If I Were Planting a Church from Scratch

[The Liturgist]

There are various models, but the lucrative ones tend to be opportunity shops (what I think you in America call good will shops?) Where the stock is donated second-hand goods, most of the staff are volunteers, the church owns the property (keeping overheads low), and there's a committee of management answerable to the church. One of the churches where I was a curate had such a shop which raised (from memory) about $70,000 a year, so we're not talking pocket change.

Those shops also tend to be great from a mission point of view; it's fantastic for forming local community connections, and there's a lot of welfare support done quietly for the clients.

Actually we call Opportunity Shops Thrift Shops, and lots of secular charities and church-run charities, ranging from the Salvation Army to a small Lutheran pension fund for widows which runs a shop called Luther’s Attic in a town near where I live operate them. Thrift shops have a virtual monopoly on second hand clothing, and many people, when a relative dies, donate to thrift shops the clothing of their loved one and other personal effects (except, if they are being buried, or if the body is to be embalmed and viewed before cremation, the clothing and any items in which and with which the loved one* will be interred or cremated; usually this is a suit or military uniform, with military and/or civilian decorations).

Goodwill shops are a particularly popular chain of thrift shops, operated by Goodwill Industries, but I recently decided to stop patronizing them, because Goodwill, while it was founded by a charitable minister in 1901, has since declined into a truly despicable organization. More than a hundred Goodwill stores pay retail workers less than the minimum wage, in one case in 2011, there being a worker paid $1.40 an hour, which even in the least expensive parts of the US amounts to starvation wages, while Goodwill executives make six-figure incomes, and in 2013 Goodwill paid its executives $53.1 million in total compensation.

What started my opposition to Goodwill was on a visit to look for some vintage 1990s computers, which I collect. I was surprised to find that the local Goodwill store in a very safe neighborhood near my house had an armed uniformed security guard, attired in the navy blue uniforms used by many American police and high end security guards, who was armed with a Glock pistol. This struck me as being literal overkill (why would a thrift store owned by a charity, at a location which did not even sell jewelry or other valuables, need an armed guard?).* Armed uniformed security guards are rare in Las Vegas; most gambling establishments do not have them, and of those that do, they tend to be the large hotel casinos on the strip. And to put things further in perspective, in Laughlin, a nearby town where I like to go during the week for boating during the warmer months (but not to gamble; it would be hugely inappropriate and would violate an ancient canon prohibiting clergy from entering a tavern), of the nine hotel casinos, only one has uniformed guards armed with handguns, that being the family owned Riverside Resort whose founder, Don Laughlin, the town is named for (the local Catholic church also has two Sunday masses in a special chapel in the resort, because Mr. Laughlin is a staunch Irish American Catholic).

So, given the anomaly of a thrift store having uniformed guards open-carrying when most casinos do not (they often have armed guards, especially after the mass murder at the Mandalay Bay in 2017, but they wear civilian clothes and their firearms are concealed), I felt compelled to look into the matter, and found out that these days Goodwill, in addition to paying disabled people $1.40 an hour, is also in an industry that Sheriff Grady Judd, the outspoken conservative sheriff of Polk County, Florida, and I, agree is evil and the work it does should be done by the government, and that is the private prison industry. Specifically, Goodwill operates “community corrections” facilities, where they charge prisoners $300/night for a bunk bed in a room with 5 other people, releasing them during the day, and requiring they get jobs, of which Goodwill then keeps most of their paycheck. The only jobs they can readily get are in Goodwill thrift stores, so in a nutshell, Goodwill is exploiting convicts sentenced to community corrections as slave labor.

When I found this out, I privately demanded a member of my congregation who was a manager at a Goodwill resign as soon as he was able to find a new job, based on yet another ancient canon law that prohibited persons connected with slavery, specifically naming gladiators and prostitutes but implying anyone who resorts to forced labor. He disagreed, claiming Goodwill was doing good for the community, so, after discussing appropriate measures with my churches two ruling elders (who we were able to organize in the past gear to fully conform to the traditional governance and oversight of Congregational churches. I excommunicated him until such time as he repents. This is the only time I have ever excommunicated anyone and I hope never to do it again, but excommunication, contrary to popular belief, does not prohibit someone from attending church, but merely excludes them from the Eucharist for their own safety based on 1 Corinthians 11:27-34 . It is also spiritual medicine intended to bring about repentance, and I made it very clear that he was still welcome at the parish; what is more, all this was done in private to avoid publicly shaming anyone. I also preached a special sermon in which I addressed the misconduct of Goodwill, before I even asked the man to find another job, and this had the effect of putting the congregation on my side and dissuading the man from embarrassing himself by complaining about the actions of the church elders.

Some people might accuse me of being heavy handed in how I dealt with the situation; in my defense, I would say that the ruling elders felt it was appropriate, and that in accordance with Congregationalist principles, I defer major decisions to their judgement; they in turn are elected by the congregation. We decided early on as a church that we would not provide communion to people actively and remorselessly engaged in adultery, to unrepentant habitual drunk drivers, to those who are involved in the adult entertainment industry who profit off the exploitation of women, and to politicians who support abortion not required to preserve the health of the mother, and doctor-assisted homicide, because of concerns that communion could be harmful for them as 1 Corinthians 11 suggests. This also provides us with differentiation from the United Church of Christ, which has the only other comgregational churches in town.

* Years ago (the 1980s), in California my maternal grandfather Daryll Larsson had similar concerns about a nursery (a botanical nursery, which grows tropical plants and then sells them for purchase to homeowners, gardeners, landscape artists and other nurseries) which had several armed guards; it turned out they were using illegal immigrants from Mexico as slave labor (they were, like many, lured across the border with promises of employment, and in many cases, legitimate residency in the US, so many do not even intend to enter the US illegally, and then they become victims of human trafficking; being a slave at a tropical plant nursery is not even the worst fate, as many are forced into prostitution and/or inappropriate contentography production, their compliance being obtained by forcibly administering extremely addictive drugs such as methamphetamines, crack cocaine and heroin; then non-compliance means agonizing and life-threatening withdrawl, and escape becomes less appealing also due to withdrawl following being taken into custody, although such a course remains the best option, because in recent years the authorities have introduced new programs for victims of human trafficking which include medical rehab, drug replacement therapy and other modalities for those who were controlled using narcotics, as well as psychological counseling.

 

[David Hunter]

Capping the congregation at 300 reminds me of what Francis Chan said about his small home churches... Where when they get to about 25 people then they should split to keep it small.