Can We Talk About Giving?

Mark 12:38-44

November 12, 2006

J.W. McNeill

I want to confess. Titles of sermons sometimes misleading. Come up with title on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Today it is very deliberate as a starting point.

Can we talk about giving?

Communicating realities about church’s money needs. People don’t like it when we talk about money. We really don’t do it very often.

Margaret and I are sometimes bashful about raising the issue.

Certain element of reluctance on my part to say too much because it can seem self-serving. After all, I’m on the payroll here.

A New Kind of Christian recognizes this fact. A couple of dozen of us have been reading this book together over the last few weeks. The book recounts an ongoing exchange between a Pastor and a high school biology teacher. Quote.

Our Scripture lesson recognizes this situation. I don’t want to be like the Pharisees and Scribes devouring widows’ houses. Yet Jesus encourages us to give. Interesting to me that it is two small copper coins. She had the option of putting in only one of them. She was radically generous – and this caught Jesus’ attention. And it must catch our attention.

Not because this woman wanted any attention paid to her whatsoever. Perhaps she felt inadequate or embarrassed or shy about her impossibly small gift compared to what others were giving. The important thing is her heart. Right?

Interesting that in the book, A New Kind of Christian, the opening to the conversation/exchange in the book about giving emerged from the fact that the the pastor had to take care of the teacher’s financial affairs for a time. This signals the sensitivity of the conversation once we get past generalities.

To talk about giving is to really talk about the situation of our hearts and lives. So it makes us vulnerable.

Can we talk about giving?

There are dimensions/elements of our lives that are very sensitive and tender around the issue of our finances. Recognition of the realities of life. Households with divided loyalties and priorities. Particular needs.

I suspect that there are households represented here who are in real financial trouble. Debt. Business failure. Unemployment.

• Everyone’s situation is different. And for many of us this is a tender subject because it can touch on our sense of insecurity, regret, fear, or guilt.
• So much of our culture takes a measurement of wealth and financial success as a measure of our human wealth.
• That’s part of why it is difficult for us to talk about money generally and giving in particular.
• But that in itself should tell us that it is important that we not ignore the question of money.
• Not to talk about money is not to talk about one of the things that impacts us most dramatically.

If we are to deal with our money situations, we need to be able to talk about them. We need to talk about them in the context of our commitments to God, our families, our loved ones, our world, our futures, and also our church.

So I want us to reflect with sensitivity and with open hearts and minds on giving. Sensitive to the fact that some of us are operating with significant limitations, hurt, and even shame.

For some of us, it might be downright irresponsible to give more. It may be that for some of us, at this point, the rest of us need to pick up the slack in giving so that this community remains a hospitable place in which we can all participate contributing whatever gifts we have to offer to make this place reflective of the power of God in which each of us shares.

We all need to take our appropriate place in the circle of giving and receiving. All of us are givers and receivers about different things at different times. At least that’s what I believe. Both positions are places of God’s love and grace.

We only need to have difficult conversations when circumstances we face are difficult. We cannot get around talking about giving, for our health as individuals and families as well as our health as a congregation called to be a witness to Jesus Christ in this community and beyond.

If you’ve been paying attention the last few weeks, you know that there have been messages about our church financial situation.

We emphasized in our initial pledge request letter that we needed at least a 5% increase in pledges to meet our anticipated financial spending plan for 2007.

The unfortunate fact as of right now, is that this goal is not being met by our Financial Secretary’s last accounting of pledges already received. Even the 4.8% increase reported in the bulletin is unlikely to be sustained – if present trends continue.

The spending plan under consideration by Church Council as presented last Tuesday envisions about an increase of just under 2%. However, because over the last several years we have overestimated actual giving, we have depleted our reserve fund in order to support our ongoing ministries.

We cannot do that again. There’s nothing left to support an operating budget that is not fully funded by pledged giving and a very conservative estimate of unpledged giving.

If this church is going to maintain its ministries, it needs the support of the congregation. We do not get a check every month from Methodist Central that takes care of us.

Two weeks ago Richard Neubauer, chair of our Finance Team, spoke to you in terms of what we need to know as we consider our pledges.

