I remember I was in Bible college and they had a class called how to start a New Testament
church.
Now I never took that class.
You can probably tell by my methods.
I never took that class.
For some reason it just kept happening and I wanted to take it, obviously, that's all
I was going to be doing.
But for some reason it just never worked out for me to take that class.
Well one day I was sitting in chapel and my friend was sitting next to me and he was taking
that class and I said, hey let me see your notes from that class.
And he panned me over the notebook and I looked at his notes and I looked at the notes
and I was like, they're trying to make it sound impossible or something.
I mean I read it, they're like this is what you have to do six months before, this is
what you have to do five months before, four months before, three months before.
You must have all these different accoutrements.
You got to have a building, you got to have chairs, you got to have song books, you got
to have visitor cards, you got to have offering plates, you got to have your pulpit, you have
to have a glossy colorful brochure.
They said the brochure is going to cost you about twelve hundred dollars, you need twelve
hundred dollars to buy your first set of tracks they said, you know, because it's got to
be shiny, glossy, it's got to have your picture and it's got to have a bunch of pictures
of strangers on it.
You know how these invitations have like this generic family that's like put on there
that doesn't even go to the church, you know, you got to have this and they're showing
us the exam.
And I'm looking through the notes and I'm reading this and I said, this sounds hard,
this sounds like nobody could do this and if you know what it sounds like you're going
to need somebody else to like do all this for you.
It sounds like you're going to have to raise all kinds of money, you're going to have to
go on some kind of a telethon or something and have people donating money to you.
And I think that part of the reason why people try to make it so difficult is because they
try to scare these kids, these young guys and they try to scare even older guys into
thinking that they can't do it without big bad Bible colleges help.
Mr. Bible College Fundamental Pope is going to have to make sure that all this works out
for them because this is way too big of a task for them, especially financially.
But I took that same guy later on after I started the church, I called him up on the
phone and I explained to him how I started this church and how it cost me $100 to start
this church.
I said listen to me and some people just haven't thought these things through and that's why
I'm teaching this and that's why I'm explaining this but I told him, I said well, I spent
$100, bought some chairs, bought some song books and I went down and just Xeroxed off
a bunch of invitations.
They weren't glossy, no they weren't laminated, you know what they were?
They were just paper, yellow, canary yellow paper with black ink on it.
And that's what I had in my hand.
I had my el cheapo Bible that cost me like $5 in my hand and I went out knocking doors
and beating the doors and guess what, an amazing thing happened three days after I moved into
town.
On that Sunday morning, all these visitors came to church.
Obviously none of them were tithing, you know these are brand new converts, brand new believers,
you know there's probably like $10 on the plate but it's amazing because I work a full
time job, okay, I reach into my pocket and I gave my 10% because now I'm the pastor of
the church, this is Faithful War Baptist Church and so guess what, I'm putting my money, so
I took out my own tithe.
And I figured out that my own tithe was like several hundred dollars a month, okay, so
I had to figure it out, oh wow, even if nobody comes, even if nobody's putting any money
in my life, I don't care, I don't need any money because my tithe pays the whole thing,
this is all I need.
And what did I do?
I bought more chairs with that first money that I put in the plate the first Sunday,
I bought more chairs, I bought more soundbooks, I bought more invitations, I paid Uncle Sam
for the incorporation, articles of incorporation, all this taxation on churches, I paid Uncle
Sam with some of the money and the next Sunday, boom, sure enough, the greatest giver in the
church, the big titer, me, okay, put it in and then spent it the next day, it was amazing
how that works and I told this to this guy, this young preacher and he said, you know
what, that's the most amazing thing I've ever heard in my life, he said I've never even
thought of that, I've never even heard of that, he said that's cool, you know, he's
like wow, there's the money that you need to do it, I said exactly, I said how much
money does it cost for you to preach the gospel, how much money does it cost to knock a door,
how much money did we spend on soul winning this afternoon, knocking doors, we didn't
spend any money, I found a penny on the ground, okay, I always find the money in that neighborhood,
I tell you, people are real loose with their money, but hey, I'm not spending a dime out
to do that, nothing in the bible about starting a church costs any money, say what about the
building, how are you going to do a building, hey look, this is the building.