Topics:<\/b> Generosity; Giving; Greed; Money; Stewardship<\/p>\n
References:<\/b> Matthew 6:24; 1 Timothy 6:10, 17\u201319<\/p>\n
Warren Bailey, eighty-eight, died in July 2000. He had no family. And to the best of anybody\u2019s recollection in St. Mary\u2019s, Georgia, Bailey hadn\u2019t been to church in at least twenty years. He did, however, make annual donations of about $100,000 to St. Mary\u2019s United Methodist Church, a 350-member congregation with an annual budget of less than $300,000.<\/p>\n
Members of St. Mary\u2019s probably weren\u2019t surprised when Bailey bequeathed money to the church. But there was stunned silence among the assembled parishioners when Rev. Derek McAleer broke the news that the man who owned 49 percent of the region\u2019s Camden Telephone Company had left the church $60 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a number that doesn\u2019t have any reality,\u201d the pastor said. Bailey\u2019s will included no instructions on how the money was to be used, so the church has set up an advisory board to decide how to handle the money.<\/p>\n
McAleer has been besieged by calls from people asking for money. And he admits worrying that greed could consume his congregation. \u201cHow do we remain a Christian church with all this money?\u201d he laments.<\/p>\n
\u2014Associated Press (October 30, 2000)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Topics: Generosity; Giving; Greed; Money; Stewardship References: Matthew 6:24; 1 Timothy 6:10, 17\u201319 Warren Bailey, eighty-eight, died in July 2000. He had no family. And to the best of anybody\u2019s recollection in St. Mary\u2019s, Georgia, Bailey hadn\u2019t been to church in at least twenty years. He did, however, make annual donations of about $100,000 to … Continue reading “OVERWHELMED
\n WITH MONEY”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}