Inspiring People Anew

Written by: Rev. Dr. Agnes W. Norfleet
Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, Bryn Mawr, PA

 

For nearly thirty years I have sat with Stewardship Committees, and brainstormed how to inspire people anew to make a deeper commitment to the church so that we can enlarge our congregation’s mission and vision.

You can imagine those conversations go. How can we take the church budget: made up of the expenses of Sunday School curriculum, electric bills, benevolent mission support, salaries, paper towels and toilet paper, and translate those expenditures into the work of Christ in the world?

There are always some well-meaning folks who want us to do the math and calculate some measured way to communicate real church expenses in order to inspire giving. They think that educating people about what it costs to run the church might make a difference. How much money does the church invest in the Christian nurture of a family of four? If people knew what our bills are for electricity, coffee hour and childcare would giving increase?

Pondering such questions raises good and faithful conversation about how to inspire generosity, but the church is a place where doing the math can never adequately measure the mission. How do you put a price on two or more church members gathered with the spirit of the Living Christ in their midst? How can you do the accounting of the youth going to an urban farm to learn how they can participate in providing food for the poor? How do you measure the experience of Deacons delivering flowers to the church’s homebound members? How do you calculate the seasoned nurture that inspires church friends to show up with a casserole or when a family member has died? How do you put a price on the beauty of music that lifts our spirits to the holiness of God? How do you estimate the expense of raising a baptized child in the church?

There is no way to calculate what it cost to be a member of the church  because not one of us could afford the price of what it means to know we are loved unconditionally; we belong to a community of forgiveness and grace; we share hope that somehow through our own participation God is ushering in a new creation.

The primary work of stewardship is not to do the math of what church participation costs per member. The primary thing is to testify to the goodness of God, to lift up the invaluable nature of Christian community and to inspire the heart. When the heart is moved generosity of the hand will follow.