I've been seeing more and more of these mega-churches pop up that have become super-capitalized with stores and restaurants inside them. The pastors are multi-millionaires and often live lives of extreme luxury. What do you all think about this? I have mixed feelings. Didn't Jesus go into the Temple and throw over the tables of all the merchants and people who were selling things inside the Temple? And what about "it is easier for a camel to go through an eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven"?
On the other hand, if these churches are bringing more people to Christ, maybe its a good thing. What do you think?
Being a megachurch pastor and living a life of luxury are not the same thing. There are churches that have unseemly ideas about wealth. I would not put all megachurch pastors in that category. There was a large church back in the early 1990's that a friend of mine went to. They had a large pastoral staff. They decided they would go with 'with food and clothing let us be content' as a mindset, and they added in 'transportation' since that was a modern need and set all their salaries at $20,000 a year. That's probably about $40K now.
Some megachurch pastors really skimped and had to trust God for the rent for years.
There are probably plenty of them that live extravagantly. I had a preacher friend from Singapore who came to Jakarta. He said he had a message that he was supposed to share with the churches there. Part of it was about pastors of large churches that opened branches, that paid a pittance to the pastors at the branches, sent the money to the mother church and lived extravagantly. He heard one of the pastors in a store in Singapore asking about shirts, "Do you have anything more expenses?" He said they saved the money for themselves and their children while there were other churches around struggling to do things like fix a leaky roof. Of course not all pastors did that. He preached this at places and did not get invited back, but he gave an example of a congregation member shaking his hand afterward and saying 'thank you.'