Faith Works 10-21-22

Faith Works 10-21-22
Jeff Gill

Giving, getting, going
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Yes, Virginia, the Christmas commercials have started running on television.

Retail outlets are hard at work, online and in real world terms, getting you to think about spending money for the holidays, and they'd rather you start spending now and thinking less. Just do it, you know.

It is a good time to think, though, and even to pray about how you spend your money, how you budget your income through expenditures, and certainly time to give prayerful consideration to how you are going to give in 2023.

Many faith communities are sharing with members and attenders their plans for the year ahead, and the needs they have financially. Some call it stewardship, or sacrificial giving, or one version or another of tithing. It all comes down to the basic reality that if a church owns a building and employs staff, there are some basic costs that have to be covered somehow.

In a state church arrangement (which is still true in much of Europe) the government collects certain kinds of taxes, and pays many of the bills for keeping the roof from leaking and paying the preacher, and offerings are more specifically for benevolences. We included that in our American experiment as something we didn't want from 1787 on, so churches are on their own.

Many congregations before the late 1800s used pew rents to cover the basic budget; the Free Methodist Church came into being both because of their stand against slavery and for freedom, but also because they were opposed to pew rents. By the end of the Civil War, the trend was towards offering plates; early in the 1900s, the idea of pledges came into popular practice, to allow church leaders to make better forecasts for what they could anticipate spending.

All of these models are based on the idea of church costs being met through intermittent donations of cash; after World War II, the acceptance of checks was controversial in many sanctuaries, but by my youth in the Sixties, the offering time was accented with the perforated tearing sound of checks being written all around us.

Now we have QR codes and various tools to allow people to give to the church through electronic means, and just as pew rents ending was a fuss and checks upset many church treasurers some decades back, we can spend time debating digital donations. What we can't do is force people to carry cash, which they often don't, or use checks, which many don't even have.

So we have a time of transition again with the changes from a barter economy to the cash economy and now the credit economy driving the need to adapt giving opportunities in church life.

What doesn't change is that our spiritual health is tied to our economic health, and not in terms of how much we have or make or even how much we give, but in how intentional and conscious our stewardship is. If we just let the expenditures pour out, if we aren't aware of what we've been blessed with and how we use it, we can end up in a dry season and a sorry state . . . spiritual or financial.

Whether you give with recurring donations set up through your financial institution, a set amount per month that puts a baseline on your donations on which you can always add more, or you put paper currency in a plate, your intentions around money weave in and around your deeper intentions. One can lift, or pull down, the other.

Which will you plan to do in the year ahead? Grow, or drift? Decline, or find new health? Be thankful, or wary?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he doesn't carry a checkbook around much, either. Tell him how giving has blessed you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.