Giving, Part 2

Last time we talked about the narrative budget, how telling the story of our financial gifts gives us a clearer picture of our stewardship than just listing numbers.  In order to understand the process we need to see our gifts in action, not lying in some column on a page.

But there's a problem with the narrative budget in a church with our size and our spirit.  If you just look at the surface of it, that action appears to amount to one word: salary.  Most of our budget is bare-boned.  People donate nearly everything we use from office supplies to kitchen supplies to communion wine to Sunday School curriculum.  Those things don't show up as spending items in the budget.  If you look at the percentages on the official ledger, salary and benefits dominate, as if most of what's given around here funnels to Pastor Dave.

Treasurer Susan and I were discussing these matters one day and she basically said, "This isn't an accurate picture!"  The numbers don't lie but they don't show the real, dynamic motion of giving in our church.  Our official budget doesn't tell the story.

It quickly became evident that in order to tell the real story of our giving, we were going to have to do something radical.  We couldn't just give a narrative budget based on our church numbers.  We had to give the narrative of where those funds were going after they left the church.  We also had to talk about how much was being given by our church members outside the budget...giving when things were needed like the folks did who bought our new copy machine this year.

Since much of our official budget goes into salary, the first step in describing our community's giving was revealing what happens to that salary.  This meant revealing our spending and giving...the narrative budget of pastor's paycheck.  As you can imagine, this was neither entirely instinctual nor entirely comfortable for me.  We live in a society where finances are private (just like religion, ironically).  We've never broken that barrier.  But without it, the story died on the vine.  So we did it.

I'm not going to go into specific figures here on the internet, but to summarize: approximately 45% of our salary, which amounts to nearly 70% of our take-home pay after taxes are deducted, went back into the church or church work this year.  We re-invest 7 out of every 10 dollars that touch our bank account into helping the church and the community.  Needs include everything from helping people with rent to buying stamps and office supplies, gas for visits and pop for kids.

For perspective, most people consider tithing--the standard goal for giving presented by many churches--as 10%.  Even in pre-tax dollars we're 4.5 times that.  The good folks at the ELCA financial advising and pension department will encourage you to save 10% of your take-home pay, give away 10%, and live on the other 80%.  We're about 7 times beyond in the giving department by that measure.

Numbers aren't the important part of this discussion.  The numbers are there to set up a couple of important points.

First, even though the budget says "salary" many of those dollars are actually going to ministry.  You're not giving to fill a bank account but to support ministry, even in the salary line of that budget.

Second, the amount of giving is less important than the why.  It's less important to understand that we're spending 70% of our take-home pay on the church right now than to understand why that's necessary.

For us, giving is not determined by dollar signs.  The dollar signs follow the need for giving instead of determining it.  Our giving is about three things:

1.  We believe and trust in God and in the people here.

Our community is faithful.  Our community is valuable.  Our community is irreplaceable, as are the people in it.  Without giving we wouldn't get to see our Confirmation students, Olee's tablecloths, Patrick's music, the children coming up for the children's sermon, or have great discussions in Bible Studies and Theology on Tap.  We wouldn't get to eat Mary's caramels or look at Rosanna's pictures or hear Louise play the organ and Jennifer sing.  Our gifts make a thousand other wonderful gifts possible...the lack of which would impoverish our lives greatly.  God is showing us blessings every day through all of you.  We give in response to that, in appreciation for it.  We're not giving to a "church".  We're giving because the things we experience in this community from God and  the people around us are beyond any price tag.

2.  We give because it needs to be done.

This is no different than walking in the kitchen and seeing dishes that need to be done or walking into fellowship and seeing the coffee out but no cups available on the table.  You don't see a need and pass by with it unmet.  When somebody needs rent and has fallen through the cracks of all the other options, you make sure they get rent and keep a roof over their heads.  When the church copier is empty, you get paper.  Find a reason to say "no" once and you'll soon find reasons to say "no" every time.

And speaking of...

3.  We give because we dare not refuse to.

Our society teaches us that the core of our security and happiness is money...that money is the most important treasure we have, to be guarded and used with infinite care lest we end up unfulfilled.  God simply asks us to trust him.  That's above all things, including money.

If we hold back in this one way, we might as well have held back in all of them.  If we can't bring ourselves to trust God here, do we really trust him at all?

Our lives will follow the pattern we set in this decision.  Either trust or fear will guide us.  There's no in-between and no mistaking the two.  Giving one cent less than is needed or called for because we're afraid of running out is a decision based on fear, not on faith.

Giving becomes reminder to us that God and faith are the core of security and happiness...that God is showing us the most important treasures every day in the faces and voices of our neighbors...that we are called to use infinite care in tending to those things, letting the dollar signs fall where they may instead of using infinite care to tend to our dollar signs and letting the gifts fall where they may.

Giving disciplines us and puts a check on the part of us that wants to fear and worry selfishly.  It's our security against idolatry.

Is giving so much a sacrifice?  Yes, it is.  But it is possible.  And that sacrifice pales beside the one our Lord made for us on the cross.

These why statements need to become more a part of our giving, a part of the discussion surrounding stewardship, than they are now.  We need to get our whys straight and let the finances follow rather than starting and ending our stewardship discussion with the finances.  Our success cannot be measured by a line in a budget.  It's measured by how much we all trust in, believe in, and sacrifice for God, each other, and the ministry here.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)