For years I was a new church development pastor. I developed the habit of setting up a study in my home because these new congregations started out in temporary quarters. If there was any office space, it was limited and not secure. Also because a home study allows me to work with fewer interruptions.
I have a wonderful study in the basement of my home in Festus. It allows me to get started on sermons and bulletins and newsletters early in the morning, as well as finish up the work day at night. I keep most everything I value in my study because I have not had a good experience with churches.
At First Presbyterian Church, Galveston, I arrived one morning to find the outline of a body in yellow tape on the asphalt of the street in front of the sanctuary. A man had shot his estranged wife less than two hours before I drove up. To keep people from wandering in, some of them dangerous, FPC had to keep all doors to the building locked during the work week.
We had just moved into our new building at Cristo del Valle. It was our first Sunday. After the service was concluded, two men came in wanting to look at our facility, saying that they had watched it going up. The next morning our sound system was gone. After a spaghetti supper, someone took a pipe torch to our safe and stole the proceeds. My office was ransacked at times by persons looking for anything of value.
Shortly after we moved into the new building at Sandia, a late-nite visitor sat in a car outside the big sanctuary window and shot six rounds from a handgun into the sanctuary. I found slugs lying on pew chairs and several imbedded in the sanctuary door. Shortly after that, someone took a crowbar and beat down the glass entry doors. They left a note saying, “Churches shouldn’t be locked.”
As time passed someone stole the offering after the early service. Anything that wasn’t locked up or nailed down tended to disappear during the week. Cars were broken into in the parking lot on Sunday.
It is a shame that churches have to be locked up during the week. But no less than is the case with other institutions, valuables are stolen, rooms vandalized, and staff attacked, even murdered. I remember the first new church development conference I ever attended. A pastor in attendance told me that a few weeks earlier two armed men came in while the choir at his church was practicing. They robbed the choir at gunpoint. Now that I think about it, one night choir practice at Sandia was shattered by a gang of kids who were shooting out the back windows of vehicles with sling shots and ball bearings.
Jesus said, “Be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” -DJ
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