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Volume 3 · CenteredLesson 29About 23 minutes

Religion as a Business

When does a ministry become a business?

Centered edition for believersSwitch to Honest Heretics (for skeptics)

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The center · Mark 11:17
17He taught, saying to them, “Isn’t it written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers!”

In this lesson

Most churchgoers have seen some version of it. A lobby store selling the pastor's books. A conference with tiered tickets and a lounge for the top tier. A ministry that asks for gifts on television and reports its finances to no one. Many churches handle money honestly. The question is when the selling became the point.

If you love your church, this lesson may sting a little. Paying a pastor fits what Jesus taught, and this lesson says so. But he used force exactly once in his life, and he used it against a market in a house of worship. You don't need anyone's permission to ask what he would make of ours.

Measured against the center

A contradiction
Turning worship into a marketplace, where the faithful are customers and trust is a source of revenue, contradicts the one time he used force in the Temple.

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