would have been, I might have been more understanding. I had never been a donor of the Crystal Cathedral, but that really isn’t the point. The point is, here was a major house of worship collapsing before a national audience, and it was all because the church was broke.
Keep in mind that we are talking not about an individual, but rather a church: a group of believers coming together to worship, instruct, and grow in their faith. This means there is a poor-leadership aspect to consider as well. To those who attended the Crystal Cathedral, either in person or via television, their church placed the needs of the people and the calling given in the Bible on the back burner in favor of worldly financial desires. The church is now sold and has become property of the local Catholic diocese, which has renamed it “Christ Cathedral” and will use it as a place of worship. Those who counted on the Crystal Cathedral are now left in the proverbial cold because the debt gamble (yes, it was a gamble) did not work out.
When a church has debt, including a mortgage, it is usually not just one person who made the error but rather a board of people who are mature in their faith, who all have to sign off on placing themselves and their church (including all other members) in bondage—I mean debt.
To the reader who does not have a belief system based on the Elohim of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you may be asking yourself, “Why does this matter? What’s the big deal if a church has a mortgage and debt?” The question is a great one from the perspective of a person outside of that belief system, but to someone who does have faith in the Author of the Bible, that Author clearly states, “For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have suffcient to finish it?” in Luke 14:28, and “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender” in Proverbs 22:7.
My response to learning of this gross mismanagement of funds and poor stewardship as it relates to the Crystal Cathedral left me thinking what I hope you are thinking, that certainly this is a one-case situation. Surely there are not many churches in this predicament.
Then I started doing some research.
It turns out that the bankruptcy of the Crystal Cathedral is not an anomaly at all. In fact, I learned that the Western world is facing record numbers of church foreclosures!
As I mentioned in the Introduction, church foreclosures are at an all-time high, according to CoStar, and individuals in the lending industry say that this crisis may be even worse than what those official foreclosure statistics suggest, because nobody wants to look like the bad guy and go after a church.
This was confirmed by Scott Rolfs, managing director of religious and education finance at Ziegler, an investment bank, in a 2011 article on the Huffington Post. “Churches are among the final institutions to get foreclosed upon because banks have not wanted to look like they are being heavy handed with the churches,” said Rolfs.9
Now the average reader may be asking themselves, “Why does any of this concern me? I am not a board member of a church. I’m not a pastor of a church. Heck, I don’t even regularly attend a ‘traditional’ church.”
The answer, unfortunately, is even worse than what happened to the Crystal Cathedral. First, we need to realize that the Bible considers the true “Church” the body of believers, not an actual building or denomination. Second, when we look at the body of individual believers, the story, as I said, gets even worse. The leadership of Crystal Cathedral still had their own personal income and finances to sustain their lives and families. However, when it comes to financial failure in our personal lives there is much more at risk.
Here is where faithful individuals find themselves: Not only are their churches in debt, not only is leadership embracing faulty financial strategy that threatens the growth of existing believers and prevents the advancement of the Kingdom to those yet saved, but as individuals, believers are being bound as well!
The Shackle of Debt
Yes, bound. And while debt in and of itself is not technically a sin, Paul reminds us in Romans 13:8 to “owe no man any thing.” The Bible is extremely careful to warn against, even going as far as bringing it up in the Prayer of all Prayers, The Lord’s Prayer:
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen. 10
Notice how we are to pray for God to forgive us our debts! Notice, too, how we mention in our prayer “as we forgive others.” After this prayer the Messiah continues to say: “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you”11—referencing plainly the text about being forgiven as we forgive others.
Now there may be some that say the Messiah is clearly not talking about financial debt but rather sin, as sin places us in a spiritual debt to those we have sinned against. This is why some translations state “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
When we look at that in depth, we find that the Greek word used here is opheilema, a derivative of opheilo, which means to owe in debt morally or financially. This means that Biblically speaking, to owe someone financially is akin to sinning against them. Meaning that having debt is not something that would prevent you from Salvation, it is something though that goes beyond our thought of just money. Debt has moral and spiritual consequences to it, so much so that even sin that does require God’s salvation is referred to in financial terms. So with this truth in mind, when a church of all entities enters into a debt relationship with a bank, it is willfully placing itself, its members, and its mission in a position of willful servitude and obligation to the lender. Now we could add in there a bunch of stuff about entering into an obligation with a lender who is not of the same faith, which the Bible calls “unequally yoked,” and no, it does not refer just to marriage. However, I think the point is clear enough that debt is a major concern to the Father. And when a body of believers places the purpose and objective secondary to their desire to secure debt, not only is immature leadership a given, but sin is also a legitimate concern.
Debt Keeps Us from Being Our Mission
Let us go back to our story of the hero who can save the world, yet due to his or her own actions (and maybe ignorance) finds himself bound in a jail cell. As an ambassador for Elohim, the Church (as a collective and as individuals) is called to be a solution to a doomed world, to bring rescue from an unwanted future. They are charged with bringing the lost to Salvation and to bring leadership to the Saved on how to live in the world but not be of it. The Church cannot answer the call if it is shackled with debt. Regardless of how heartfelt the desire to save, believers cannot focus on the rescue of souls when they’re held in bondage by debt, just like our hero could only sit in jail wishing and hoping he or she could do something.
The father of lies has been telling the elect that if they build a bigger church, bigger temple, or bigger synagogue, then more people will come. A large church usually has to compromise on what should not be compromised to “draw a crowd.” This fact is amplified by the obvious call from the Word to go out to the world, not to bring the world into your building.
The astute will point out what I have already stated—that the Church is not a building or a denomination, but rather a body of believers. Some may inappropriately
