The State of the Presbyterian Church

I attend a church here in town and I have been doing so now for about the last two months. The last two weeks though I did not attend service at all and that are because of a number of reasons. There are two mains churches in this country which are the Catholic Church and the Presbyterian Church. I am a member of the Presbyterian Church and I have been since I was a little child. Church service in my childhood used to last for a maximum of two hours. That was the case throughout the year except when there were special occasions like thanksgiving and other special ceremonies such as church marriages and the service would then be extended.

The Catholic Church though for the few instances that I have attended is always constant in that their service runs between one hour to one hour and a half. They never go over one hour and the half despite the fact that they take communion each and every Sunday.

Part of the reason that the Presbyterian Church takes longer is that people come to the church to try and raise money for one project or the other. For example, the Christian Youth Fellowship of the said Presbyterian Church in the past two weeks lunched a CD in church that they have been working on for some time. There is nothing wrong in lunching a CD and raising money in church but the money raising aspect of the business just dominated the whole church service of that day. The service started at about 9am and did not finish until about 1.30pm, that is about 4.30 hours of church service. Too long in my opinion especially if you are trying to recruit more members into your service.

The Catholic Church has the advantage in that they raise money to run their church services from a central location and they have been around much longer than the Presbyterian Church. So they have more funds in their bank accounts. The Presbyterian Church can also raise money from private service out of church service time. In the case of the CD lunch that happened in my church, what I think they could have done is announced that a CD has been released and get people to purchase the CD and make other donations when the main church service is over. That way people who came to church service to worship would do that and leave if they are not interested in purchasing the CD. There are a lot of people with money in the area and they would donate money to the Church if you contact them privately. The church has elders and part of the duties of the elders in my opinion should be to try and raise money for various projects of the church. They can do that during the course of the week.

People come to church and take pride in announcing large donations that they are making to the church. I do not know whether they actually do give the money to the Church, but God knows how much you contribute to his course and you do not need to make a grand announcement of it. There is some sort of a competition going on in my opinion and it seems as if some people are using the church to show off the financial success that they have achieved somewhere else. I think there are a lot of ways in which you could let the world know that you have money and the church is not a place for that. What the Church can do if people that make donations to it need to make the rest of the world know, is to create like a balance sheet at the end of each 6 months or a year and make the announcement during the year end service. That way people would come to church and do what the church service is intended for, which is a place for people to come and worship. This is one aspect that the church has to work on.

Attending church is good because each and every one of us has to have a faith in which they believe in. The Presbyterian Church is also lively in that they have various groups that light up the service with singing and makes the place more human.