Meeting Houses For Poor Churches
The following request is from my good friend of many, many years, Dr. R. P. Woodward of Louisville, Kentucky:
"Dear Brother Douthitt:
"I appreciate your reasoning in the Gospel Guardian. Would you please make comment briefly on 'One Stronger. Church Sending Money To A Weaker Church For The Construction Of A Church Building'?"
The New Testament presents two divinely approved examples of churches' donating money from their treasuries to other churches.
The church in Antioch, "every man according to his ability," sent relief to the churches in Judea, "sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul." (Acts 11:27-30.) No man with an honest and good heart can fail to see that this is an approved example of one church's contributing to many churches for the relief of the saints in the receiving churches.
Churches in Galatia, Macedonia and Achaia sent funds by the hand of several messengers to the church in Jerusalem for the relief of poor saints in that church.
No man with an honest and good heart can read I Corinthians 16:1-4 and II Corinthians 8 and 9 and fail to see that this is an approved example of many churches' donating money to one church in order to supply the physical needs of saints in the receiving church.
In both of these cases the receiving churches were unable to provide adequately for the physical needs of their members, and the design or objective of the donations was "that there may be equality" or mutual freedom from want. (II Cor. 8:13-15.) Food, clothing and shelter are physical necessities.
It is God's will for all the members of a church to assemble and worship: to pray, to sing. to teach and study the Bible, and on the first day of the week to eat the Lord's Supper and lay by in store as they are prospered.
In order for this to be done, certain physical needs are indispensable; the saints that assemble must have adequate clothing and shelter for such meetings.
If the saints in a church are unable to provide these physical necessities for these required meetings, then certainly other churches must send funds "according to their power" (II Cor. 8:3, 14) that the poor church may have shelter or clothing adequate for such meetings.
There is no disagreement among brethren on this point. I have never heard of any man's denying that this is scriptural and right. All know and agree that this is not an unscriptural centralization of the control of church resources.
But it is neither scriptural nor right for a church to surrender the control of one dime of its money to another church in order to make the receiving church the controlling agency in a brotherhood meeting-house-building project for poor little churches all over the world or in any area. Such practice would be a centralization of church resources that is Romish and rotten to the core.
The New Testament contains no command, example or necessary inference authorizing a church to donate from its treasury to another church, except when the receiving church is unable financially to provide adequately for the physical necessities of its members, and when the objective or design of the gift is "that there may be equality" or mutual freedom from want. To do so in the absence of these two divinely prescribed conditions is to head straight for Rome. Contributions from a church to a church must stop right where the New Testament stops it; otherwise, there is no stopping place this side of "the man of sin." (II Thess. 2.)
Advocates of centralized control of church resources ignore the issue completely. They argue long and loud that churches may send funds to a "poor little church" with which to build a meeting house containing class rooms, dressing rooms, and perhaps other rooms. Nobody denies that such is scriptural. This is not the issue at all, and never was.
But when these "sponsoring church" promoters are asked: "Is it scriptural and right for a church to surrender the control of any of its resources to another church in order that the receiving church may launch, manage and maintain a building project for poor little churches all over the country?", they are as silent as the tomb on that point. I have never been able to get any sponsoring church advocate to pay any attention whatever to that question.
Recently in a debate in South Houston, Brother Thomas B. Warren asked me if one church could contribute scripturally from its treasury to a poor church to build a meeting house. After explaining to him and to the audience that the purpose of houses and clothing is to protect those who use them, and that other churches must contribute to a church that is too poor to provide such physical necessities, I made this statement which I have copied from the tape recording:
"But, Tom, the thing for you to do in order to defend what you are trying to uphold now, is to find one church somewhere that set itself up as a sponsoring church, and then went out all over the neighborhood and all over the nation begging churches to send it money that it might build meeting houses for little churches all over the world, placing it under its oversight."
I tried hard to get Brother Warren to pay some attention to that point, but I was never able to get him to do it. He just continued to read the speeches which he had written in advance, digressing occasionally just long enough to hurl an insulting misrepresentation at his brethren, accusing them of being against cooperation and of teaching the "most damnable and soul destroying doctrine" that he ever heard of. He did not seem to know the difference between a slanderous insult and the answer to an argument.
If you know of any sponsoring church promoter who will venture an answer to the above question, I should like to get in touch with him.