generosity
This interview was conducted in lieu of a sermon on Sunday, October 23, 2016 at Mt. Olivet United Methodist Church (Arlington District, Virginia Conference) during their Let Your Light Shine Stewardship campaign. This interview has been lightly edited to remove verbal ticks and to firm up sentence structure and add clarity as needed. An audio recording is available on Mt. Olivet's website.
Kathleen: We are in the middle of our fall stewardship campaign "Let Your Light Shine," and we thought it might be a good thing to share stories of generosity with each other and for all of the congregation to overhear these stories. So this week and next week we'll be interviewing members of the congregation instead of a more traditional sermon. And this morning it's a joy to welcome Kate.
Kathleen: So, Kate, what brought you to Mt. Olivet?
Kate: Friends brought me to Mt. Olivet. When I moved back to the area with my teenagers about a year and a half ago, I reconnected with some college friends who are long-term members here at Mt. Olivet. It's been a joy to go to church with them, and I've met more friends like you and Amanda and decided that this was a good place to be.
Kathleen: So what makes you stay, besides me being fabulous?
Kate: Well, you're pretty fabulous, so..... One of the big things that makes me stay, actually, is the multigenerational ministry that happens here. We lived in rural Michigan for a long time, and there were a lot of years and more than one church where my kids were the Sunday school. There were no other children, there were no youth for them to look up to. The congregations were aging, so it's nice to be here where there are families and people at lots of points along the spectrum of age, and a robust Sunday school, and confirmation class, and youth group.
Kathleen: So our theme for stewardship is Let Your Light Shine, and when we talked about this question before, we couldn't settle on one ministry or mission of the church that really stands out for you, so what are the missions and ministries of this church that stand out for you, and how do you let your light shine through them.
Kate: The mission of the church that I'm the most excited about is La Cucina, downstairs, the activity that we host in our kitchen. When I first learned about that ministry, I asked some questions and tried to see if there's a way I could get involved, and the answer is really no, so I support La Cucina by staying out of the way: respecting their space in the refrigerator, not messing with their stuff, putting their kitchen things back where they belong when I'm done using them. And also, the funds that I give to Mt. Olivet are undirected, so if La Cucina needs money, then hopefully some of the money I give to Mt. Olivet can go there.
In terms of the ministry of the church, I really enjoy worshipping with the way. There is a lot about that service that I like, and I let my light shine there through participating. I help with hospitality--in fact before I came up here for this service today, I helped Marsha with the snacks downstairs--and I have preached and offered children's sermons in the way.
Kathleen: We're talking about generosity, and I'm curious: where did you learn generosity?
Kate: I think I learned generosity in the church, particularly in confirmation class when I was thirteen. We talked about the vows we were going to take, that we were pledging to support the United Methodist Church with our prayers, our presence, our gifts, and our service. And now we've added our witness to that pledge.
And the church that I grew up in was a rural church in Pennsylvania the size of a one-room school house. While I was a teenager, we were raising the money to build a new building, which was a big stretch. And we started to raise that money three dollars at a time buying cinderblocks for the foundation. Every time we raised another three dollars, one of the women in the church would glue a sugar cube to a model of the foundation of the new building until we had enough money for all the necessary sugar cubes. And then we moved on to studs--they were more expensive than three dollars apiece--but the studs were popsicle sticks. It took years for us to build this sugar cube and popsicle stick model of the church, but at the end of the process, we had the money we needed to actually build the building. And so it was watching the members of this congregation be generous with each other and give beyond their normal giving to do this next thing that taught me a lesson in generosity.
I also think that generosity begets generosity. When you commit to give and then you practice that commitment, you're like, 'Oh, hey! I can do this! Maybe I can do more.' Giving becomes self-reinforcing.
Kathleen: And how do you personally practice generosity?
Kate: In terms of giving my gifts to the church?
Kathleen: Sure! Or just in your life.
Kate: So a lot of times in a campaign like this and in the church at stewardship time what we're focused on most is the money, which is important, but it's not the only way to practice generosity. There have been times in my adult life where I didn't have a tithe to give to the church. But I was able to sit down with my checkbook and the pile of bills and make decisions about money prayerfully: how am I going to honor my commitments? am I going to have anything left to give financially to the church?
