C3 - are you listening?????

Baby Issac is hanging in there...Thanks for your Prayers!!!

This is from the latest blog entry (March 29th at 9:15 AM) about Baby Issac...

http://babyleino.blogspot.com

Waiting
Psalm 27:14, "Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD."Psalm 33:20, "We wait in hope for the LORD; he is our help and our shield."Well, we made it through the night, with some small improvements early this morning in his CO2 levels. He is still in the same dangerous place as last night, so we continue to wait and pray. It was a very difficult night to say the least, but that doesn't change the fact that God is in control and is holding our baby Isaac in His loving hands. We ask for continued prayer for Isaac, and also for strength and comfort for Patience and I (and family) in the waiting. Thank you for your continued prayer, support, and encouragement.

 

The money changers were exploiting people. They were selling animals for sacrifice and also taking a cut from the Roman money they exchanged. In other words they were selling salvation.

If anyone can equate that with a coffee shop at C3, please tell me how. Are you required to buy a cup-a-joe before entering the service?

 

I've been to some churches where that should be required, because the sermons were so boring they would lull you to sleep!



j/k!

 

Craig must live a happy life if all the people he does business with respond within 24hrs. craig who were the contractors that built your house so I can use them on mine new one. 24 hr response your dreaming!!!!!!!!!

 

You are very very WRONG!!!!!!!!! The masture thing to do is walk over and talk to them. Think back before the intranet what then? Mature people are able to comprimise...... And that means walk over and talk to the people...... Stop being so stubborn and walk over..... you people are allowing her to be lazy.

 

What in the heck is wrong with you people? In the courtyard, out of the courtyard? In the sanctuary, outside the sanctuary? Jeez Louise, folks! There will be a coffee shop charging money IN THE CHURCH! Let me once again quote the word of Jesus:

"And Jesus went into the temple of God and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of them that sold doves. And said unto them, 'It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer but you have made it a den of thieves.'" "Take these things hence, make not My father's house a house of merchandise."

What is so hard to understand about this? C3 is putting a coffe shop inside the church and it will charge money! According to various members posting in this thread, it will be operating independently of the church, making it a place where people buy and sell, and a place of merchandise.

Hell, I don't know. Maybe I'm the one whose crazy.

 

I dont go to the church. I dont know anyone who goes to the church (if i do know them, i dont know it). I dont know what goes on inside the church. I dont care what goes on inside the church. What goes on inside that church will not affect my life for one minute (that i know of).

Personally....they can sell cars in there for all i care but lets put all of this in the big picture and in very simplistic terms.

Some place is planning on selling coffee.

Ouch! That hurts!

Come on people...

 

It's just a little more complicated than that, the church I grew up in didn't even believe in the community fund raising efforts that some churches do such as the bake sales, the BBQ chicken lunches, etc. We were taught that money for the church should come from tithing, not selling ANYTHING. But this was the Presbyterian church, they can be kinda strict, LOL! I don't agree with having a coffe shop in the church, that just seems wrong somehow to me. But again, that's just me.8)

 

i have no idea who you are but evidently you do not have very good reading skills - the point of going over there has been dealt with many times in this thread. Obviously you are not familiar with the church by your posts.

 

No its not. Churches have fund raisers all the time. You can see signs on the road nearly every day about a church having a BBQ chicken dinner, or a pancake breafast. No one complains about those.

Evidently C3 is having a fund raiser...just its smaller in nature and it happens every day with the coffee sales. If that is what the church wants, then so be it.

 

At this point and since the church pretty much started, they do not sell coffee, it is given away free before all the services. Now the coffee shop will be a whole different deal and i am not sure how they are going to work that. When the idea first came up it was to be staffed by employees of the church but evidently now from what i have read in the posts, it is to be an independent business basically renting space. i could be wrong but that is what i have been led to believe.

 

Ok even so, how does this affect your (your being anyone against the idea) life at all? How does it keep you from paying your bills, taking vacations, planting bushes in your yard, washing your car or anything? Does it take away money from anyone on this board somehow? Would the opening of this coffee shop invade anyone's personal bubble?

If not...then um....let it go. (best way i can say that here)

 

Hey sweetie, i have not said anywhere in this thread that i am against anything going on at C3 other than the starting work before 7am and the church's lack of response to the community and that was hard for me considering my DH's work. :-D Actually i have held my tongue so many times during this whole thread:lol:

 

HEY Kaci - stop talking at this one. ff not only missed that the issue of walking over there was taken care of, but he or she also missed the fact that I got an answer- (in fact I received two now),. Oh and ff also missed Spelling class and Sunday school. I know this for a fact because no good Christian could possibly call me lazy.

