Should Churches Get Stimulus Money?

Last week, some of my friends had a friendly conversation about churches getting stimulus money.  One of my friends said that he would be fine with churches getting stimulus money if they paid taxes.  While I agree that he has a point, overall, I disagree. 

Here's how I really feel:  in the time of the largest worldwide crisis since World War II and/or the Great Depression, we shouldn't limit who gets stimulus money.  We need to help a variety of institutions survive.

I am one of the people who was not outraged to discover that some large restaurant chains got stimulus money, so I'm coming from a different viewpoint than most people.  Those chains have payroll too, and they don't have business right now.  I don't assume that they have pots of money stashed away for a time of pandemic.

My church applied for a PPE loan and got it.  Most of it will go to pay the small number of our employees:  the pastor, the organist, and the woman who cleans the church.  I realize that many people who contribute to a church don't want their offerings to go to payroll.  When I was younger, I felt this way too.  Now that I'm older, I realize that parts of the church like the food pantry won't exist without payroll.

I know that many people who hear about churches getting money are thinking about megachurches, the Shake Shacks of the church world.  My church is about as far away from that vision as it's possible to be.  The non-festival Sundays when we have more than 75 people in the pews are few and far between.  Most of our members are elderly and poor.  Frankly, I'm amazed we make payroll at all.

But we do have a building, and we've tried to steward that resource.  We have others using the space as much as we can, and they contribute towards expenses.  So far, some of those groups are still contributing, even though we're all sheltering in place with gatherings larger than 10 people banned.

As we think about the trillions of dollars that are being disbursed, I realize we can have voracious disagreements about who should get that money.  I realize that not every recipient will be deserving.

But I believe that churches offer lots of community support in a variety of ways, ways that are often unseen by the larger majority of the community.  I'm happy to have stimulus money go that way.