the church treasury and give it to the light company, you are not supporting primarily the light company — When you take money out of the church treasury and give it to Boles Home — you are not supporting primarily Boles Home, but the fatherless.. ."
Brother Oler has said in the past that he is just as opposed to the church supporting Boles Home as any one could be but hastened to add that the church was not supporting Boles Home, but was supporting children. He has implied the same above, for he has attempted to divorce Boles Home, as an institution, from the work that it does. He doesn't want anyone to think that Boles Home is being supported by the churches. He'd be opposed to that, if it were done primarily. When a church takes money out of the treasury and gives it to a preacher that isn't primary support, he says. Well, is it support in any sense? If so, it would have to be secondary support, according to him. I'd like to know if Boles Home is supported in any sense by the churches? It must obtain support from some source. It is in existence. Something must keep it going. Perhaps it is the income which is never listed in the financial report printed for public notice. A complete financial report of Boles Home for the fiscal year ending July 1954 showed a net profit of more than $80,000.00. Despite this fact, Brother Oler wrote that the home was operating at a deficit. Not many of us would mind that kind of a deficiency! But such a report shows that Boles Home must be obtaining some "primary" support from some source. If a church wanted to "primarily" support Boles Home, how would it go about doing it if sending a contribution to them would not be doing it? If Brother Oler says that is just "secondary" support, then could a church support it. "Primarily"? If it is impossible for Boles Home to be supported "primarily" by the church, then this couldn't have been the kind of support that Brother Oler was talking about when he said he was opposed to the church supporting the home. Surely he would never have said he was opposed to something that he knew could not possibly happen, therefore, either the church can primarily support Boles Home, or Brother Oler is opposed to the church providing even secondary support. When a church, who has no children in Boles, sends a contribution to the home, is that primary or secondary support? If that is secondary support, I suppose the only way that the church could primarily support the home would be to run off all the children and continue to send contributions to the home to be used by the superintendent and his hired help. When Brother Oler draws his salary from the home treasury, what kind of support is that? "When the church takes money out of the treasury and gives it to Boles Home, it is not primary support for Boles, but for the fatherless." Then Boles Home takes a part of that money given for the fatherless and gives it to Brother Oler. Is he one of the fatherless? His "primary" argument pressed to its conclusion gets a little ridiculous. "When you take money out of the church treasury and give it to a preacher, you are not primarily supporting the preacher but the gospel." Another says, "No, you are not primarily supporting the gospel, you are primarily doing the will of God." "Oh, no," responds another, "You are not primarily doing the will of God, you are primarily trying to be saved," etc., etc. When you contribute to the church, you are not primarily supporting the church but the work of the church! When you eat unleavened bread and drink the fruit of the vine in Lord's day worship, you are not primarily eating the Lord's Supper, you are primarily worshipping God! Such gems of logic.
Granting Brother Oler's "primary" argument for the moment, let me ask if it is scriptural for a church to support a preacher, secondarily of course? Brother Oler will be one of the first to answer in the affirmative. Where did he learn this? Why the scriptures abound in such teaching. Now is it right for the church to take money out of its treasury to support, even secondarily, a human institution like Boles Home? If Brother Oler says, "yes," I should like to know where he learned that it was right? Where is the scripture that teaches the church to do so? I do not ask for an abundance of passages but just one. Brother Oler fixed up this "primary" support proposition because he knew that he could not scripturally justify churches supporting a human institution like Boles Home and seeks to circumvent the institution with the churches' contributions by implying that it was not intended for the home in the first place.
I wonder if Brother Oler's "primary" logic would work equally as well in the church's support of a missionary society? "When the church takes money out of its treasury and gives it to Boles Home, it is not primarily supporting Boles Home, but the fatherless." When a church then takes money out of the church treasury and gives it to a missionary society, it is not primarily supporting the missionary society, but the preaching of the gospel, which is its duty! So, Brother Oler has discovered a way for the church to support a missionary society, secondarily of course! Perhaps he will come to the aid of the embarrassed "sponsoring church" brethren and tell them what is wrong with the missionary society by saying, "nothing is wrong with supporting it, as long as it is not primarily done." I predict that before long these brethren will say there is nothing wrong with the missionary society, but its abuses. Some have already hinted as much. What would be wrong with the church taking money out of its treasury and sending it to a missionary society, since it would not be primarily supporting the society, but the preaching of the gospel? Will Brother Oler answer?
Brother Oler says further: "Boles Home receives only the children whom churches of Christ certify are their Christian duty to support." Churches certify that certain children are their "proper Christian duty to support," then send them to Boles Home to be supported by the entire brotherhood. They do one of two things. They either support the children that are in Boles Home by paying for services rendered, or they fail to discharge that which they certify to be their "proper Christian duty." Since Boles Home will not receive a child unless a church certifies that he is their "proper Christian duty to support", then all children in Boles Home are being supported by the churches who sent them, or else those churches are not doing their Christian duty. If children are being supported by those churches who sent them to Boles Home, then the home has no right to ask for nor to receive money from churches who have no children in the home, since the children do not need double support. If some churches who certified it to be their Christian duty to support certain children, will not do it, they are worse than infidels and Brother Oler ought to tell us who they are, for they are unworthy of Christian fellowship. If he says some of those churches are unable to support their own children, does he mean unable to support them at Boles Home, or unable to support them at all, even in their own community. There are some places where I would be unable to support my family on my present income, but I can support them at 1917 South Walnut in Brady on it.
Brother Oler concludes his article in saying, "A person who will split a church trying to split the difference between supporting an able-bodied preacher and a fatherless child is in a pretty bad way and has evidently forgot the judgment." Does this include the fatherless in Buckner's Orphan Home which is a Baptist institution? Should the churches contribute to Buckner's Home, since it would not actually be a contribution to the home, but to the fatherless? Brother Oler doesn't believe the church ought to support all fatherless any more than I believe the church ought to support all able-bodied preachers, but it doesn't take much splitting to see the difference between the church scripturally supporting worthy preachers and taking care of children who have a right to look to the church for support, and the church sending a contribution to a human institution like Boles Home who assumes to supplant the church and confiscate its funds. I expect the "digressive brethren" would tell Brother Oler that a "person who will split a church trying to split the difference between supporting a fatherless child in a benevolent society such as Boles Home, and in supporting an able-bodied preacher through an evangelistic society such as the United Christian Missionary Society, is in a pretty bad way and has evidently forgot the judgment." They will make wonderful co-workers when they learn to love each other a little better.