Poor Saints in Jerusalem

On the subject of the poor saints in Jerusalem, do we know why there were so many poor Christians in that city? Historically I am missing the cause. There was a famine around 47 but I believe 1st & 2nd Corinthians were written around 56 or so. Money was not necessarily the best item to contribute to the people caught up in Katrina so I imagine it was not necessarily the only thing needed by those people in Jerusalem especially if there was no food. Weekly collections would have taken a lot of storage capacity.

In the 1950s the contribution did not rate a prayer, at least in the congregations I remember attending. The congregations I would have attended would have been in Springfield Ohio and Chapel Avenue in Nashville where my grandfather was an elder. I remember when the congregation we attended decided to add a prayer. I remember hearing discussions concerning that giving it prayer status was putting to much emphasis on the physical. Up to that point after the communion the same men would grab a basket and collect. That would suggest the church in the early 20th century did not consider the contribution part of the "official worship" service but a necessity to pay the bills or possibly no purpose just the act of giving. Do you remember any movement for a prayer or was your experience different than mine? Am I too negative to suggest if we just had containers by each door the people would tend to give less than when silence rules and others are watching them? I know of a few congregations that deduct it from your savings or checking account. They still pass the basket but fewer people contribute that way. We might like it as a way of speeding up things.

I am not suggesting we should not support the local congregation but for us to use the collection Paul gave instructions to the church in Corinth for is taking it out of context. Anyone associated with a group should be willing to help the group pay its expenses. That is reason enough to keep the members involved in the decision making. Contributing to the support for the poor was a practice of Jesus and his apostles as well as with the early church and is not optional individually or corporately but we are comfortable with it being a minor purpose for our collection...

Since the purpose of the weekly collection was so that no collections would be necessary when Paul came through is the collection the only command we have that we can apply the principle but change the purpose?