Not looking for a freebie but I need some direction Answered

I was actually just thinking about tithes, to begin with I don't believe we will be able to donate half to charity for a while, but that is a good goal.

If there are no other churches in your area then your 'small' group church will soon grow bigger, which means more donations, But it would probally be a good idea to spend all your donations on making your church bigger.

There are quite a few area churches, so we are going to have to grow by word of mouth and eventually advertising. I don't want to steal members but I want to provide a more friendly environment for those who do not like their own church.

A good motivation is coffee, you should give it out

mmmm coffee

A warning with tithes...as you grow and collect/spend money, you may have to register as a non-profit.

thank you for the advice, I will have to look a lot into that

I'd put the most money possible towards "charity". Certainly every church has bills to pay, but in the New Testament, it seems that most any "tithes" (although that's more of an OT concept), and "freewill offerings" went to help the needy. It's sad when I think of how many churches I've seen, that lose their spiritual focus, when they start spending money on "themselves". I highly recommend the movie "Simon Birch". It gives an "outsiders" look at the difference between "institutionalized" religion vs. a life of faith.

It's the only thing that will get my mom out of bed to go to church...

There is the separation of church and State so I'm not sure government locations would allow a religious meeting unless it was for civic purposes. Depending on what faith that is being practiced, maybe there are bigger churches or organizations that sponsor such things as this may be establishing some type of missionary thing.

we're studing this in school atm schools are aloud to have a religon oriented clubs and such as long as it doesn't promote/ demote religon and two other things "i dun learned two well"

I believe they have to meet before/after school, too. Here, at least.

I hope two other things you study in school are spelling and proper vocabulary.
Ya know where counting on yous youts for the future.

How I pay social Secu4rity? Put mon$y in envelopeh? I no comprehendith *sorry you going to die cuz we can't figure out how to pay social security, our bad*

Yes my dear Chicken. Put munny n de invelopeh. I send you proper adrees. Yu munny be taken goood care of.

I send Munny? Okey, I siind munny let me loc4te my monopoly gam fist

No "fist", jus de munny in unmarcked invalopeh.

sarry dat one wuz a typo bud dun wurry, I gots da munny cept my monopoly game dun com with envelope

. From what I've seen, if gov't space is rented to any organization, they don't discriminate against religious orgs.

You're right...there's a church who rents out the "community room" at my school every weekend. At least, they used to.

I'm guessing they'd only refuse if a bunch of pagans wanted to do a Beltane ceremony or something...

We actually sort of started in Starbucks, but I am looking for a bigger place, like how to get a totally empty garage or something

. How about one of those large storage units? They may not allow human occupancy, but then again, they might for a few hours a week.

Ooh, that is a good idea. Do you have any idea about average rates or anything like that? I wonder if I would have to actually rent the unit in the down time, or if I could use a currently empty one.

. As skunkbait pointed out, it probably varies, depending on the area you are in and who owns the units. Grab the Yellow Pages and start dialing. You might even be able to find someone that would let you have some space for free - you just never know until you ask. ;)

thank you so much for the help, I am so excited to get this started.

That's an interesting thought. I think the laws differ from state to state, and certainly from one owner to another. There are people (truck drivers and the like) Who are only in town 1 or 2 days a week that live in those things! If I were single, I'd rent one, and live in there with my Harley!

Heh, it's almost winter, I don't think I could convince Jesus himself to stay outside in Ohio weather.