Stewardship

 

St. Francis Church

Warden's Talk

October 27, 1996

 

Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."  (Matt 22:37-40.)

When I left Wall Street three years ago, I decided to embark on a new career.  I ended up starting three.  In addition to the management consulting firm my brother Steve and I started, I became the Warden of the Vestry here at St. Francis', and also began publishing and reading verse, which had been my long-term avocation.  With your indulgence, I would like to talk about stewardship in terms of these three viewpoints: businessman, churchman and writer.  And  look at stewardship first as meeting a financial need, second, as building a community of faith, and third as living out the Great Commandment in risking, creating and doing.

 

Stewardship as Business

 

There are many aspects of stewardship that are familiar to the business man or woman.  At St. Francis', we have an annual budget, we need to grow revenues, control expenses, make investments and undertake new projects.  This year is no different.  You all have received a brochure in the mail that provides a narrative description of our budget, complete with 3-D pie chart showing the breakdown of our expenditures. 

This year we wanted to show how your pledge dollars are spent in terms of the ministries and services we provide.  And there are many good things to say here.  For every dollar we receive:

• 21 cents goes to mission and outreach (up from 19 cents last year)
• 18 cents is for Christian education
• another 18 cents goes to worship and spiritual life in the parish
• 11 cents is for pastoral care and counseling
• and the remaining 33 cents to administration and facilities. 

Fully two thirds of our budget is allocated to the ministries of in-reach to our parish families and outreach to the community.  In most recent St. Francis' Messenger, there was a very full list of outreach contributions we have recently made.  That is a healthy story to tell.  Our spiritual balance sheet is in good standing.  And we want to continue to grow these important ministries.

I recently looked at some history of our budget and our giving at St. Francis over the past ten years.  Here are some highlights:

• Pledges have grown from $129,000 in 1986 to $207,000 today.
• In that same period, the average pledge grew from $1,139 per year to $2,031; or $22 per week to $39 per week.  And the average annual increase was 6.4%, well in excess of the rate of inflation.

The very strong message here is that St. Francis' continues to have a history of increasing generosity. 

When you receive your pledge card, you will notice something new in this year's campaign.  Aside from the very professional brochure, design and printing, you will notice we are indicating suggested levels of giving.  This is not an assessment, nor mandatory gift; it is a suggestion.  But it is not an arbitrary suggestion.  It’s based on the historical trend on our pledges.  For 1997 we are suggesting $35 per week as a starting point for thinking about our pledge, and we are asking all our families and individuals to participate in pledging this year as part of our recommitment to St. Francis' in this our Jubilee year.  This is the challenge before us.

Some more numbers: Our total budget for 1997 is $320,000, of which 68% --over two thirds-- are pledges.  That's $226,000, which is a little over $35 per household per week, so the math does work out.  That's what we need on average to keep our ministries going and growing in 1997.  Tom Hitchcock, our Outreach Committee chair, reminded me just this week that with the cutbacks we have seen on the national and state level, the need is even greater in our community for the gifts from private organizations like St. Francis'.  In our 1997 budget we are looking to grow our Mission and Outreach by 9%.

A fair amount of our budget increase in the coming year --almost two thirds-- will be met by the increased rental income from our new lease with Canaan Ridge School.  That's good news.  But keep in mind that this rental income has been earmarked for our new sanctuary, and will not factor in our increased ministry in Stamford.  The bottom line is that we need $16,000 more in pledges for 1997.  And part of stewardship is meeting a financial need.   At St. Francis' we have long tradition of rising to meet the challenge, and this year, I am confident we can do it again.

But there are two other reasons for increasing our support of St. Francis'.  First, we had a difficult year in 1996 with a budget shortfall in our pledges, following the upheavals in our parish last December.  I believe firmly that we came out of it a stronger family, as indicated by the 82% of you who voted last March in favor of expanding our parish ministry by building a new sanctuary.   If we were a weakening parish, we would not have had such a strong voice of support.  We now need to show that our 1996 pledge campaign was an anomaly, an exception to the rule, and that we are once again on a path of growth.  The second reason we need to increase our stewardship support is that we must demonstrate to our potential lenders that our operating budget is on a very strong foundation.  Our ability to secure a mortgage for our new church will depend on that.

