The Church: Should it be used as a rolodex?

Nothing pisses me off more than finding an invitation in my church mailbox to some sort of party. "But Church Critic", you say, "what's wrong with parties? Are you against dancing or drinking? Are you one of those old school church goers that believes in KJV only and that kissing before marriage is wrong?!" Fear not, I'm not going all old-school on you.

It's not that kind of party.

It's one of those parties where someone in the church hosts a candle party, or a cooking utensil party, or a tupperware party...y'know, one where everyone in the church gets bombarded with requests to come out to help Mrs. Jones get some free gifts or, what I consider even worse, helping Mrs. Jones earn her monthly rent.

Now its not that I have any issue with people making a living this way. But for some reason, these sort of business ventures are seen as being acceptable in using a church body as a potential market, while if an insurance salesman tried to distribute literature on available plans they'd be asked to kindly stop (or at least I'd hope they would).

Where do you draw the line between business and church? In large part, the church relies on its members to BRING skills: technology, hospitality, trades...these are things that can be used in churches to help them. But then you have the ones that just want to sell TO the church, not use their skills to help it. This bothers me.

The church should not be somene's personal rolodex. Sure business will be discussed, but spending a weekend mass calling everyone in the church directory to see if they would like to review their finances is NOT the intended use of a church directory. We had a woman's event recently at the church, the focus being on different ways women could prepare for the holidays. One woman, who sells kitchen utensils, took one of the sessions. I can only imagine how excited she was to have a free, captive audience so easily handed to her.

This should be something that church leadership should be addressing. People have a hard time enough coming to church and feeling accepted, welcomed, and comfortable; the last thing they need is "friends" trying to sell them things or talking them into hosting a party.

CC