bro rushmore, thank you for your paper. do you think that churches may use church treasury to buy items for church members to eat, drink or etc…like at a church picnic or purchase juice and donuts for breakfast or kentucky fried chicken for a church social? should members pay for these items individually out of pocket or can we use church treasury to buy these items? ~ jack Johnson
Your appreciation of our efforts through Gospel Gazette Online is uplifting. Thank you.
Ordinarily, the churches and brethren with whom I am familiar usually bring covered dishes or bring personally purchased items for ‘church socials.’ This is a good practice.
However, there are other occasions on which food is purchased with church money about which I have no problem whatsoever, especially occasions that are associated in some way with teaching or preaching the Gospel (e.g., ladies’ inspiration days, lectureships, VBS, youth days, etc.).
In John 6:1-13, Jesus Christ introduced to his disciples the prospect of buying food for the multitude that had come to him (v. 5), and his disciples entertained the prospect of buying food for the multitude who had come out to Jesus (v 7). Despite the fact that Jesus planned to perform a miracle to provide the food, and that he was testing his disciples (v. 6), apparently neither our Lord nor his disciples disapproved of buying food for that occasion. Parallel verses in both Mark 6:37 and Luke 9:13 record Jesus saying to his disciples, “Give them to eat.” While the church was not established yet, the principle appearing in these passages seems applicable to similar settings that may and do occur in Christianity. Of course, we cannot feed anyone miraculously.
While I have never heard the mission of the church described nor do I propose to amend the mission of the Lord’s church to include social functions, fellowship among Christians cannot be minimized without doing serious harm to the church. Close and frequent social interaction is an essential ingredient of biblical fellowship. Acts 2:46 indicates that first century Christians socialized daily, ate together and were in one another’s homes. If we can glean authorization from the Scriptures through implication by which we infer a place (i.e., a meetinghouse with its trappings — lawn care, paved lots, etc.) for studying God’s Word and worship, we can find sufficient implication from which we can infer (if opportunity otherwise escapes us) to provide place and means (including food) for that valuable Christian fellowship to occur.
Though we do not want to squander the Lord’s money or spend it unwisely, there is a persistent tendency in humanity, including in the Lord’s church, to emphasize material wealth and money to an inordinate position of concern (bordering on the love of money, 1 Timothy 6:10). Someone once observed that more passages of Scripture appear in the Bible addressing material wealth than any other biblical subject, doubtless because mankind has as much or more problem respecting material wealth than any other subject. It occurs to me that often members of the Lord’s church have not completely let go of the money they profess to have given to the Lord and want to control it substantially after they have given it.
