A Georgia church has terminated the membership of a 92-year old woman whose illness forced her to stop attending and tithing.
A 92-year-old woman is no longer allowed to worship at the church where she was a member for more than 50 years because she was not tithing.
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“Josephine King is no longer considered a member of the First African Baptist Church of Bainbridge, Georgia,” read Gerald Simmons, as he skimmed over the letter addressed to his aunt.
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He said Ms. King was considered sick and a shut-in for several months, which was the reason for her lack of attendance.
Apparently, nobody knew of her difficulties because, you know, a loving community.
Stories like this keep drifing past, and there is no way to make sense of them but to suppose that churches are financially straitened and mean to pressure the members for financial support. This is plausible; their financial model only works when there are a lot of members. And as the ‘nones’ and ‘dones’ grow, there is a corresponding decline in financial support.
The Southern Baptists, for instance, close between 750- and 1000-churches a year, but ‘plant’ churches so rapidly that their church-count goes up. Since their overall membership rolls are in decline, however, and they have several megachurches which claim membership in the thousands, the plants can’t amount to much more than home-groups. But it gives the sheeple a satisfying statistic: “Yay! We’re growing!” And the deceptions roll on.