How churches can help people save gas and money in the oil and food crisis

I was doing some serious thinking about the issues surrounding peak oil (declines in oil production while at the same time we have increasing demand due to industrialization globally and continued population increases), and it's rising associated costs such as energy including heat and light. Also food price increases due to corn and ethenol subsidies as well as the fact that oil is used for fertalizers/ pestisides and food / agriculture production and distribution.

What can we do about it? We can't stop eating...we all need food. Besides the usual things such as using compact flourescent bulbs instead of incandescent lighting, conservation measures on heat and slowing down on driving etc...we absolutely need to work to earn money to be able to take care of our basic needs such as food and shelter so some energy is a necessary thing here.

What we don't absolutely need is church every single Sunday. Why aren't the churches stepping up to the plate and coming out with programs such as this: Every first Sunday of the month, cancelled services to save gas.

If there are 100,000,000 people going to and from church every sunday and commuting an average 10 mile round trip and getting an average 18 mpg...do the math...there would be ton of fuel savings, and it would help ease preasure on markets and help reduce gas prices for everyone including poor and needy people who can least afford high gas prices. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of church buildings (some nearly the size of a metro arena) could keep their air conditioners shut off, or heaters turned off depending on climate and season...also all lighting and power that would otherwise run the organ, the PA system amps, and other associated electric uses (plus less candle burn too) could be saved...imagine the yearly savings in reduced power? That on top of fuel savings! It boggles the mind and is exciting what kind of relief this could provide working families. Instead of church that one day of the month driving and wasting power, they could spend the time helping their elderly or handicaped neigbors rake leaves, pull weeds, or fix fenses and do various odds and ends that these people have a hard time doing.... what an idea!!!!!

Also the money saved by not driving to church one day out of every month could be saved in a jar and given to the homeless or to help pay for medical care for uninsured poor children, or medicine for the elderly who can't afford it, or meals for the hungry and help for those in need.

WHERE ARE THE CHURCHES ON THIS????? And whos side are they on anyway?

[edit on 24-4-2008 by skyshow]

[edit on 24-4-2008 by skyshow]

Wow. I honestly don't know if you are joking or not.

Whether you agree with them or not, members of the clergy usually believe that the gathering of the faithful to worship God is an act that if not integral to the salvation plan than it is extremely important. The eternal destination of the soul is considerably more important than saving $4.00 on gas by skipping weekly worship.

If I may, maybe a better question would be why don't Church's spearhead an effort of carpooling or merge congregations?

Eric

reply to post by EricD


That's an excellent idea! If they did that along with canceling services one or even two days a month, imagine the millions of gallons of fuel saved each month and over the course of a year, and the tons of carbon that would not be added to the atmosphere contributing to climate change. May we also add into the new measures (desperate times call for desperate measures) perhaps, finally, some family planning? Plus if people took that savings and used it for good...good that didn't require burning a bunch of fuel, imagine how much good church goers could actually do for their fellow human beings?

It's not a joke. We are way over populated, we are now moving beyond the peak, and that means oil and oil related products (virtually everything we use and enjoy in the modern western industrialized world including food) are going to sky rocket. Get ready for $6.00 gas in the near future, and beyond $10 in the next few years. Get ready for food prices to double what they are now, and for huge food shortages here and around the world. Get ready for your heat bill over the next few winters to increase dramatically....and on and on it goes until war breaks out, famine is rampant and looting along with massive civil unrest becomes the norm...

It is incumbent now upon the churches to step forward (as they remain one of the main hubs for societal ethics and morals...self professed in fact) and lead the masses into a new way of thinking...a new way of conserving...a new way to hopefully help ease society into the menacing years we have ahead of us. Otherwise, they run the risk of knowing, but doing nothing, in the name of filling up the pews and passing around the hat. Besides, if the people are already saved, it wouldn't really matter if they were there one less day a month or not...

Here's a chance for everyone interested in religion to come up with ideas on how we can help ease pressure on the demand for oil and energy and help save...

Just drive by the nearest mega church this Sunday and look into the parking lot and run a quick rough estimate of what it costs to move all of those bodies to and from the complex, and what it likely costs to power and heat/air condition that big building...and ask yourself, "do we really need this?"




