the Lord, Mammon, and me.

I have a worry.

Every day of our lives, we're pretty much told, "Money makes the world go 'round," and to a large extent that is so. It's hard to live cash-free. Food costs, housing costs, clothing costs, gas... the list goes on and on.


However (and here's where I start to have trouble), we can't, as Christians, allow money to rule us.
I think that too many churches have lost sight of this. I look at 3000 person mega-churches, with paid praise bands, titantrons and 10 services, and I think, "wouldn't we be better served with 10 300-person churches, that didn't require a $10,000,000 facility?" Or, I look at the various denominations and think, "Wouldn't it just be awesome if the greater "church" worried more about sermons and good works, and less about getting butts in the pews so that they can pay an entire level of administrators whose job seems to largely consist of bearing down on the pastors in the trenches about the fact that their church isn't paying their portion?"
It seems like too many members of the clergy (and I'm not calling any particular denomination out, here) are too busy serving Mammon to serve God.

Now, I'm still too new to all of this to be comfortable drawing a line in the sand. Generally, if you do that, and are then forced to cross it, you never get the chance to make another stand. But, I'm pretty certain that when I'm a pastor, the last thing I want to worry about is money. I realize that once I become a full-time pastor, I'll need a salary. It's a calling, yes, but it's also a job of work, and I'm probably not going to learn to live on air and love between now and then. All I want is a roof over my head that I can share with my wife, simple fare, simple furnishings, a suit or (gasp) two for services. In my opinion, you don't become a pastor to make money. I doubt most of the clergy I'm calling out here started that way. But money, while making the world go 'round, is also the root of all evil. It's easy to get caught up in Satan's net, and never even realize you're screwed. I've never really cared about getting wealth, so I hope that I'm safe from that temptation, at least, but you can never know for sure.
I may have to find a little independent church, that doesn't answer to any kind of hierarchy - some place where we worship the Lord, do good works, and don't pay for people to tell us where our money is supposed to go. Shoot, I don't even know if such a thing exists in this day and age. 
All I know is that there are too many churches that seem to need a refresher on Matthew 6:24.