A Fashionable Church by Editor

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 28, 1856

A Fashionable Church.

By Editor

ONE hundred dollars a Sunday, says the New York Observer, is about the expense of a fashionable church in Boston, as we learn from a recent paragraph in the Boston Transcript. In New York the expense is not far from five times that sum. We will figure up the expenditures of one church in this city, the affairs of which we happen to be somewhat acquainted with.

The church, parsonage, library, &c., cost, in round numbers, $200,000; the annual interest of which sum, at 7 per cent, is $14,000.

The pastor's salary is $4,000; that of his assistant is $500.

The presents annually given to the pastor, we believe, do not average less than $500; presents to his assistant, say $5.

The singing, with the salary of the organist, repairs of the organ, and wages of the blower, costs very nearly $1,000.

The cost of cleaning, including the salary of the sexton, will average about $900 a year.

The annual depreciation in value of building and its contents, by use and time, may be computed at $1,000.

The cost, therefore, of maintaining the church for one year, is $22,505, which is equal to $432,76 per Sunday.

Forty smart mechanics, working steadily all the year, earn about as much as it costs to support this church.

For $22,505 a year, two thousand children could be kept under instruction in good schools. It would maintain a college of five hundred students in the highest efficiency.

It would support twenty-two country churches, or eight city churches, in a liberal manner.

However, we must add, that there are not more than ten churches in the city conducted upon anything like the scale of the one to which we refer, though there are three which probably exceed it.