Like any organization, income is needed to operate the enterprise.  This parish cannot run without paying its bills, making the payroll and maintaining its operating plant.  This is obvious.  Although we are a non-profit organization, we are similar to some subscription services.  Without our annual subscribers paying their membership dues, we close our doors.  Remember that our annual pledges account for over two thirds of our required income.  Pledging is crucial for the well being of St. Francis' Church.  Unlike many other private organizations, St. Francis' has no large endowment fund;  each of you are our endowment; each of us are the strength of this parish.

 

Stewardship as Churchmanship

Stewardship is also about being a member of a community of worshippers.  At St. Francis' Church we are all called to be an active member of the body of Christ, and to give of ourselves to the work of God in this community.  But what does that mean?  Marshall McLuhan said that "There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth.  Everybody's crew."  I think that is also true of the church.  Living out our faith means serving each other with our time, treasure and our talents.  "Everybody is crew".  And St. Francis' Church has shown again and again how are living out this service to others.

Over the past year, I have been asked frequently about the work I do in this parish.  The comments have ranged from "that must have taken a lot of work" to "don't you ever sleep?"  Some nights, when I am about to leave for another parish meeting, Janet says, "What, again?!"  But this is not an isolated story.  I can tell you that many others in this parish –many of you-- give of themselves without reservation.  And they are not just those with extra time on their hands.

For example, let me tell you the story about how this year's stewardship campaign got done.  When we asked Rusty Pickard to chair this year's committee, he was concerned about the time he could devote.  He is starting up a new business division in Ohio, and spends much of his time shuttling back and forth.  But that didn't stop him.  He enlisted his wife, Ann to help.  Rusty, Ann and I comprised the core team.  Rusty used his airplane time to review and edit materials, faxing them to Ann and me from airports.  We in turn would make corrections and fax them to Richard and our consultant in the diocese for comment, and leave voicemails and emails for Rusty in the evening.  Meanwhile, Ann was running her own shuttle service on the ground, ferrying materials to David Demarest, another parishioner, who did a wonderful job on the graphics design and publishing for the campaign.  And then she'd run them to the printer and arrange for the mailing, where yet other parishioners helped fold and stuff the envelopes.  All this was going on immediately before a weekend family vacation, with the mailing going out the day of their flight, with packing clothes and kids and arranging transportation to the airport!  In addition, Rusty returned from a west coast business trip late on a Saturday, to present his testimony at both services, early the next Sunday morning.  That all this got done --and in good humor I might add--  is amazing.  But it is not atypical of our parish.  Why?

When someone comments about the time I give to St. Francis' I prefer to tell them about what it has done for me.  This has not been a one-way street.  On one level, the parish has become my workplace, where the teams of people and jobs to be done have moved from Wall Street to North Stamford.  And instead of managing a company of 300 employees, I am now part of a thriving parish of 300 adults and children.  This has not been a small factor for my changing from corporate life to one of entrepreneur.  It has helped enormously, making the psychological transition a positive experience.

But it is more than that.  On another level, there are the rewards of working with other dedicated and caring people.  St. Francis' is truly a place of energized teamwork.  And that is energizing for me.  Our Vestry, for example, is a group of very dedicated people, able to discuss and wrestle with all manner of issues from the most mundane budget item to the most difficult moral and ethical questions.  I am proud to be a member of such a group, and it has been very rewarding.  On yet another level, are the friendships and the rewards of helping each other, being there for each other.  St. Francis' Church has become my extended family, my neighborhood among this region of corporate nomads.   I don't know the family next door; they are never there.  But I know all of you.

I recently asked Ann Moore about the things St. Francis' means to her.  She talked of the "wasteland" of our Fairfield county communities  --not in terms of the benefits this area of the country offers, which are many-- but in terms of the lack of a real sense of neighborhood, the lack of a close knit community of neighbors.  For her, St. Francis' provides that neighborhood.  It is her extended family.  And there is nothing else like it here.  I have heard others say that St. Francis' is the best kept secret of North Stamford.  I agree.

