Before I go off on my rant, I would like to point out that in the past few months I have been a regular attendee of the worship services of a local Lutheran church. I initially went only to bring my mom to church, with the intention of going a few weeks until I could possibly hook her up with a ride from someone else in the congregation. Oddly enough, however, I discovered that I quite liked the service and particularly the Pastor. At this point I consider myself an agnostic observant Lutheran, with an essentially Einsteinian belief in God. My point is, I am not generally inclined to bash Christians in general.
That being said, there is a specific Christian congregation that has succeded in really pissing me off. The main campus of my son's school is located on property behind a church. The school has very little parking, and parents and visitors to the schoool have regularly used the nearby church parking lot during the week. It is worth noting that this parking lot is generally completely vacant of church members during the week, although I expect it fills up during worship services. Absolutely nobody is being inconvenienced by having a little spillover from the school parking lot into the church parking lot on the weekdays.
Now, as it is the school already pays the churce $1,000 per month for access rights to the driveway. Only a tiny part of the driveway crosses church property, but the school pays through the nose for that privelege. Recently the school received notification from the church council that effective February 15th, the school either needs to pay the church an additional $1,200 per month for use of the parking lot, or else cars will be towed. Bear in mind that Princeton House is a non-profit organization that provides education for severely disabled children. It costs roughly $25,000 per student per year to educate these kids, and the school does not get nearly that much from the state. The school has to do continual fundraisers in order to close that gap. Already the school does not provide bussing for the students, because the cost of hiring the school district to bus the students would mean having to cut staff and reduce the therapy services that these children so desperately need. The school is not a cash cow, by any stretch of the imagination.
I would think that the mission of the school would be compatible with the compassionate outreach mission that a church is supposed to have. It would be one thing if school visitors were disrupting and/or displacing church visitors by parking in that lot, but that clearly is not the case. Does the church have the legal right to decide who gets to park on their property and whether or not they have to pay? Absolutely. They are completely within their rights. But that doesn't change the fact that because they have decided to try to bleed more money out of the school, this Saturday morning I and several other volunteers will be showing up at the school with wheelbarrows and rakes in order to spread 20 cubic yards of gravel over a large section of the school's playground in order to turn it into a staff parking area. So now the kids will have less outdoor space to play in during recess, all because the fine upstanding Christians next door saw a chance to make an extra buck. I think the comparison to money changers in the temple is an apt one, and we all know how Jesus responded to them.
Feh. Bad, greedy Christians. Not a very good way to spread the faith.
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