Note:  I didn’t want to put all of this into monetary terms, but it’s easily quantifiable, so please forgive me.

A church of 1,000 is a $1,000,000 per year business.

When I look at the size of big churches—the staff, the programs—I can’t help but wonder how much of that money actually gets anywhere good.

Let’s take the church of 1,000 people as an example.

A staff of 10 people, making an average of $30,000 per year (which is a conservative estimate) takes $300,000 off the net right away.

A $4,000,000 building at 7.00% interest over 15 year is another $430,000 off the top.

That puts us at $730,000 and we haven’t even gotten started yet.

Chairs, Sunday school curriculum, sound systems, programs, maintenance, landscaping, bulletins, youth groups, insurance and more still have to be paid for.

I don’t think that leaves much left over for anything good.

Big churches, small churches – this is simple accounting, and it’s the way almost all of them work.

That’s the way that everybody does it, but I don’t think it has to be that way.

What if we had 1,000 people scattered among 25 homes instead of one big church? There wouldn’t be anymore building costs, there would be no staff costs, but the $1,000,000 would be the same if not more.  Not only would the money be there and be 100% available to help others, but those homes would already be in the community and be able to identify and address the community’s troubles directly, in real time!

What if instead of showing up for a quick fix on Sunday morning, in and out in 90 minutes for full credit, each of us actually had to contribute more than 10% of our paycheck.  What if it was 10% plus our heart and soul, each of us playing our part to make each time work.

What if instead of meeting together once per week in someone’s home, we met together every day, addressing each other’s needs, discussing politics, religion, health, diet and how to find Steven’s cat?

What if instead of giving 10% of our money to a church to be used to maintain facilities and pay staff, we made 100% of each of our incomes available to whoever needs help at any time.

Hell, and I’m really stretching now, what if all of those people actually lived in the same house or the same community?  What if instead of working jobs they hate to contribute to churches or groups at all, what if they used the talents that God has given them to support one household between the 40 of them and used the extra time working for Jesus?

Even if those 40 people only made $20,000 per year each doing things that they loved, that would be $800,000 per year available to directly address the immediate community’s needs and to share the love of Jesus.  40 people working together in community could easily live on 20% of that.

If the original 1,000 people were scattered throughout the community that would be a net of $20,000,000.

If we could increase the money available for the work of God by 20 fold, how much can we increase the love, the people and the hours available for Jesus?

How much happier would we be?  Think of the value that we could find in life together.