Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 9, 2003

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

We do things differently here. I mean, this church, I suppose like most churches, has its own way of doing things that isn’t exactly what the experts on church administration and life tell us is how things should be done. That’s not necessarily, or at least not always, a bad thing. Things get done. Decisions get made. The church works. It just works in its own traditional ways, some of which at least are, shall we say, not exactly orthodox.

And it’s not just how we do things that’s different. It’s also how we don’t do some things. Here I have one particular thing in mind. A central fact of the life of every other church I’ve ever known is the annual stewardship campaign. Everybody does one. I get material all the time from the Conference office about how to do them. John Breen, our Conference "Administrative Assistant for Stewardship and Planned Giving," just held a two day retreat for pastors on how to do them. I didn’t go. The main reason I didn’t go is pretty simple: This church doesn’t do stewardship campaigns! At least, that’s what you all tell me. I have certainly been given to believe, at least, that you would not appreciate it if I tried to do anything like at traditional stewardship campaign around here.

So I haven’t. And yet....And yet two significant facts remain that require, I believe, a pastoral word at this time in the life of our church. First: Stewardship, that is, how we use the resources we have, is an important, I would say a central part of the Christian life. Second: The church needs money. It needs a good deal of money. Not coincidentally, both of these facts are reflected in this morning’s Gospel story of the widow’s offering. I want to look briefly this morning at those two truths through the lens of the story of the widow’s offering.

In that story, Jesus is watching as people put money into "the treasury." Don’t worry about what "the treasury" is. The important fact is that the people in this story are making money contributions to the Temple, that is, to their church. As we would expect, the wealthy people are making large contributions. Jesus is unimpressed. (Please don’t get the idea from that statement that I am discouraging large contributions-Please!) He is much more impressed by the numerically small contribution made by a widow-two small coins that together total one penny. Not much objectively speaking, except that they represent, we are told, all she had, everything she had to live on. Jesus says that he’s not impressed by the large contributions of the wealthy because they are giving out of their abundance, while the poor widow gives out of her poverty.

This story has a lot to tell us. Now, don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you to give everything you have to the church-although, if any of you want to do that, please see me after the service. I’m sure we can work something out. Really though, I want to draw a couple of other lessons out of this story for us here in this church today. One is that thing I mentioned a minute ago, namely, that churches need money. Churches, it seems, have always needed money, and always will. Jesus knew the church needed money, and in this story he approves of people making financial contributions to their church. Now, that churches need money may seem pretty obvious, and yet I wonder if it really is. I mean, how many of you know how much money it takes to run this church? Some of you do, but I suspect most of you don’t. We know the church needs money, but if you’re like I’ve always been you haven’t really paid much attention to what that means. We need to pay more attention to this issue.

The story of the widow’s offering also points to that other thing I mentioned a minute ago, another truth that I think we also know but to which most of us, myself included, usually pay insufficient attention. The story points to the fact that faithful stewardship of our resources is an important part of the life of faith. I don’t think the story is telling us to give everything we have to the church even to the point of leaving ourselves nothing to live on. You could draw that conclusion from it, but that conclusion is too literalistic for my taste. I think it is telling us, however, that if we want to be faithful people, in our case if we want to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, we need to think about how we use our money. We also need to think about how we use our time, but today I want to talk about money. We probably think of money as the stuff you have to have to buy things, to get the things we need to live and, we hope, to get some things that we may not need but that just make life nicer. Money certainly is that, but it is more than that. Money has symbolic value. We attach symbolic importance to it. In our culture, it becomes not just a means of buying goods and services. It becomes virtually a measure of our worth as human beings. In other words, it becomes an idol. We indeed make it into the great Mammon, money as demon.

Moreover, how we use our money does say a great deal about what we value. Someone once told me: Show me your checkbook and I’ll tell you what you believe. Jane tells me that should be modified to: Show me your checkbook and your day planner and I’ll tell you what you believe. That’s better, although even that is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration. Still, the point is valid. How we use our resources of time and treasure is a reflection of our values, of what we hold dear and consider important in our lives and in the world. So, looking at how we use our money can be a way of assessing what we truly value, what is truly important to us.

In this morning’s story, the widow pretty clearly had done that. We aren’t told what her thought process was. We don’t know exactly why she felt moved to give everything she had to the Temple and its work, but clearly she did. Now, I’ve said I’m not going to ask you to give everything you have to the church; but I am going to ask you follow the widow’s example by examining carefully what the way you spend your money says about what you value in life. And I’m going to ask you to think seriously about how much you value this church. We all need to think about that question because, I’m sorry to say, our financial status at the moment is not very good.

I’ve said the church needs money. In my experience, people who conduct church stewardship drives never actually tell the people how much money the church actually needs. Well, I think you need to have that information as you make your decisions about your giving for the coming year. But first some good news. Your giving to the church this year is running about 20% ahead of the amount budgeted. That’s very good. It says that you value this church and its ministry and that you are trying to help. For that I thank you with all my heart.

That being said, however, the crucial fact that you need to know is that even with your increased giving we are running a budget deficit this year that, if trends continue until the end of the year, will total nearly $31,000. Giving is up, but our expenses have been higher than budgeted too, especially for work on the two church buildings. So far this year we have had to transfer $21,000 out of our financial reserves to cover expenses. Barring unforeseen capital expenses, the deficit won’t be as large next year. Even so, unless the deficit is reduced dramatically our financial reserves will last only perhaps three more years. Without those financial reserves we will not be able to afford a full time pastor, nor will we be able to maintain this wonderful, historic building as it should be maintained. We certainly will not be able to expand our outreach in the community. We need more money.

So we have to ask: Where will the increased revenue we need come from? We all pray that new members will come, will be part of our fellowship and share our ministry, and will help relieve the budget problem. Some of us are working as best we know how to attract those new members; but we must still all ask ourselves: Is this church important to me? Do I want it to be here for many years to come? If the answer to those questions is yes, then each of us needs to consider very carefully whether we can increase our giving to the church. I know I plan to increase mine.

I won’t bore you with a lot of statistics. They’re all available in the latest financial statement if you’re interested. The bottom line, however, is that we need to increase income by close to $30,000 a year to balance the budget. That won’t happen all at once, and it doesn’t have to. We have a few years to do it, assuming that some increase starts next year. My point however is valid: We all need to do what we can to give more to the church.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I know that for some of you that simply isn’t possible. Many of you live on fixed incomes and have significant medical and other expenses. If you have prayerfully examined your finances and the role of this church in your life and have found that you simply cannot increase your giving, then God bless you and thank for your stewardship. You are a faithful and beloved member of this community. If, however, you find that you can increase your giving, then we need you to do so. We need it quite badly. So, think of this morning as the annoying but inevitable KCTS-type pledge drive if you wish. Find me as annoying this morning as I find George Ray; but please, consider what you can do to help. Thank you.