an open letter to real life community church

June 5th, 2008

I don’t get to say my 2 cents in the public arena very often so I’m going to take this opportunity to say some things that I think need to be said. These are my own personal thoughts and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or attitudes of the senior leadership of Real Life Community Church.

As a general rule you, the congregation of Real Life Community Church, suck at giving. I mean you are the worst givers in the entire Intermountain District of the Church of the Nazarene (I can show you numbers to prove this). I don’t know if you realized this but you have 5 full time and 2 part time staff members that work their tails off so that you have an awesome place to attend church. Yet you don’t give in response to how much God has blessed you through this church.

The following is not meant as a guilt trip but just a presentation of the truth of the situation. Because of a lack of giving your kids have to pay more and more for trips and events because there is no money in the budget to help offset the costs. I’ve heard stories of parents complaining about the cost of youth trips compared to other churches in the valley. Understand this, those other churches have multi thousand dollar budgets to offset the cost of those trips. Where do you think the money in their budgets come from? From weekly tithes and offerings.

Recently we’ve made the tough decision to rent out the church office to lower our expenses. Everyone may have to work from home. This leaves us without a place to have staff meetings, a place to house our copier and will only lead to the staff being more disconnected from each other instead of growing together as a team.

Real Life is a great place to explore the reality of God and how God is relevant in our world. You have the freedom to ask questions and figure this whole thing out in a loving, open community. Real Life has recently been ranked as the 7th fastest growing church in the Church of the Nazarene but yet our financial situation gets worse and worse everyday.

Because your giving sucks so bad it just adds more and more stress to your staff and they can’t focus on the things that are most important. I can’t express to you how important an issue this is. There is some serious un-health in Real Life Community Church. We don’t want to be a church that is constantly asking for money, we want you to be blessed by God and give out of thanks because of that blessing. Everything you have has been given to you by God and you have no right to be selfish with it. I wish this was a non-issue and Real Life could continue to grow and thrive impacting the Treasure Valley, showing Gods grace to those who need it.

Those of you who faithfully give 10% or more of your income to the church I personally thank you from the bottom of my heart. I don’t know who you are or I would actually tell you to your face. I’m sure God has continued to bless you out of your faithfulness. If you are faithful with a few things God will put you in charge of many things. This letter is not written to you few wonderful people. This is for those of you that call Real Life Community Church in Nampa Idaho your church home and you come every week and enjoy the services and eat the food we provide yet don’t do anything to help us continue existing as a church. So I put it to you, if you are just going to consume our resources and not give back then go somewhere else. We can’t afford for you to suck up what we have left.

If you are new to Real Life and just checking things out then by all means disregard this entire letter. We want you to feel welcome and enjoy yourself, but as you begin to call us home we expect you to learn and embrace our core practices. One of these practices is “First Fruits” which means offering to God not our left-overs but the best of what we have, what we do, and who we are. “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31) This includes every area of our lives ie. time, energy, and money.

I hope you can understand the heart from which this letter comes. I love you all but God has a greater vision for Real Life and the difference we can make in the lives of broken people. I hope I don’t get into trouble for speaking my mind and if you have any concerns please do not hesitate to let me know I’m open to discussing this further with you.

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