What I love about Buckhead church is the striving for excellence in everything that is done. We serve a God of excellence. A perfect God. All that we bring to Him can never compare to him but in the OT days, people were to bring their best to sacrifice. Not the sick and rotten… the best. Buckhead brings the best.

We also need to understand the people we are trying to reach in our zip code. Buckhead is not an area of dirt roads and outhouses. It is an affluent and wealthy area. You could have built a church of plywood, tarps, and an overhead projector while everyone sits on a dirt floor and pees in a hole in the ground…. and all 3 people who would attend would be ok with it.

While our churches are not “the temple of God” I do think back to the days when God had His people build a temple. Again, it wasn’t made of sun dried Ox poop and palm leaves. It was a magnificent and richly appointed place.

I hear a lot of people talk trash about things like churches spending too much money on “stuff”. I used to be one of them until God smacked me about the head. I love the quote “You can not romanticize poverty.” If we logistically look at this, like the price of the projector at Buckhead, how would that money be spent otherwise? Let’s say the thing cost $200,000 for the sake of argument. I have no idea how much it actually cost. I look at it every week thinking the bulb alone is probably equal to my annual income.

A lot of the poverty we see in the “third world” comes from massive corruption from the top down to a lack of natural resources to sustain a population to a cultural attitude lacking a “western attitude of what is poverty.” As mentioned here, some people we see as poor would not think of themselves in such a way.

“I have 50 goats! I’m the richest man in the town!”

“But you don’t have a toilet or cable TV!”

“No one has a toilet here!”

You know, in some cultures, 50 goats is as good as a Tahoe with a PS3 in the backseat! Anyway….

So we have this $200,000 to “send to the poor” instead of buying a projector? What do we do with it? Realistically?

“We could give meals to 50,000 hungry people for 2 weeks!!!”

Ok, after 2 weeks then what?

“We could build 4 schools in rural wherever!”

Ok, that has some longevity. How many lives are going to be changed through that school over the life of the building? And are we talking about a country that changes the government like we change underwear? Do we know that school is going to be there for 50 or 60 or 70 years to come? The schools are built. Who is going pay the teachers and provide the stuff schools need?

“We could give shoes/clothes/toothpaste/laptops/alarm clocks to 10,000 people!”

Ok. And then in 6 weeks or months or a year down the road we need another $200,000 to give more shoes/clothes/toothpaste/laptops/alarm clocks to the same people.

Logistically, where would the $200,000 go to poor people that is going to have lasting impact? Where would you send it? What would it be used for? How would you get it there and what is the long term sustainability of it? How many will have their life changed by that $200,000 to the point that they go on to change the lives around them?

It is SOOOOO easy for some to say “we spend too much when there are poor people to take care of” and not enough discussion on how that actually would happen. I mean, Sally Struthers tells me that I can feed a kid for the price of a cup of coffee so maybe we send the money to her. It also makes me want to move to a place where I can feed my kids for the same price.

What if we took that $200,000 and bought a top of the line projector. Something that we know is going to last a long time. And what if we know, for a fact, that if we plug that thing in and project sermons on it we will reach 5,000+ people each and every week in an environment that speaks to their lifestyle?

What if that $200,000 will communicate the message of God to thousands and their reaction to that message is in turn followed by opening their wallets and sending MILLIONS out into the world from the guy next door who lost his job to the village in wherever that needs a new school house built? We’ve taken that $200,000, reached people in our community, helped the guy next door, AND got a school house built. Trifecta!

Now that $200,000 doesn’t seem like such a lavish expenditure if you realize the work that thing is doing. And about being a steward of that $200,000 for a projector. What if Buckhead could have bought a $50,000 projector used on eBay that “sort of” did the job? And what if it was going down all the time? And what if it took $200,000 to maintain the clunker over a two year period? Now we’ve spent more to do the job that the initial projector could have done. Is that really being a good steward?

We could just say that Buckhead Church cost millions and millions of dollars. That money could have gone to the poor and those thousands of folks who go to Buckhead could have just gone somewhere else to church. That doesn’t work either because it is the generosity of the people in the church that built the church.

To reach the people of Buckhead, logistically, it REQUIRES the spending of millions. Someone find me free land in Buckhead. Someone find me a way to build without worrying about codes and restrictions and community expectations. Want to join in the Buckhead community? You better come correct with the money because it’s going to cost you…. and what is the real cost of the souls being won by Buckhead? Isn’t it worth the money?

I think about Exodus 31…

“Then the LORD said to Moses, 2 “See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, 3 and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts- 4 to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, 5 to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of craftsmanship. 6 Moreover, I have appointed Oholiab son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, to help him. Also I have given skill to all the craftsmen to make everything I have commanded you:” (NIV)

What we have at Buckhead is a blessing. Everyone who works there is able to not only do their job but follow the talents God has placed in them with the tools that have been afforded to them to do with the blessing of God and the generosity of the people being “fed” by the church. Carlos, I’m sure your job is made that much better and able to be done efficiently thanks to the current technology you have instead of trying to run a church on a Windoze 3.1 computer with a bed sheet for a projection screen.

How many poor people could have been fed with all the pure gold in God’s temple?

I love all of you who work so hard at Buckhead. Don’t be ashamed of the wealth and blessing…. great and amazing work is being done through it!

Cheers,
Zack

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You don’t have to even make the contrast with Buckhead—even the poor and rural communities in this country have FAR more wealth & power than the rest of the world. A church with an $800 projector could be accused of wasting that money when they could have used flannelgraph and sent the rest overseas. Our call isn’t to feel bad about our resources—it’s to leverage them for those less powerful.

What Buckhead & NPM has done through the BE RICH campaign is a good example of this. Thanks to you and your team for showing the way!