Tuesday, June 7, 2011

How Much?

I wonder how much this costs (from Savannah's mega-church).

14 comments:

Brian said...

Assuming they are all paid positions and make an average of $30,000 (which I am sure it more), and since there are 131 if I counted correctly... just under $4,000,000.00 a year or a monthly expense of over $300,000 a month.. and this does not included medical benefits and possible bonuses for bringing in more "giving units"

Take just 10 of these megachurches (which one I used to attend.. and knew the numbers) and you are at $40,000,000.00... ans so on...

Do not know if this is right or wrong, but something just makes my blood boil when I think about it.

thats the salaries, should we add the maintenance costs? landscaping costs? Mortgage? Interest?

Arthur Sido said...

And they are hiring!

http://savannahchristian.com/about/employment

At least someone is bucking the recession...

Norma Hill - aka penandpapermama said...

Wow. Mind-boggling. I'm speechless.

Eric H said...

I'd guess about $4M, or 65% of "revenues", whichever is higher, especially with their teaching on tithing.

Aussie John said...

Eric,

I feel sick! Truly!

Eric said...

Everyone,

Thanks for your comments.

As for this massive waste of money, it makes we feel like throwing up.

Jonathan said...

And I recall a day when the protestant churches looked at those old catholic churches as an extravagant waste of money.

If only we could make our buildings last and start stashing cash in Swiss bank accounts. :)

Jeffrey said...

I'll only speak from personal experience: the few times we had visited, the subject of giving consistently came up. we were exhorted to dig deep because the expenses were so great. I feel bad for the folks on the receiving end of that. Trying to picture Jesus doing it.

Jeff

Eric said...

Jonathan,

It always fascinates me that Protestants in general got the gospel right but failed to reform the church. The disconnect is an interesting and sad one.

Eric said...

Jeff,

We visited once. The main theme was the big offering they were going to collect at the end of the service to pay for another building. Not only is it wrong, but it seems like it would get boring after a while.

I agree that this is completely foreign to anything having to do with Jesus Christ.

Arthur Sido said...

Jonathan

If only we could make our buildings last and start stashing cash in Swiss bank accounts.

I used to work in banking and you might be shocked at how much cash even modest sized churches have socked away. Churches with hundreds of thousands in the bank are not at all unusual. Bankers love churches because they make big deposits and hoard lots of cash and always pay their mortgages.

Tom said...

Big bank accounts, big buildings and lots of overhead.....where does it end?

Tim A said...

Self-serving system called Godly. "...you nullify the commands of God for the sake of your traditions..."

Do these priorities reflect a faith that is dead?

They will find out soon.

Ur Man CD said...

Yeah, I'm late on the uptake, but let me tell you, I scrolled down the link and scrolled ... and scrolled ... and scrolled ... and scrolled ... and ... you get the idea. It would have been funny if it wasn't so sad. I'm sure there were more people required as staff members than there were in churches I've visited! Wow. As for the money required ... errr ... you talk about wanting to be sick, I talk about how that can be justified in the light of more pressing priorities.