“The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance. You are Christ’s body–that’s who you are! You must never forget this. (1 Corinthians 12, The Message)
It’s that time again, soon, you know it when the Super Bowl comes calling. The WCC Church Annual meeting is at hand! For us it will be Wednesday, February 7 — pizza at 5:30, meeting at 6:30.
The central document we grapple with at this meeting is the proposed budget for the coming year. It is attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that he said “a budget is a moral document.” The point is, at least in part, that a budget lays bare the mission and values of an organized community, or in our case, the budget sets us off as Winnetka Covenant Church into another year of life and ministry, this one being our 97th!
The proposed budget to come will be what we call a “deficit budget”. That is, that we expect our collective giving will not be enough to fund our ministry for the year. To a great extent this is no surprise. I think I’m right in saying that in my 23 years here we have never begun the year with a balanced budget. We begin with the finite figure of our collective pledges and we make assumptions about non-pledge giving and these together usually form 60 to 70 percent of our proposed budget. At our annual meeting we have conversation, and maybe make a few adjustments, but our budget always ends up being a deficit budget. We pray and commit ourselves toward that other 30 percent, and on we go. Welcome to the quirky world of faith based budgets! A more positive way to say it is that a deficit budget is a faith budget. We are people and a community of faith, believing that God is with us and will help us forward. Our mission remains. On we go.
Just now I’d like to also say that while a budget is a moral document, and for us rooted in our faith, ours is also a “body budget”. That is to say that it is our collective coming together, our together work. St. Paul talks about how critical it is to a body that all the parts are functions, participating as they should, are healthy in their contributions to the whole. The whole idea of a church body, biblically and theologically, is first that we all as members and friends of the church participate in it’s ministry — with our gifts of time, talent, and treasure. The second idea is that this giving of ourselves and our resources is our primary, or best, our most substantial giving, because this church is our body, our primary community of faith and spiritual growth and life, the place and people with whom we live out our faith in the world.
It is embracing, each of us, our central part in this body of Christ, this Church, that we catch a vision — that if we can come together in this way, we need not have a deficit budget, that our collective work of giving can set us free to more boldly pursue the mission of God and neighbor love that is our witness to the world.
A few practical thoughts:
Participate in giving to the church. Pray about saying yes when you are asked to serve. Pray about your most substantial giving being to your church.
Make an effort to study the proposed budget, and join the annual meeting on February 7. We need everyone’s voice and energy!
Commit yourself as a part of the body to its health and flourishing.
The budget is a body document!
Praying with you
Peter Hawkinson
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