by Jason Byassee
Dear Friends,
A lay leader here whom I trust deeply recently came to me with some advice. “You ask a lot of us,” he said. “It wouldn’t hurt to thank us, say ‘attaboy’, every now and then”.
Jason Byassee
He couldn’t be more right. I spent oceans of words and worry last fall on our finances. Y’all heard about it, I lost sleep over it, it hung over lots of our conversations, in worship and far outside. I honestly felt last fall sometimes like the wheels were coming off. I know we have a history of catching up at the end of the year with our giving, but what if this is the first time we don’t? On my watch? (sorry to overpersonalize these matters…).
Then we did catch up. Money kept coming in into 2013 (apparently you can give well into January toward the year before and get tax benefits. Who knew?!). One noteworthy gift came from our own Preschool, which sent a gift of $2,000 to the church, bless them. And we realized in our accounting that $50,000 we set aside for repair was being counted as an expense, when it’s still in our hands, waiting to be spent (we removed it from our profit and loss sheet). So with an avalanche of generous year-end giving we met our expenses for 2012. I still can’t believe it when I think about it. Several of you have come to me and asked, “Did we make it? Our family stretched, dug deep, and did all we could.” I can’t say this enough: thank you. That end of the year giving is not to be presumed. It took all of us digging deep and giving generously–in response to a God who gives us everything in Christ.
Another of you suggested I more often give thanks for folks in lay leadership, serving on committees, stretching our church in mission (do you see a common theme in the feedback I’m getting?!). I told her I hesitate to thank people because no one is serving for me. Any service, any giving, any time offered, is done out of love for God, the church, and our community. For me to say ‘thank you’ hints that I’m the recipient, and I never am. She corrected me: “It’s not for you, sure enough. But you’re the leader of our church. Your thanks means something.”
With this first round of committee meetings at our church in 2013, with eager new members and wise longer-time participants, I’m staggered at the level of creativity and hospitality offered in leadership in our church. I hear stories about the elbow grease and skill with which we rebuilt our church building after the fire in 1982. Lots more of our leaders are around who built this current site in 2000. We have more community leaders than I can count, in all sectors of society, who are part of our congregation.
And we have real needs. One group is talking about what our vision as a church should be. They talked before about our financial situation, our debt, our long term financial prospects, and possible need for a capital campaign. Another group is working on our welcoming practices. We have a confusing building, hard to read for outsiders, leaving, say, parents with kids who turn up to church 15 minutes late unsure where to take their kids, where to find worship, where they left their car. Another group is trying to tend to a building that is aging and having expensive repair problems to HVAC’s. Another wants to make our prayer space more beautiful, on the way to attracting more participation in our prayer practices. Others spend all their time and effort in designing creative and exciting ministry with our children, our youth, in missions in our community. Still another is launching new endeavors in mission internationally and locally and among the poor. If you count the hours and the worn shoe leather and the chewed up pencils you’d run out of time.
This church is such a gift. It is offering its life to God, who offered his life to us first in Christ. The kingdom of God inches slightly closer when we do these things. As leader of this church on its behalf I say, thank you, more profoundly than I can ever articulate on my own. And as your friend and fellow church member, your fellow sinner being saved by grace, I say “Let’s get back to work.”