[edit on 24-4-2008 by skyshow]

reply to post by skyshow


Well a lot of churches have busses that they use (free of charge) to pick folks (poor folks) up and drop them off, to and from church. Some churches (though this is declining) have "Food Pantries" and hand out food to poor folks, my dad's church was in my mind, the greatest outreach church in a town of 200,000. We did a lot of good, giving employment to the homeless and a roof over there heads, helping to pull people out of a misserable life of drugs and prostitution, feeding folks and giving them hope, putting clothes on there back and love in there hearts.
I believe in small groups more than big huge corperate churches, Yeshua never menat for the church to be big industrial business, it's more like a comunity, a family, not a cold shoulder.
Believe it or not, I think at the political heart of the church is Socialism, not govermental Socialism, but voluntary Socialism, sharing and giving are not sharing and giving if people are forced to share and give (that would be Comunism).
As Christians, we are supposed to help others give without expecting to recieve anything back and we are to be good stewards of this planet (I'm not talking about global warming, but pollution in general).
We lack in a lot of that though, but maybe when the line between the futre and the present draw closer, we will change.

-Jimmy

reply to post by jimmyjackblack


Amen~! Right now, I've temporally stopped going to bible study because it starts at 7pm and I get off work at 5pm, at home at 5:20pm which is in the opposite direction. So, I would have to make 4 trips in traffic to go to a 1 hour bible study. What's worse is, I currently drive a 98 Lincoln Town Car... super gas hog.

Personally, I believe this:

Heb 10:25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another even more as you see the day coming nearer.

Fellowship is VITAL for encouragement, growth and evangelism. I ask my pastor, along time ago when the church we were pastoring was having 1/4 of the members attending on weekly service, why don't we just close Wednesday night service to save money on the heating and light bill? That would make sense right ? His answer was an excellent one....

I wouldn't mind and it would make sense but.. what if some one that knew they needed to change their ways and decided to go to church that night and came to ours and found the doors closed. How does that make you feel, knowing that we missed an opportunity to change a life because we wanted to save a dollar?


.....................we kept the Wednesday night service open and ate the cost. That's how important meeting together SHOULD be! God will provide for his children just like He did for the children of Israel in the Sinai Desert...for 40 years.

Jesus Christ: is the same Yesterday, Today and Forever.

of course one would have to "believe" the material in the books your reading from...assuming the possibility that you were sold a bill of goods, is it still worth the expenditure? If not, at what point does it reach the point where it's no longer affordable? gas at $10 per gallon? Milk at more than $8 per gallon. A dozen eggs for $7.49 ? How about when your next monthly gas bill arrives and it's more than $400.00? Is church every sunday and bible study every Wednesday still attractive? How about for the minister who wants to save lives and not miss that opportunity to just save one more soul...at what cost to everyone else including the very same ones he's trying to help...will he/she be working for god and the devil at the same time???

Of course for someone like me there is an element of irony and humor to this, but at the same time these are some very real issues society and organized religion will be and in fact are facing...

I don't go to church. I walk a good deal of the time to and from my work place, and try to keep commuting to a minimum, but if I were to drive aprox 10 miles rount trip to and from church every Sunday and multiply that by 52 (the number of weeks in a year) would mean a burn of about 20 gallons. Researching how much Co2 is emited per gallon of gas and I see that I am saving putting 400 pounds of Co2 into the atmosphere by just staying home. I also saved a little under $100.00 in gas. Now, lets say one million go to church every sunday...if they are all like me these totals go to 20,000,000 gallons of gas burnt up, 400 million pounds of Co2 released into the atmosphere, and 100 million dollars ($100,000,000.00) in fuel expence. (I got the 1,000,000 population number because in USA population is around 300,000,000 now and growing...but some are kids, or non believers, so I estimated about a third).

Imagine how much more really is burnt up though considering all the late model SUV's I see in the church parking lots, and the fact that people go more than just on Sunday, and then they like to drive around and go to Denny's or whatever after...imagine this multiplied by all the ones who do this all over the continent as well as Europe, S. America etc...and you are talking about a lot of foscil fuel being used to drive the religious industry...



[edit on 24-4-2008 by skyshow]

God does not live in the church and only look out for those who go every sunday (wendsday). If you need group motivation to study your chosen religion whatever it may be, you may already be lost. I refuse to go to any church because the people there apparently need a pastor to motivate them to read a book. Church is for the guilty.

read Psalms 23, church is not needed.

Save your gas and money and help the people around you. Good 'ol boys clubs are what church's have become. A church wont close its doors because some poor sap down on his luck is a potential life long monetary resourse .

uh huh...I noticed how everyone wants to talk about just about anything having to with religion EXCEPT how it can help people and make the world a better place...the attention speaks volumes!

So, you think Christians are supposed to quit about half of our church-time each month, (3 Sundays, average, no Sunday nights and no tuesday or wednesday nights) for global warming,
because you don't believe in God anyway?

