Local Churches Could Use A Casino

I think the membership of the 37 local churches who were instrumental at getting the question put on the upcoming November ballot of whether or not casino gambling should be allowed in the City of Cape Girardeau are missing the Big Picture.

These churches NEED this casino.

As the United States has evolved into the utopia it is today, churches nationwide have found many of their domestic missions and ministries going totally, unwanted by fellow Americans.

Let's be honest. When your average American is happily ensconced in their La-Z-Boy with a beer in one hand and bowl of Cheeto's cradled in their lap and months of watching football games on a 60" HD-TV to look forward to, they do not want to be ministered to.

Well, unless the ministering involves grabbing them another Coors Light from the fridge then it might be OK and as long as any actual ministering takes place during the commercial breaks.

And so those very valuable ministering services have been outsourced, our country's top missionary and ministry specialists sent overseas to help whatever "needy" people they can find in places like Mexico or Mozambique or Zambia or even France.

Now some people might say, "Brad, that's not outsourcing. We're actually exporting those missionaries."

I suppose that is one way to look at it. But what do WE get in return? What is our corresponding import? Goodwill? Friendship? A warm, fuzzy feeling? Those are all well and good, but what kind of price can you put on those things?

Nadda. Zip. Zilch. Nothing.

It costs money and resources to send missionaries to foreign lands, but the returning boxcar load of "goodwill" won't pay the rent.

So it makes fiscal sense to keep our missionaries and ministry specialists here in our own country.

And with legalized casino gambling in the City of Roses we can not only keep those jobs here in the good ol' U.S. of A., we can keep our own local missionaries plying their trade right here at home in Cape Girardeau County.

A casino would be a ready-made source for sinners who need to be saved and ministered to.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that a casino is a business and it is their business to win other people's money. If you treat it like an entertaining diversion you're OK, but some people forget these truisms about casinos and will squander everything they own betting on "sure-things" which are anything but.

Those people will likely wind up dead-broke and homeless, having to scrape together money by panhandling or performing immoral acts just so they can crash each night on a flea-infested mattress in some pay-by-the-half-hour-hotel.

And who will pull them up by their bootstraps?

Odds are likely, they can't do it themselves or they wouldn't be in that situation to begin with.

But with the help of local church ministries, they can rise up from the rock bottom of despair and right their lives once again becoming productive and tithing members of society.