The region produces some of the wealthiest people on earth, many of whom sit in pews on Sunday. Are Bay Area pastors too reluctant to preach prophetically about money, inequality, and generosity to congregations that fund the church's budget?
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Add your commentThe disciples ran fishing businesses. Okay. Simon Peter was not sitting on $40 million in pre-IPO equity while his neighbors slept in tents on Division Street. I'll grant you the fishing boats though.
Here's my genuine challenge to everyone in this thread who attends a church in Marin or the peninsula: look up your pastor's salary. Look up your church's endowment. Look up how much went to direct poverty relief vs. building renovations last fiscal year. Most churches are required to publish this. Do it before Sunday. Then come back and tell me your congregation is being prophetic about money.
I've attended four different churches in SF over the past decade — from a tiny Tenderloin mission to a massive Palo Alto megachurch — and I can tell you from direct experience that the Palo Alto one basically never touched the subject of wealth except to celebrate tithing as a 'financial blessing multiplier.' That's not theology, that's prosperity gospel with a Stanford hoodie on.
born and raised in the mission district. watched my whole neighborhood get displaced so tech workers could move in and then those same tech workers show up at our parish talking about community and belonging. i dont have a problem with people being successful but the church should be asking harder questions about who benefits and who suffers. our priest hasnt said the word gentrification once in five years of homilies.
Moved here from rural Mississippi two years ago for a software job and honestly the wealth gap here is the most shocking thing I've ever encountered as a Christian. Back home a rich person and a poor person might sit in the same pew and barely notice. Here they literally don't attend the same churches. The segregation is economic and nobody names it.
Actually it's 1 Timothy 6:10 and while you're technically right about the verse, you're conveniently ignoring Luke 18:25 — the camel through the eye of a needle? Jesus said that one directly, not Paul. Hard to explain away when your net worth clears eight figures and you're sitting in the front pew at a church in Pacific Heights.
My grandmother came to SF in the 60s and her church fed people no questions asked every single day. That was just what church meant. Now I visit some of these beautiful congregations with the espresso bars in the lobby and the LED screens and I think — who exactly is all this for? I'm not saying coffee is evil. I'm just saying I miss when the answer to that question was obvious.
I want to push back on the premise that Bay Area churches DONT address this. The church I attend in the Sunset preaches on wealth, simplicity, and solidarity probably four or five times a year. We have a dedicated fund for unhoused neighbors that takes real money from real members. Not every congregation here is a chaplaincy for the venture capital class. Some of us are doing the work and it's frustrating to be lumped in.
lol yes very dangerous, extremely dangerous, I'm weeping into my third monitor as I type this from my standing desk in SoMa. Look I get the critique but this thread reads like people who have never had to make payroll guilt-tripping people who have. Running a startup and being a Christian aren't mutually exclusive. The disciples ran fishing businesses!!
Spiritually dangerous? Wealth itself isn't sinful, Jesus never said being rich was a sin. Timothy 6:10 says the LOVE of money is the root of evil, not money itself. People keep misquoting this and it drives me nuts. My pastor at City Church addresses stewardship regularly and I think he does a fine job.
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