Hmmmmm. Maybe not.
Our preacher would go get ANYONE who asked him, he has before.
We don't have a bus. It's too small for that, except for VBS.

BTW, my Church time is made up by the fact that I don't spend $$$ travelling to Wal-mart.

Originally posted by LordBaskettIV
God does not live in the church and only look out for those who go every sunday (wendsday). If you need group motivation to study your chosen religion whatever it may be, you may already be lost. I refuse to go to any church because the people there apparently need a pastor to motivate them to read a book. Church is for the guilty.

read Psalms 23, church is not needed.

I disagree. God told Christians to have fellowship and sharpen each other. Early believers formed local churches. Many NT books were written to these churches (Ephesians, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Phillipians, etc.).
Psalms 23 is a great passage, but I don't see what it has to do with organized churches.

Save your gas and money and help the people around you. Good 'ol boys clubs are what church's have become. A church wont close its doors because some poor sap down on his luck is a potential life long monetary resourse .

On the other hand, you are totally right here. Many churches have become exactly what you said. We've forgotten the importance of 'love your neighbor'.

It was either Marx or Lenin, the communist founders, who said that
'Religion is the Opiate of the masses'...


religious NGOs, the Bush administration tried to corral and make behave
as the neo-cons thought was proper conduct... but even They never suggested cutting back (i.e.: rationing) on the availability of church services/church community activity.

Did ya-all read the news yesterday? Experts say gas could go up to as much as $10.00 a US Gallon by this time next year. Oil at a new record high around $120.00 a barrel. 5 or 6 airlines bankrupt in the past month or so, and the rest bleeding money like no tomorrow due to high fuel...economy going to hell while we all keep Bush and all his oil friends rolling in record profits...

Saving gas by not going to church at least once per month, maybe more, would go a long way to help hard working families, and reduce pressure on the markets...and if you feel guilty, just cut a check and send it out to ConocoPhillips, BA, Shell, Chevron, or Bush, or whomever you want in the oil industry and know that atleast you didn't put a bunch of carbon up into the atmosphere...

We gotta' do something, and here's where religion can play a role. "Save gas for Christ". Man, if we could just get Christendom behind it...think of the millions of barrels of oil that could be saved!!! Why, we wouldn't even have to consider that 6 mo's worth up in Alaska...it would be like having 10 Alaskan oil fields...all because everyone decided not to drive these great big gas guzzling SUV's full of all those kids to Services several times a week!

[edit on 29-4-2008 by skyshow]

yeah..322 reads on a post titled "how to help people..." and you say christians help have it their heart to help people? Now try to convince all of the rest of us otherwise...

Come on Christians...

well.. it's NOT about saving GAS.. it's about Saving Lives!! and living by faith.. so far.. I go once a week to church.. how about this.. how about we ALL stop working just one or 2 days a week to save even more gas??

why can't we ?? It's because WORK(money) is MORE important that saving and discipling (church) younger Christians in this country!!!

Fellowship/teaching/preaching (church) SHOULD be more than 2 hours a week and going to our daily jobs SHOULD be cut to 30 hrs/week. If anything .. they should be equal.... THAT's putting God first!

Isn't Time just as important as work and fellowship??

I've got it!
On line church services. That's it! I'm all in. Churches carbon footprint would be greatly decreased.

A better idea would be if all of the bars decided to close one Friday or Saturday night a month. Think of all the fuel people would save by staying home. Not to mention getting the drunks off of our streets and highways.

reply to post by darkelf


but god forbid we miss a day of church!

You are making things complicated, it must be one's decision not to go to church in order to save money. It is the duty of the church to offer its services even if people are not willing to go that day. In fact, that should be the duty of every business and organization. I haven't gone to church for many years, but if someday I feel the need to confess with a priest I want it to be the day I have the chance, not every second sunday.

Also, I prefer people going to church than staying at home getting fat and doing nothing. The solution for global warming and energy sources depletion is technology, not sloth and not prohibition.

I don't go to church or bars. The point is that it should be an individual's choice whether or nor they refrain from driving their vehicles. We drive our vehicle to work every day and to the store once a week. I have jury duty so now I have to spend more fuel. If the government truly wants us to cut down on fuel, why don't they offer better public transportation?

Interesting thread. Just to throw something else in, I used to be a Jehovah's Witness and they HAVE canceled on of their three meetings a week due to petrol, at least they intend to in the new year (why it can't start now is beyond me) but I kind of thought that the reason they gave of canceling the meeting was a lame excuse...