Joy Fang of My Paper reported today that New Creation Church collected $21 million in less than 24 hours!
In fewer than 24 hours last Sunday, members of the megachurch donated an impressive $21.1 million towards its multimillion-dollar building fund over four services held at Suntec City and Golden Village Marina. The sum breaks the church’s record of over $18.8 million raised last February, and $18 million raised in April 2008. In comparison, last year’s President’s Challenge raised a total of about $10 million for 37 beneficiaries. When “My Paper” broke the news last year that the church raised about $19 million in a day with about 21,300 people in attendance – what the church said was a “new record attendance and collection done during a worldwide recession” – it caused an uproar among netizens in online forums. This year, a record number of over 22,000 people attended the special service last Sunday,
called Miracle Seed Sunday. Church members donated money to help fund the construction of the Integrated Hub complex. Located at Vista Xchange at one-north in Buona Vista, the civic and cultural complex will house a 5,000-seat auditorium when it is completed in 2012. It is being co-developed by Rock Productions, the commercial- development arm of New Creation Church, andmall developer CapitaMalls Asia. New Creation Church will be the auditorium’s anchor tenant and hire the venue for its services on Sundays. With this new amount, the total sum raised so far by the church for the project stands at about $259 million, or more than half the $500 million needed.
There will be a wide range of responses from different people. Blogpastor imagines some:
Governance regulators: “Let’s keep a close eye on them!”
Politicians: “How can we get our party members to donate that much in such a short time?”
Finance/Marketeers: “It must be an investment scam!”
Organizers of President’s Challenge: “How can we harness religion for fund-raising?”
Christian idealists: “Why don’t they do the same for the poor?”
Secularist: “Churches should be taxed!”
Other megachurches: “Will we be able to match that?”
Small churches: “Can we have the crumbs that fall off the table of plenty?”
Parachurch organizations: “With that money, we can send 21,000 workers into the harvest fields”.
Fundamentalist: “20,000 deceived by prosperity doctrine in less than 24 hours!”
Roman Catholics: “How come our folks do not give as much?”
Gambler who lost $26 million at the casino recently: ” If only…….”
Unsaved dad: “I told you the church is filthy rich. Stop giving your salary to them!”
Arsenal fan: “We could get Shay Given with that amount!”
Blogpastor: “Hallelujah! Praise the Lord.”