This is the second reality of stewardship, working together one-on-one, and in small groups, to build a community of faith, an extended family, one relationship at a time.  Supporting this community in concrete ways, not only with our dollars, but with our time and abundant talents, is the bedrock of stewardship.

 

Stewardship as Authorship

 

In closing, I would like to look at Stewardship from a writer's perspective.  Here, I would propose that Stewardship is about giving of yourself in a way that creates something new, in neighbor and in yourself. 

 

Risking

Lucille Clifton, twice nominated for the Pulitzer prize in poetry, says, "You cannot play for safety and make art." What this says to me as a writer is that there is something inherently risky about the creative process.  You are trying to express yourself in a way that puts yourself on the line, that leaves something exposed, or at least starts there.   It is the closest thing to being naked in the garden of Eden in search of the nearest fig leaf that I can imagine.   I see this nervous creative energy each time a new poet comes to read at the local bookstores.  There is always the tremble in the hand and the tremble in the voice.  From the artist we learn that giving of yourself is a risky proposition.

 

Doing

When I was a freshman in college, my parents attended a Marriage Encounter weekend run by the Jesuits.  It was a time when their marriage was on shaky ground, and they were seeking some help.  This workshop had tremendous impact on them, and immediately turned them into relentless evangelists for the program, complete with bumper stickers, posters hung on the walls, and Marriage Encounter magnets on the fridge.  I remember asking my father what it was he learned that was so important, that made the difference.  He said it was that "love is something you do."

Ann Lamott, in her writing handbook, Bird by Bird has an enjoyable chapter that I'll paraphrase as "Writing Crummy First drafts."  (She uses more colorful language!)  What she says is that if the writer waits until she has the work perfectly imagined before writing it down, she will never write a word.  It is a sure recipe for writer's block if there ever was one.  What Lamott recommends is getting that first draft down, warts and all, and then rewriting and rewriting, crafting it until it shines.  Good writing, in her opinion, rises out of the doing, the struggling with incomplete and crummy drafts.  This is an important lesson for giving as well.  Learning how to give is a matter of doing it again and again, no matter how imperfect our gift, no matter how feeble our attempt.

 

Creating

It is fascinating that the first mention of stewardship in the Bible is part of the Creation Story.  In the first chapter of Genesis, after God creates man and woman in His image, He says "let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.'"  This dominion over creation, this being entrusted with the stewardship of the earth and life itself, is being given the keys to the kingdom.  What does God do?  He creates the heavens and the earth, and then he gives it away!

This week's Time magazine has a cover story about the renewed interest in the book of Genesis, something our Christian Formation classes have been wrestling with over the past few weeks.  And it has been the topic of the latest PBS series by Bill Moyers.    If you have been following his series on Genesis, you have seen some very engaging dialog on this subject.  Last Sunday, in part 2, Moyers lead a panel discussion about Creation and the Adam and Eve narrative.  In addition to Old Testament professors from a variety of faiths, the panel included the renowned artist, Hugh O'Donnell.  At one point in the conversation, O'Donnell makes this remarkable statement:  "in making art, the artist literally gives his body to the world.  This is what embodiment means." This is a powerful statement of self expression. It says to me that as God gave himself in His new creation, so too when we give of ourselves we are creating new and wonderful possibilities. 

But we know this.  We only need to imagine the last time we gave a small gift to someone in need, or to a child at Christmas, and watched their eyes light up.  Giving has that endless creative potential.  When we give love, we create love.  That is the secret of the Great Commandment.

Jesus said "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Matt 22:39).  One way to read this passage is that by loving our neighbor, by giving of ourselves unselfishly, we are creating our neighbor, creating our neighborhood.  And the miracle of this is that we also are creating ourselves.  It is precisely at this moment of giving ourselves that we become co-creators with God in his universe.  We become most like Christ, fully human and fully divine as we confess in our creed.

This morning we ask ourselves again, will we risk giving of ourselves?  Will we try to give no matter how imperfect?  Will we create love in our neighbor and in ourselves by giving?  These are among the higher things of our life as stewards of God's creation?  We can ask no more of each other.  Amen.

--Ed Happ