I also think bigger about the idea of our gifts. The oath we make to the church is not only our money. It's our prayers and our presence. Just showing up is keeping your oath. And our gifts are not just the monetary ones. We can give our time, our talents, all of those things, too.
[I wish I had thought to talk about my support of American University's United Methodist Chaplaincy, the Kay Spiritual Life Center, and Friendly Planet Missiology here.]
Kathleen: Can you tell the offering basket story?
Kate: Oh! The offering basket story.... For a couple of reasons, sometimes in my life, like I said, I haven't always had financial things to give to the church. Sometimes in my life [even when I do have a tithe to give] I just always forget to bring the offering. And now, I give to Mt. Olivet electronically, so I don't have anything to physically put in the basket. The habit that I've gotten into in the past when I didn't have anything to put in the basket was to still touch the offering plate. So, even if I don't have anything to put in it, I hold the offering plate in my hands, and I think about what I'm giving that week. Sometimes it's just I remember that I've given online, and sometimes its that this week I'm giving my time, or this week I'm praying for a congregant, or this week I'm doing some work for the church. Right, so using that moment of the offering plate moving before me to concentrate and think, 'What am I giving this week?'
Kathleen: Do you find that practicing generosity brings wholeness to your life?
Kate: What do you mean by wholeness?
Kathleen: Does practicing generosity make you feel like the person God created you to be?
Kate: Yes. Yeah, I think so. I think generosity isn't wholeness all by itself, but it definitely is an important component--that idea that we are created and called to give as well as receive.
Kathleen: And now the six million dollar question that you and I have spent a lot of time talking about, and I'm really excited for you to share your thoughts with the congregation: What goes through your mind when you look at that pledge card?
Kate: I do not like the pledge cards. Having been the lay leader of a small church, I understand the desire on the part of the church leadership to know. I understand the desire to have numbers, to be able to say, 'In the next year, our congregants are going to give us X amount of dollars.' At the same time, one of the small churches I was involved with in rural Michigan did not do pledge cards because at some time in their past, pledge cards--and arguments about pledge cards--had caused a schism in the church. We didn't have that as a tool, so we looked at our patterns of income and our patterns of expenses over the last year, five years, ten years, and those were the numbers that we used to plan our budget. We were pretty successful at that. Using those numbers worked for us and allowed us to not bring up the hard feelings associated with pledge cards in that congregation.
As a congregant myself, when I'm faced with a pledge card, I do one of two things: Either I just avoid it, and I never turn it in, and I feel kind of bad because the church asked me to do something, and I didn't. Or, I write down a very low number. That's in part because the pledge card presumes a constancy of income that I haven't experienced in my adult life. Although I know that no one in this church, no one in the office is ever going to chase me down and say, 'You pledged us three hundred dollars this year and you've only given us ten'--that's not going to happen--at the same time if I write something on the pledge card and I sign it and I put it in the offering basket, that feels like a covenant now. It feels like something that I have to do. I am more able to give with a joyful heart if I don't feel that sort of weight associated with the giving. So I would rather not participate in pledge cards.
Kathleen: But not participating in the pledge cards doesn't mean that you don't practice generosity.
Kate: Right. Right, I absolutely give. Not using the pledge card doesn't mean not giving. It just means giving consciously and adjusting the gift as the circumstances of my finances and my family's situation change.
Kathleen: I think when we talk about money in the church, sometimes we forget that it's a communal thing. There are those among us who are definitely in the situation to sit down and fill out the pledge card with our graphs and our pie charts and our Excel spreadsheets. Some of us lead different kinds of lives, and it's something that we do together as a community.
Kate: Yeah, it is something that we do together as a community, and I think that the continuation of the use of pledge cards in the Methodist church as a whole is tradition-based. We've done it for a long time, and so we keep doing it, but it doesn't work for all of us.
Kathleen: Is there anything else you would like to share about Mt. Olivet and your time at Mt. Olivet or generosity?
