aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Thursday, September 28, 2006

An ATM for Jesus

The LATimes has a story on a church in Augusta that has ATM-like kiosks that will take in between $200,000 and $240,000 in donations this year. Last summer the pastor, Marty Baker, and his wife, Patty, began selling the devices to other churches through their for-profit company, SecureGive:

The Bakers charge between $2,000 and $5,000 for the kiosks, which come in a variety of configurations. They also collect a monthly subscription fee of up to $49.95 for licensing and support. And a card-processing company gets 1.9% of each transaction; a small cut of that fee goes to SecureGive.

So far, seven other congregations have installed or ordered the machines. All of them are Protestant, and most are in the South. If the idea takes off and makes the Bakers rich, Patty says they will thank the Lord - and give a significant sum to their church.

That seems like a perfectly obvious Christian-capitalist idea to me. Apparently the LATimes found it newsworthy and some churches find it objectionable.

Me, I had a kind of visceral objection to how a different Augusta church chose to give back to the community. On a recent trip to there, in a Panera Bread Company men’s room, I found this:

I was dumbfounded. Am I the only person to be reminded of this?

LATER: David Pescovitz at Boing Boing has a photo of the ATM.