Where has the joy in giving gone?

Budgets for large churches must be met somehow. Forcing tithing not to be done out of joy but out of necessity. People are led to believe that their place in heaven could be in jeopardy if that check of the right amount doesn’t make the offering plate. Which to me sounds like buying your way out of purgatory. All so the pastor and his cronies can buy bigger houses and bankroll bigger retirements. A church in Michigan recently bought a home for their pastor. No big deal right? Unless the home sits on 4 acres and is over 11,000 square feet costing over 4 million dollars. Of course it is owned by the church, a non-profit, so that means it is costing the town $40,000 in taxes every year. Could there have been a starving country we could have fed with this money or possibly a few hungry, sick, or homeless families in America that this money could have gone to? Probably not, as the elders of the church put it, we honor our athletes and actors with giant bankrolls and multi-million dollar mansions what are we saying if we don’t do the same for a man of God. I believe that if someone wants to be a man of the cloth so he can live in a 4 million dollar house he may be in the wrong profession. I don’t think our clergy need to go poor but I also think a Church that can afford to buy a house of that girth has a greater responsibility to the community in using that money for more Christianly endeavors. The last time I read the Bible I could have swore greed and envy were sins? Interesting how this pastor and church don’t see the correlation. And in a church that size, you don’t think there is one parishioner who may be starving or on the brink of losing their meager home or struggling to pay medical bills? This is the kind of thing that pushes people from Christianity. They see too many churches like this and not enough that make it a joy and goal to use their finances to help others. This could be because the churches with a greater bent towards helping others don’t have the operating budget that allows for flamboyant shows of wealth to get peoples attention.