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Church rejects $600,000 from lottery winnings

Here’s the story. Of course, where one pastor is ready to walk his talk, there’s always another who “sees the green.”

After Robert Powell hit the Florida Lottery jackpot last month and took home more than $6 million, he thought of his church. And he offered to drop his tithe, around $600,000, in the collection plate of First Baptist Orange Park. But the church and Pastor David Tarkington politely declined and told Powell they will not accept the lottery winnings. Many churches do not approve of the lottery and gambling but on the other hand Pastor Dr. Lorenzo Hall of the El-Beth-El Divine Holiness Church says $600,000 can do a lot of good.”I’m against the lottery, but if one of my members won the lottery, I wish and I hope he would give 10% to the church, we could do a lot of things with that money,” says Hall. As a Holiness minister, Dr. Hall says he does not ask where members get the money they decide to donate. He said he would welcome Powell’s donation to his inner city church anytime. “We are in the process now of building a youth center, and you would be surprised at the people that can be helped with $600,000,” says Hall.Bethel Baptist Church member Lottie Walker says if she won, the first thing she would do is give lottery money to her church. “Anything extra is bonus so that would be an extra blessing of offering after that, so if I did win lotto, sweepstakes I would tithe to my church,” says Walker.First Baptist Orange Park Pastor David Tarkington would not say exactly why the church refused the money, saying only he didn’t want to talk about members’ gifts.

The difference a friend made

I just received word that a fellow Norfolk Christian High School class mate has died, Tom Avery. Tom served as an ethnomusicologist for Wycliffe Bible Translators. It was his ministry to enable people groups to worship God in their own music. Here is an example of the difference he made.

For nearly 20 years Jack and Jo Popjes, Canadian missionaries with Wycliffe, tried to learn the music of the Canela people of northeastern Brazil. Jack and Jo could not grasp the subtleties of Canela music. The Canelas showed little interest in writing any new music for themselves. Despite their love of music, the Canelas sang only ancient songs. They did not compose new music. Everyone was content to sing the old songs about ghosts and water monsters, just as their ancestors had done. It would have been easy for the Popjeses to simply translate hymns (using the Canela language and the original European/American music). “But this would have caused problems,” they report. “Hymn translation can perpetuate the false idea that Christianity is a foreign religion.”

Jack and Jo sought help from Dr. Tom Avery, a Wycliffe ethnomusicologist also working in Brazil at the time. Tom did extensive library research on the tribe. He then went with Jack and Jo and recorded Canela music so he could analyze it using a computer program he had written. After making recordings of Canela music Tom transcribed the music note by note, aided by computer-generated graphs of the melodies. Every part of the Canela music system was examined — form, melody, rhythm, scale, and more. He discovered that the intervals between notes of the Canela scale differ from the European scale. Therefore, Canela music cannot be played on a piano, because some of the notes would “fall in the cracks.”

Then Tom Avery and Jack Popjes teamed up to create 23 Canela songs with Christian lyrics, most of which were direct quotations from Scripture. With lyric sheets in hand and a tape recording of themselves singing the songs, Avery and the Popjeses arrived in the main villages. The moment they started playing the tape, the Canelas became very excited. Within minutes, the Canela men started to join in. Soon the women added a high-pitched harmony part. “I just stood there and bawled. It was so perfect,” Jack remembers.

Over the next few nights, hundreds of villagers gathered to learn the new songs. One Canela song leader told the Popjeses, “I never realized we could make up our own songs.” Another Canela told them: “You have been here all these years and gave us writing. Your friend Tom has only been here a little while, and he taught us how to sing to God.” Jack estimates that between 5 and 10 percent of the tribe have now placed their faith in Jesus Christ. New Christians enjoy freedom from the fear of ghosts and evil spirits. Looking back on their whole ministry, Jack says providing the songs may have been their most important contribution. “While the Bible translation was essential, the Scripture in those songs did more for them than the Bible translation.”

Not bad, eh?