At Church Council this past week we explored a variety of calculations to give some sense of what it costs on a weekly basis to operate this congregation.

It costs between $3 and $4 per enrolled student per week.

The operating budget breaks down to about $9000 per week. Of that about $8000 needs to be covered by regular check and envelope giving, most of which is pledged. We need between $25 and $30 per giving unit on average per week or between $108 and $133 per month or $1300 and $1600 per year for our operating budget. (Some variation because the number of giving units depends on how we count. Giving units are typically households.)

On top of that, we invite you to participate in our 50/50 Journey in Action which allows us to make needed updates and large maintenance on our building and to be dramatically engaged outside this building to be agents of Christ’s compassion in the world. The amount required for that is about one-fourth of the operating budget – about $7or $8 per week.

Just like our household budgets, we have an ongoing regular operating budget to meet current expenses, we must make capital expenditures to preserve our assets, and we give charitably to aid others.

Some of us can and do give substantially more; some of us must give less.

Please ask questions about how all this is structured and where the money goes. There is a balance between overwhelming you with data and giving you the information you need to know what is going on.

We don’t collect dues, we don’t assess you a fee at the door. We understand that different life stages, giving possibilities and opportunities change.

We invite your generosity and your gracious participation of your time, talents, and treasure. We invite your giving. We invite you to make a commitment.

Why is this important?

Important because the organization has basic costs that you want to share as best you can.

Can we talk about giving?

It’s not really that we can. The fact is that we must. And not just for the health and growth of this church as an institution. Even if after today our church financial needs are met and exceeded, it is still important to talk about giving.

It is also important to talk about giving because we need to give. As Christians and as human beings we need to give because our spiritual health depends on it.

It’s important for us to give elsewhere also. There are many important and worthy causes that call for our participation. The Church has no monopoly on good and Godly works.

But it is particularly important to give here because this is very likely one of the key places that cultivates your generosity and grace for all your other endeavors.

This is a central place where we focus our attention on God who is all about opening and expanding our hearts. Freeing us from our attachments to our want want want desires that masquerade as need need need.

Our hearts, opened, sensitized and expanded hearts need to be formed and shaped and molded into generosity.

We know that the world around us is giving us another message about all the things we think we need. Cultivates our desire

A couple of decades ago. Church was in financial difficulties. Taken on obligations to build this sanctuary. Divisions and dissatisfactions. People left. Fewer people to repay the loan for the building.

What happened?

People decided to do without stuff. Car. Waited another year to make a major purchase.

If you ask them now, did they make the right choice. I’m sure what their answer would be. That car would be long gone. This church is here, now, and the Spirit of God is active within it.

Our financial is not nearly so dire as that. We’re only asking for another 5%. If you can make it 8 or 10 that would be even better. Some folks have already stepped up to that.

But it is also – and more importantly – a matter of cultivating our generosity. That might for some of us be a much more challenging issue. That might be a very dire situation indeed regardless of our 2007 church budget.

So I invite you to reflect on the priority you are called to give the church in your annual financial plan.

We went around the room at Church Council and talked about our feelings about what we give at church – financial and otherwise. That was a touching conversation of commitment. It was inspiring.

In my own family, Martha and I personally believe in the ongoing possibilities and call of this congregation to be a part of God’s astonishing adventure of love and mercy and compassion, and so we give to it. We consciously build it into our family budget.

I invite you to commit yourself to a level of giving that you will notice in how you live your life. Martha and I give by Electronic Funds Transfer so I don’t notice it by writing checks or sealing an offering envelope, but it does show up as I balance the bank statement each month and I always feel good about it.

Can we talk about giving? We can, and in fact, we must. Giving, generosity, is an essential element of the Christian life because it allows us to receive the freedom that generosity gives us.

But Jesus teaches us that whether the amounts are large or small, when they proceed from a heart of generous love they become signs of hope and testimonies of devotion.

When our generosity – at whatever financial level – proceed from trust that God has called us to this journey together, to join in this circle of gracious giving and receiving, then we celebrate God’s love with rejoicing.

Can we talk about giving? You betcha!

Thanks be to God. Amen.