16-6-5 Wealth In The Church

The early church started undeniably poor, meeting in homes, funded by the few wealthy converts. There was a lay ministry- there is no hint that salaries were paid nor tithes raised from the converts. However, over time, Christianity became more socially acceptable. The overall wealth of the members increased. The socially marginal no longer comprised the majority of congregations. By the 3^rd century, churches started to own buildings and then land. Initially of course, Christianity as an illegal religion had no right or opportunity or even desire to own buildings or to meet in a permanent place. Salaries started to be paid to the ministers. Cyprian of Carthage and other writers point out how there developed a dichotomy between the ministers of poor rural areas, who lived on very little, and those salaried church workers of the urban areas, who became very wealthy. They began to spend their wealth on lavish clothing and church buildings, and to flaunt these things, justifying them in the name of Christ’s service. There also developed in Syria and Asia Minor especially almost a dogma that one must leave their wealth and property to the church. And thus the churches grew wealthy. And with it came politics, division, doctrinal and moral apostasy, endless concern about church funding issues even though the church had never been richer, and a loss of focus on the man Christ Jesus, who though He was rich became poor [Gk. ‘a pauper’] for our sakes.

The Western Christian world  cannot deny that all this hits close to home. Those in the poorer world must also beware of where things could develop for them too, if the Lord delays His return. Brother Alan Eyre concludes his classic study The Protesters by saying that the Truth has not usually been lost purely and solely by false teachers or wholesale doctrinal apostasy; but rather by the inroads of materialism leading to these things. In Contra Celsum we read Origen justifying the Christian church against Celsus’ criticisms that it is a church of poor, simple people. That the majority of Christians would be poor and simple was indeed the expectation of both the Lord Jesus and Paul. Yet Origen seeks to justify the Christian church as middle class and respectable, with respected intellectuals amongst its membership. It was and is this desire to be seen as worldly-wise and ‘normal’ which is the death-knoll for any revival of Christianity. It was this which led to the acceptance of the Trinity; and it is this which robs true Christianity of its radical nature and appeal today. Perhaps in our last days this lesson needs to be learnt as never before. The Lord’s picture of the world of the last days is of a household eating and drinking, absorbed with being normal (Mt. 24:38; Lk. 17:27). But the Lord’s point is that this very ‘normal’ behaviour is what He finds so wrong.