Under the Canons, The Rector, Church Wardens, and Vestry are responsible for the formulation and implementation of an annual budget in Parishes. I enjoy our deliberations around budget and finance; in those conversations, I am humbled by the loving, creative, generous spirit of the Parish leadership. We are so blessed to have the governing body we have!

Since 2007, we have undertaken the formulation of our annual Budget aware that expenses that do not diminish despite hard times. Utilities and office supplies and such are what they are, and we have enacted Budgets that recognize these realities. Through careful management, we have maintained at/under-budget expenses as The Great Recession has worn on…

In the same period, we have been blessed to be able to maintain giving levels, and we are able to make it work with a very lean budget. For my part, I am more proud than I have words to say of the Parish; the people of this Parish are generous, and that surely has been evidenced in pledged income as the recession has worn-on.

Pledge receipts for the 2011 Budget are slow this quarter; please check to see that yours is current.

And pledge returns for 2012 are slow thus far. Our projections are incomplete; pledged income may maintain current levels, or it may be lower in 2012 than in the previous four years.

At one level, this does not surprise your leadership, and it is fair to wonder if The Great Recession finally has caught up with us.

Examples are numerous. In 2011, the City of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Jefferson County (Birmingham), Alabama declared bankruptcy. Such financial collapses demonstrate the unrelenting nature of this recession across our entire economy. However you feel about the “Occupy Movement,” it’s happening, and it is evidence of a frustration and malaise that is becoming chronic- depression in its clinical as well as its economic sense. The newsreels are full of economic crisis beyond our borders as well as at home, and whether we believe the faltering economies of Europe can bring us down or not, the conversations are being had, and they cause anxiety. The malaise, frustration and anxiety in the public arena have implications in our Parish Budget as surely as they do in the budgets of corporations and governments.

The places in the budget where we can achieve further economies are few, and the places where we have cut so far are already “showing bone.” So, the picture at this writing causes concern, but the picture at this writing is incomplete.

If you have not returned your pledge for 2012, please do so. If you have and are moved to increase it, please let our Treasurer know that. Until we have the pledges in hand, we cannot effectively make decisions or report a spending plan. Please do your part to help us as we lead the Parish in these challenging times.

Thanks.

FBC3+

“You know if you don’t want to run again, I respect

that. But if you don’t run ‘cause you think it will be too

hard or you think you’re going to lose, well, God, Jed,

I don’t even want to know you.”

-Mrs. Dolores Landingham to President Josiah Bartlet

I’m a fan…enough of a fan that I own several seasons of The West Wing on DVD. It was brilliant ensemble acting, and some of the best commercial television broadcast in the last quarter century. The West Wing carried forward simultaneously an image and a vision of the American Presidency…an image of the American Presidency close enough to reality to fascinate, and a vision of the American Presidency close enough to our hopes to inspire…it is art at a level of excellence rarely seen.

Mrs. Landingham’s words to the President translate into all areas of human endeavor. It is one thing NOT to engage an issue, cause, activity, idea, moment of growth, or anything else because we genuinely do not believe that it is worthwhile, or right. It is another to avoid engagement simply because we think it’ll be too hard. Mrs. Landingham’s utterance brings into high relief the daily choices to be made in so many areas of our lives, the Christian stewardship of money included.

Certainly, her words chasten us and inspire us when we apply them to our Christian stewardship. If we really just don’t want to pledge, believing that pledging is inappropriate or morally questionable, then our resulting behavior will be clear: we won’t and we’ll have the courage of that conviction to speak publicly against tithing, pledging, and all the other features of the Christian stewardship of money as they emerge in our common life. 

If however, we just don’t want to think about it, if we just don’t want to get that committed to anything about stewardship, if we just don’t want to undertake the strenuous work of learning more and more to be faithful in this way, then there are plenty who just don’t want to know us. 

If we’re honest, we’d be first on that list not-wanting-to-know-us, wouldn’t we?  We do not think of ourselves as lazy, and yet often we live lives on the path of least resistance, with as little strain and as little movement of established self as possible. Such persons are contemptible when they’re not us, aren’t they?

The bad news is that making your first pledge may be hard; the Good News is you’re not alone. The bad news is that making a proportional increase in your established pledge over time, working toward the tithe, may be hard; the Good News is you’re not alone. The bad news is that playing the part we are asked to play in our parish and in The Church in New Jersey may be hard; the Good News is we’re not alone. 

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be known by the Jesus who has to forgive my stewardship struggles than to be unknown to Him for having made no effort at all to be a Faithful steward.

We’re in this together. God is with us; Jesus said so at The Cross. We get to respond to that everyday of our lives.

Love you. See you in Church.

FBC3+