 

Gotcha ya and isn't it cool when the 4042 board gets some action taken once again - gotta love our community:-D

 

Maybe you're just a radical shake. You have a pretty strict interpretation there. Look at what they were selling - articles of sacrifice. Requiring that people "pay to pray". Jesus was against putting people under the burden of strict laws, making them feel inferior in God's eyes because they couldn't bring a sacrifice, and pressuring them into buy something for sacrifice. What if one person was selling fresh clean water, and charging just enough to cover his costs (and maybe even a fair profit - he has to eat too), with the express intention of attracting people to the temple to hear God's word. Do you think Jesus would have gotten mad at him? I don't.

I couldn't sit on the couch and pull files from my desktop like I can now. Ain't the intranet wonderful.

 

Response from a Member

I have read every post over the last few days (I should get a life, right).

Master Shake, you are insisting on the letter of the law as you interpret it. The bottom line is, does a coffee shop make the church a house of merchandise? How about a church bookstore? If we (yes I am a member) are starting a business because we want to fill our pockets, as some on this thread have suggested, then yes, it would be wrong. If we are allowing someone else to use us as a way to fill their pockets, then, again, yes, the coffee shop would be wrong.

But if we have a bookstore because we want to provide a service that we find important to the life of the church, is that changing our property from a place of worship and prayer to a place of merchandise? If we offer a full coffee shop on our property as a place for people to bring their friends and a place for the community to come and see who we are, and potentially give the church a try which might lead some to Faith in Christ, then does that make us a house of merchandise? What Jesus condemned was that opportunists were taking advantage of those travelers who didn't have easy access to local currency and sacrificial animals. They did it to make a buck.

PepperCorns, I am sorry that our church did not respond sooner.

I am personally disappointed that they/we did not respond more quickly to the original complaint on this thread. And I think that the complaint was a legitimate one. I don't think that peppercors should have had to walk across the street and talk to someone in person. A phone call (with no email response) should have been adequate. Unfortunately, she didn't get a quick response. I sincerely apologize. I find this a big problem in churches (small or large) and the business world. Some are better at it than others. Those who miss email and phone responses (as I do more often than I would like to admit) usually pay a price, such as a long discussion board thread that tends to turn negative.

I hope those out there referring to us as a cult would check it out sometime. We don't serve cool-aid. If you don't like the music, find a church where you do. We do what we do to reach people that aren't interested in traditional church. I'm glad there are lots of church styles because humans have lots of different tastes.

As far as the charity thing goes. I am going to leave soon to start a new church in Europe. The church supports my ministry. I don't know the exact number but I believe the we support about half a dozen individuals as well as A couple of larger ministries that train pastors around the world and groups like Children's Cup in Africa. We gave large to the Tsunami and Katrina relief efforts as well as around 2000 local angel tree gifts. I don't know the numbers for 2006, but I know that we gave around $250,000 to local and international missions in 2005. Last time I checked we had an application to be filled out for special needs. No one needs to talk to pastor Matt for that.

There is much more I would like to address but I have made this way too long.

If you are still waiting for the pastors for something, please understand priority that the church is facing with the our worship leader's 1 month old baby. We should have responded before the serious issues with baby Isaac over the last few days. I am sorry that we didn't. But right now please give our staff the time they need to focus on the Leino family and still do everything necessary for the Sunday service that is coming.

I pray that we will all let our conversation be gracious, seasoned with salt so that we will know how to answer everyone. (Col 4:6)

 

Whew, that blog was alot to read, so I skimmed over it some. I hope the baby gets better. Who are the parents, are they members of the church or just someone that C3 is sponsoring thru community support? God bless them, they have been thru alot, and look like they are holding up wonderfully considering the stress they are going thru.

 

Jordan is the music leader for the last year or so at C3. As for the community outreach being served by a coffee shop that charges, having been involved very closely with our Octoberfest for the years we did it, that was an awesome community outreach that brought a lot of people to the church without having to pay - i was so sad when Matt decided he didn't feel called to continue that community outreach program:cry: i have felt sad for the last few years that we no longer reach out to our local community. Yes, supporting ministries overseas is a very important and needed agrenda but need i remind anyone, Charity does begin at home.

BTW, before anyone asks, yes i have been a member since we had 300 members in 2000 and were meeting in Cleveland Elementary and until this past year, i was very involved.

 

You must have missed the part that said MY church was against it, obviously not all are.