Saturday, June 2, 2007

Baptist Church Fasts - McDonald's Declares Bankruptcy

NASHVILLE, TN - The McDonald's restaurant in Riverton, TN has had a "fast" trip into bankruptcy. According to the McDonald's Corporation, their franchise in this suburb of Nashville recently went belly-up due to a rare turn of events.

Ronald Roth, owner of the Riverton McDonald's, blames Riverton Baptist Church, "It's all their fault. If not for their decision to boycott our restaurant, things would be going along fine. While they were eating here, we turned a nice profit. Since they stopped, we can't meet the bills. It just ain't fair."

What exactly is going on here? We at Religion Roundtable went to the senior pastor of Riverton Baptist to find out. Pastor James (Jimmy) Black was kind enough to sit down with us. According to Pastor Black, "This all began about two months ago. Our church had just completed building a new worship center. We went into a bit of debt ($850,000) in order to finance the building. We ran out of Sunday School space, and needed somewhere for our bored youth to meet. What else were we to do?"

Black continued, "We really needed God to answer our prayer as to how to pay for this building. As a church, we had tried fasting before but it just has never really worked out. Last year we tried to get the folks to give up fast food in order to pray for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. People weren't willing to do it. However, this year when they could see what they would be paying off, they rose to the occasion."

Riverton Baptist decided to really sacrifice this time. They knew that a complete fast for even a few days was an impossibility. In fact, due to last year's failure, the guess was that even asking the body to refrain from fast food in general would lead straight to disaster. Although difficult, one option appealed to most (62%) of the church - they would give up McDonald's for three months. The results have been astounding.

Riverton Baptist has collected the money they would normally have spent at McDonald's and put it toward the new building. As of this past Sunday, the near 1 million dollar debt was completely paid off. "What a blessing from God this is!" said Pastor Black. "When you are willing to sacrifice and be right in the center of God's will, He delivers!"

Ronald Roth does not see things in quite the same manner as does Pastor Black. "Those Baptists have put quite a few people out of work. They are so selfish to think about themselves rather that the good folk of this town who now won't have McD's to sup at. It just goes to show that Christians do a lot more harm than good. Those terrorists!"

It is clear that most of the Riverton townspeople are divided over this issue. Nancy Harris, who attends the local Church of God, said, "There's no way I'm fasting now. I need my Cracker Barrel!"