If you were at the Charge Conference on Sunday, you participated in electing FUMC leadership for the coming year. If you read the list of nominees, you will see that I decided after a decade of service to step out of the leadership circle. There were many reasons for my decision. The most important is that we are in an era of transition and we seek new young leadership. John Wesley says in his covenant," let me be put to work for you or let me be set aside for you." If we will have room for new leadership, old leadership has to get out of the way.
The second thing you may notice is that there is no position of Stewardship Chair on the list of team leaders. After many years of attempting to change the way First Church understands stewardship, it seems clear that I have had minimal success. The traditional reaction to the word steward may just be too strong to overcome. The fact that for three years the nominations committee has been unable to populate a stewardship team seems to be the strongest evidence that we need to do something differently.
This change doesn't mean we will stop having an annual financial stewardship campaign. There will be a task force to carry out that important annual task, and that will be their only job so they can focus on it over the course of a year rather than make it only one of their priorities.
As for stewardship education and the broader understanding of stewardship as a way of life, not an annual financial campaign, that remains unknown. Inclusion of a stewardship education component in the Journey series is the most likely first step.
What of the Circle of Stewards? The concept has been a difficult one to for many grasp in this day of evaluation. It is my way to initiate, to ask questions, to provoke thought, and trust the spirit. You can't evaluate that and make a report. You can't count it, you can't quantify it, and you can't say it succeeded or failed. The only real investment was my time and effort and I feel that the project has been worthwhile. I have enjoyed hearing from many of you and the conversations have been inspiring. Like most ministries, I gained a great deal by doing the soul searching to write this blog. Records show about 100 people a month are regular readers and I enjoy thinking of you out there as I write, even not knowing who you are. The blog might continue if you like, or we can make it into a forum. Let me hear from you if you have ideas.
For the remaining weeks of my term as your Stewardship Chair, I'm going to talk about the fifth dimension of stewardship, witness. We added that to our membership vows a few years ago but we haven't done much work on understanding what that means. As we go forward in making a new future for FUMC, witness will be an essential component.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
The C Word
As we gather in the Estimate of Giving information for First Church and try to develop a budget to undergird our ministries next year, I'm having to help people deal with the C word, commitment. Churches are told these days that asking for commitments puts people off and keeps them from wanting to be part of the church. Well I'm not real found of stop signs either, but my desire to avoid them doesn't mean they aren't a good idea for my own health and safety. One of the big differences between just being a spiritual seeker and accepting the role of steward is commitment. It's not for everyone, but then neither is marriage. That's really the best analogy I can think of. I don't think God sits around thinking up ways we have to prove our faithfulness to him, setting us up with trials we have to pass so we can prove we love God. (I know there is that Job story but that's for another day.) There are just certain things we have to do in order to progress in our faith.
Let's take the marriage analogy up for a minute. There are several stages to romantic love. We see the object of our attraction, we spend time with them, we enter into the euphoria of love. Then we have to make some decisions. Either we try to continue in the romantic euphoria indefinitely (not really possible) or we decide to get married. When we decide to marry, we decide to give up some things in order to have others. We make a commitment. We give up exploring that euphoric relationship with someone else. There is nothing wrong with that exploration in itself, but if we are going to have a deep and honest marriage relationship, we forgo seeking that relationship with someone else. We may stop going out for drinks after work and go home to our spouse instead. There is nothing wrong with socializing with other people, but we make choices about how that socializing affects our relationship with our spouse. We don't make the commitment in order to make our lives narrower and sadder, but in order to make a specific relationship deeper and more meaningful. We learn to make our first thought in any situation not how will this affect me, but how will this affect us.
We commit to practices of, prayer, attending worship, service to others, intentionally devoting a percentage of our material wealth, sharing the good news, not because those are penances or rules, but because our tradition tells us those are the ways we live in order to maintain our close relationship with God.
As we approach Christmas and the usual music of the season, I'm reminded of the composer Handel who wrote the famous Messiah. The story is legend about how he sat down without stopping and scrawled out that masterpiece. What isn't in the legend is the years he spend studying his instrument, composition, form and analysis, voicing, instrumentation, honing his skills. That's how I see the Steward's way. Sometimes is feels good, sometimes it doesn't, but every step is progress with faith that the destination and the journey are one.
Let's take the marriage analogy up for a minute. There are several stages to romantic love. We see the object of our attraction, we spend time with them, we enter into the euphoria of love. Then we have to make some decisions. Either we try to continue in the romantic euphoria indefinitely (not really possible) or we decide to get married. When we decide to marry, we decide to give up some things in order to have others. We make a commitment. We give up exploring that euphoric relationship with someone else. There is nothing wrong with that exploration in itself, but if we are going to have a deep and honest marriage relationship, we forgo seeking that relationship with someone else. We may stop going out for drinks after work and go home to our spouse instead. There is nothing wrong with socializing with other people, but we make choices about how that socializing affects our relationship with our spouse. We don't make the commitment in order to make our lives narrower and sadder, but in order to make a specific relationship deeper and more meaningful. We learn to make our first thought in any situation not how will this affect me, but how will this affect us.
We commit to practices of, prayer, attending worship, service to others, intentionally devoting a percentage of our material wealth, sharing the good news, not because those are penances or rules, but because our tradition tells us those are the ways we live in order to maintain our close relationship with God.
As we approach Christmas and the usual music of the season, I'm reminded of the composer Handel who wrote the famous Messiah. The story is legend about how he sat down without stopping and scrawled out that masterpiece. What isn't in the legend is the years he spend studying his instrument, composition, form and analysis, voicing, instrumentation, honing his skills. That's how I see the Steward's way. Sometimes is feels good, sometimes it doesn't, but every step is progress with faith that the destination and the journey are one.
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