As Christianity Dies, Church and Clergy Should be Replaced with Rent-A-Friend
Christianity is losing members and churches are closing
their doors forever, so I propose that parish clergy be replaced with what I
coined as Rent-A-Friend or simply a
striped down version of Pastoral Care without the dogmatic supernatural mythology.
Let's be honest. Most any active or inactive church member can
tell you that access to the church facilities, for use of weddings, funerals,
major anniversaries or any social is (if facts were known) based on a software
program that lets the church leadership know if their members have been
attending services from how many personal (unnamed, but numbered) church offering
envelopes which are counted every month. In
fact, unless an offering is received once a year, most churches place none giving members on the Inactive List meaning one does not get a
hospital visit from the senior pastor, but – maybe – just a card reminding them
of Gods steadfast love for them.
With Rent-A-Friend, once God is out of
the picture, then church membership can emerge as what it really is; a social
function held together with tithes and offerings (In case anyone doesn’t know,
offerings are those monies given over and above the 10% tithe). Thus, if you pay, you play. Plus, once the sin
factor is gone, paying for social services doesn’t have to be lied about, such
as “Give back to God that which is already God’s” . . . clearly illogical bullshit.
Plus, the beauty of Rent-A-Friend would
be a dynamic social function totally free of opinionated religious sales dogmas and, as with
churches today, the more you’re willing to spend, the more features you get. This makes
Rent-A-Friend a dynamic social function which can offer everything
from a simple Economy Plan with several calls once a month, to the Standard Plan
which adds a monthly visit, up to the
Gold Plan which includes all the bells and whistles where a
member is called several times a week along with personal visits several times a
month. The Gold Plan would
include daily hospital visits along with grief and depression counseling and even an optional wedding feature (and yes, your choice of religious dogma could be thrown in for free).
All members who work for Rent-A-Friend
would be insured after an extensive background check. Those who choose to work for Rent-A-Friend
would be guaranteed an income off of every member who joins while keeping the premiums current. Those members who fail
to maintain a higher lever membership (such as having been a Gold Member for
six months) would be dropped back to the Economy Plan for one month before
placed on the “Inactive Member List”.
In conclusion,
Rent-A-Friend would offer the best
of the religious world without the mythological bullshit. A member gets what he or she pays for in the here and
now with no pie in the sky in the sweet by and by.
The pressing question now is not, “Are you saved?”,
but Which plan is right for you?!
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