Kate: I'm just really happy to be in a church that has as much variety as Mt. Olivet does. There's a lot that Mt. Olivet has to offer because all of us bring our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness together to the community.
Kathleen: Thank you. Amen and amen.
Kathleen: We are in the middle of our fall stewardship campaign "Let Your Light Shine," and we thought it might be a good thing to share stories of generosity with each other and for all of the congregation to overhear these stories. So this week and next week we'll be interviewing members of the congregation instead of a more traditional sermon. And this morning it's a joy to welcome Kate.
Kathleen: So, Kate, what brought you to Mt. Olivet?
Kate: Friends brought me to Mt. Olivet. When I moved back to the area with my teenagers about a year and a half ago, I reconnected with some college friends who are long-term members here at Mt. Olivet. It's been a joy to go to church with them, and I've met more friends like you and Amanda and decided that this was a good place to be.
Kathleen: So what makes you stay, besides me being fabulous?
Kate: Well, you're pretty fabulous, so..... One of the big things that makes me stay, actually, is the multigenerational ministry that happens here. We lived in rural Michigan for a long time, and there were a lot of years and more than one church where my kids were the Sunday school. There were no other children, there were no youth for them to look up to. The congregations were aging, so it's nice to be here where there are families and people at lots of points along the spectrum of age, and a robust Sunday school, and confirmation class, and youth group.
Kathleen: So our theme for stewardship is Let Your Light Shine, and when we talked about this question before, we couldn't settle on one ministry or mission of the church that really stands out for you, so what are the missions and ministries of this church that stand out for you, and how do you let your light shine through them.
Kate: The mission of the church that I'm the most excited about is La Cucina, downstairs, the activity that we host in our kitchen. When I first learned about that ministry, I asked some questions and tried to see if there's a way I could get involved, and the answer is really no, so I support La Cucina by staying out of the way: respecting their space in the refrigerator, not messing with their stuff, putting their kitchen things back where they belong when I'm done using them. And also, the funds that I give to Mt. Olivet are undirected, so if La Cucina needs money, then hopefully some of the money I give to Mt. Olivet can go there.
In terms of the ministry of the church, I really enjoy worshipping with the way. There is a lot about that service that I like, and I let my light shine there through participating. I help with hospitality--in fact before I came up here for this service today, I helped Marsha with the snacks downstairs--and I have preached and offered children's sermons in the way.
Kathleen: We're talking about generosity, and I'm curious: where did you learn generosity?
Kate: I think I learned generosity in the church, particularly in confirmation class when I was thirteen. We talked about the vows we were going to take, that we were pledging to support the United Methodist Church with our prayers, our presence, our gifts, and our service. And now we've added our witness to that pledge.
And the church that I grew up in was a rural church in Pennsylvania the size of a one-room school house. While I was a teenager, we were raising the money to build a new building, which was a big stretch. And we started to raise that money three dollars at a time buying cinderblocks for the foundation. Every time we raised another three dollars, one of the women in the church would glue a sugar cube to a model of the foundation of the new building until we had enough money for all the necessary sugar cubes. And then we moved on to studs--they were more expensive than three dollars apiece--but the studs were popsicle sticks. It took years for us to build this sugar cube and popsicle stick model of the church, but at the end of the process, we had the money we needed to actually build the building. And so it was watching the members of this congregation be generous with each other and give beyond their normal giving to do this next thing that taught me a lesson in generosity.
I also think that generosity begets generosity. When you commit to give and then you practice that commitment, you're like, 'Oh, hey! I can do this! Maybe I can do more.' Giving becomes self-reinforcing.
Kathleen: And how do you personally practice generosity?
Kate: In terms of giving my gifts to the church?
Kathleen: Sure! Or just in your life.
Kate: So a lot of times in a campaign like this and in the church at stewardship time what we're focused on most is the money, which is important, but it's not the only way to practice generosity. There have been times in my adult life where I didn't have a tithe to give to the church. But I was able to sit down with my checkbook and the pile of bills and make decisions about money prayerfully: how am I going to honor my commitments? am I going to have anything left to give financially to the church?
