Dear Sisters and Brothers at Christ Church,
It's mid-October, the weather has finally cooled and another Oakland A's season has ended unceremoniously. This means it's also fundraising time at Christ Church. Raising money is not everyone's favorite thing. Neither is donating money. Sometimes in October I feel like I have a split personality; from my right brain I talk about creating relationships with God and with each other, and serving our community. From my left brain I track financial data on a spreadsheet. Usually I keep these lobes of my brain separate. Who wants to talk about filthy money when they're contemplating the circles of heaven? For this reason, I find that Faith Full Giving season is a challenging spiritual exercise for me. Faith Full Giving confronts me with the idea that I can seek integrity in the various spheres of my life. When I say integrity, I mean its dictionary definition: the state of being whole and undivided. Working on my annual pledge to Christ Church forces me to align my personal and private values with my hopes for this community and all my blathering during sermons. Because how we each spend our limited income is a clear and quantifiable reflection of our private values, applied to a collective cause. I tend to think of my financial choices transactionally, but Faith Full Giving puts a relational lens on my choices. I can yammer on endlessly about loving God and loving our neighbors and the value of community life and our calling to share our blessings, but a financial commitment is a tangible, long-term bet on those very values.
Each one of us has to make their own decisions about finances and philanthropy with the counsel of prayer and the people we love, balancing all the pulls of costly modern life. As you make your decisions about supporting Christ Church with money, time, energy and love in 2023, I ask to bring a sense of God's blessings, your own joy in community, prudence at taking care of your own needs, and a heart open to God's movement at Christ Church, in your family, and in the whole wide world. Who is God calling you to be?
Peace,
Stephen