{"id":3268,"date":"2009-04-01T06:17:09","date_gmt":"2009-03-31T22:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=3268"},"modified":"2018-03-13T08:26:29","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T00:26:29","slug":"a-growing-disquiet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2009\/04\/01\/a-growing-disquiet\/","title":{"rendered":"A Growing Disquiet"},"content":{"rendered":"

I typically steer clear of controversial topics on this blog. Over the 18 years I\u2019ve been online now, making my opinion on a sensitive subject known in the public sphere has never led to anything good.<\/p>\n

On this occasion though, I\u2019m facing an increasing disquiet that I thought I\u2019d just make a brief mention of it. One of Monday\u2019s news items<\/a> read on The Straits Times:<\/p>\n

$500,000 pay for New Creation Church leader<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

THE New Creation Church, which made headlines for raising $19 million on one Sunday last month for its upcoming multi-million dollar building, pays good money to its staff too.<\/p>\n

The independent church paid one employee between $500,001 and $550,000 in its last financial year, checks by The Straits Times showed.<\/p>\n

The church did not confirm if the amount went to its leader, Senior Pastor Joseph Prince, but told The Straits Times that its policy is to \u2018recognise and reward key contributors to the church and Senior Pastor Prince is the main pillar of our church’s growth and revenue\u2019.<\/p>\n

The article also notes that the Senior Pastor donated a similar sum of money to its building project.<\/p>\n

OK, it’s their money and not really my business. And I’m sure the church is doing great things. But I’m uneasy that the church awards monetarily its leader for the ‘revenue’ (!!) it receives. Also, that church governance saw fit to lavish a servant of God with such large <\/em>rewards (his alleged return back to the church not withstanding), and for the church not saying who is receiving the princely six digit sum.<\/p>\n

In fact, why stop there even? If the church gets even bigger, why not \u2013 along the way later \u2013 also reward its leaders with bungalows and private jets? That’d be congruent with the church’s policy to “recognise and reward key contributors”.<\/p>\n

$500,000 isn\u2019t a small sum of money. Heck; I think Ling and I live about comfortably and spend within our means with an eye on our savings too, but our combined<\/em> income is just less than a third of that! In my opinion, $500K is well in excess of the needs of modest, middle-class living.<\/p>\n

I’m just thinking now also of the early apostles who spread the gospel under a lot more difficult circumstances than today. Did they receive one hundred donkeys every year as a reward for the work they did?<\/p>\n

The letters expressing sentiment on the payout has also started appearing in the newspapers. For instance, one writer yesterday wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

However, I do not put the blame for such obscene pay cheques on the elite group of church leaders; rather, I would lay it on the congregation.<\/p>\n

During the Chinese New Year period, my family and I visited one of the classier church buildings and attended a service. We were taken aback when a special offering, referred to as a hongbao for Jesus, took place. We were surprised to see many in the congregation willingly coming down the aisles to drop their red packets of money in the baskets held by the pastors and leaders. In return for giving, devotees received a spiritual blessing of prayer.<\/p>\n

I was amazed at the congregation’s willingness to give without really knowing where all the money was going to. (There was no mention of the purpose of the collection other than giving it to Jesus.)<\/p>\n

In the forthcoming days, I\u2019m pretty sure a couple of things will happen. There\u2019ll be more letters to the forum page questioning the payout. There\u2019ll also be letters from the church\u2019s loyal flock defending<\/em> the payout.<\/p>\n

But even in the latter, the damage is done. That a large church which has been in the news recently for being very rich is now showering its leaders with big sums of money in this time of financial prudence is going to just invite more skeptics to point their fingers at how Christianity has become associated with big dollars. And that rising tide of cynicism is the thing that worries me the most.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I typically steer clear of controversial topics on this blog. Over the 18 years I\u2019ve been online now, making my opinion on a sensitive subject known in the public sphere has never led to anything good. On this occasion though,<\/p>\n

Read More A Growing Disquiet<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[593],"class_list":["post-3268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-letters","tag-reflections","wpcat-12-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}