I also think bigger about the idea of our gifts. The oath we make to the church is not only our money. It's our prayers and our presence. Just showing up is keeping your oath. And our gifts are not just the monetary ones. We can give our time, our talents, all of those things, too.
[I wish I had thought to talk about my support of American University's United Methodist Chaplaincy, the Kay Spiritual Life Center, and Friendly Planet Missiology here.]
Kathleen: Can you tell the offering basket story?
Kate: Oh! The offering basket story.... For a couple of reasons, sometimes in my life, like I said, I haven't always had financial things to give to the church. Sometimes in my life [even when I do have a tithe to give] I just always forget to bring the offering. And now, I give to Mt. Olivet electronically, so I don't have anything to physically put in the basket. The habit that I've gotten into in the past when I didn't have anything to put in the basket was to still touch the offering plate. So, even if I don't have anything to put in it, I hold the offering plate in my hands, and I think about what I'm giving that week. Sometimes it's just I remember that I've given online, and sometimes its that this week I'm giving my time, or this week I'm praying for a congregant, or this week I'm doing some work for the church. Right, so using that moment of the offering plate moving before me to concentrate and think, 'What am I giving this week?'
Kathleen: Do you find that practicing generosity brings wholeness to your life?
Kate: What do you mean by wholeness?
Kathleen: Does practicing generosity make you feel like the person God created you to be?
Kate: Yes. Yeah, I think so. I think generosity isn't wholeness all by itself, but it definitely is an important component--that idea that we are created and called to give as well as receive.
Kathleen: And now the six million dollar question that you and I have spent a lot of time talking about, and I'm really excited for you to share your thoughts with the congregation: What goes through your mind when you look at that pledge card?
Kate: I do not like the pledge cards. Having been the lay leader of a small church, I understand the desire on the part of the church leadership to know. I understand the desire to have numbers, to be able to say, 'In the next year, our congregants are going to give us X amount of dollars.' At the same time, one of the small churches I was involved with in rural Michigan did not do pledge cards because at some time in their past, pledge cards--and arguments about pledge cards--had caused a schism in the church. We didn't have that as a tool, so we looked at our patterns of income and our patterns of expenses over the last year, five years, ten years, and those were the numbers that we used to plan our budget. We were pretty successful at that. Using those numbers worked for us and allowed us to not bring up the hard feelings associated with pledge cards in that congregation.
As a congregant myself, when I'm faced with a pledge card, I do one of two things: Either I just avoid it, and I never turn it in, and I feel kind of bad because the church asked me to do something, and I didn't. Or, I write down a very low number. That's in part because the pledge card presumes a constancy of income that I haven't experienced in my adult life. Although I know that no one in this church, no one in the office is ever going to chase me down and say, 'You pledged us three hundred dollars this year and you've only given us ten'--that's not going to happen--at the same time if I write something on the pledge card and I sign it and I put it in the offering basket, that feels like a covenant now. It feels like something that I have to do. I am more able to give with a joyful heart if I don't feel that sort of weight associated with the giving. So I would rather not participate in pledge cards.
 |
| Behold the pledge card I will not be filling out. Ironic that it appeared in my mailbox the day after this interview. ;-) |
Kate: Right. Right, I absolutely give. Not using the pledge card doesn't mean not giving. It just means giving consciously and adjusting the gift as the circumstances of my finances and my family's situation change.
Kathleen: I think when we talk about money in the church, sometimes we forget that it's a communal thing. There are those among us who are definitely in the situation to sit down and fill out the pledge card with our graphs and our pie charts and our Excel spreadsheets. Some of us lead different kinds of lives, and it's something that we do together as a community.
Kate: Yeah, it is something that we do together as a community, and I think that the continuation of the use of pledge cards in the Methodist church as a whole is tradition-based. We've done it for a long time, and so we keep doing it, but it doesn't work for all of us.
Kathleen: Is there anything else you would like to share about Mt. Olivet and your time at Mt. Olivet or generosity?
Kate: I'm just really happy to be in a church that has as much variety as Mt. Olivet does. There's a lot that Mt. Olivet has to offer because all of us bring our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness together to the community.
Kathleen: Thank you. Amen and amen.
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