$130 MILLION

**** First off, I would like to thank everyone who responded to my post on home schooling.  If you left me an email address...I will be emailing you!  :)  The last couple days have just been hectic, plus given the fact that hubby wasn't working and never shares the computer...I haven't had time to type out all my questions until today.  But don't worry....I  have plenty of questions coming your way!!!*****

Now for what has me bothered that I just can't let go.....(And for the record, I am NOT trying to down talk anyone, for only God truly knows ones heart....I am just expressing my opinion and feelings.  And since it's my blog, I can do that...hehehe!!)



$130,000,000.00

First Baptist Church of Dallas is working on a new church building that costs $130 Million. I stumbled across an article about it the other day and have been trying to let it go.  But I can't. That is such a staggering amount of money. Among the amenities are....

• 1.5 million square feet
• LEED certified (its green and energy efficient)
• Glass structure
• Stone water tower topped with a luminescent cross
• Common area for downtown residents and guests
• 3,000 seat worship center (on the second story)
• 7 high-definition screens
• Choir and Orchestra pit
• Senior adult education center (under the sanctuary)
• 300-space underground parking garage
• 6-story education building for children/youth ministries
• 2 side-by-side gymnasiums
• Children’s play areas
• Outdoor concert space
• Adjacent parking garage with 500-plus parking spaces

Now don't get me wrong.  I am not going to say that there is anything wrong with a church getting a new building or a make-over on their current one.  But I am going to say that in my opinion this is excessive.   I look at the list of amenities and the huge dollar figure attached to it, and so many different thoughts come to mind.

• $1 will provide someone clean drinking water for a year.  I'd think the cost of that stone water tower could provide an awful lot of clean water wells in third world countries.
•  "Common Area" for downtown residents and guests....how about a homeless shelter?  Instead of 2 side by side gymnasiums, what about a soup kitchen?
• Why not use some of that outdoor concert space to grow a community garden to help feed people?
• I wonder what type of orphan ministry could be launched with the cost of a 3 story underground parking garage?  (That is not even counting the adjacent parking garage.)
• While $130 Million is being spent on this building, a CHILD DIES every 5 seconds from hunger related causes, and a CHILD DIES every 15 minutes from a preventable and TREATABLE disease.

(I could list thousands of ways I think the money could be better spent, but I think you get my point.)
I can't imagine sitting in a building that cost $130 Million, while listening to a preacher talk about Jesus.  It just doesn't seem right to me.  Sit in a $130 Million dollar church, talking about someone who commands us to care for the "least of these"....while homeless people are starving even just up the street from me and the cost of the chair in the auditorium would probably feed someone in America for a month, and in Africa for a year.

I just don't get it.  While I sit here in my confusion thinking of how that much money could help starving children, orphans, children trapped in sex trafficking, children being killed as sacrifices by witch doctors, spreading the Gospel, giving people bible's who have never seen one, etc... I will leave you with the words of the Senior Pastor explaining a little about the need for this new campus.
 
“As I look around downtown Dallas, I see spectacular temples of commerce, of culture and of government – many new, some restored to former glory, and all intended to stand for generations. The Kingdom of God needs a home to equal them – a spiritual oasis in the middle of downtown.”
       ~Dr. Robert Jeffress - First Baptist Church of Dallas