James
2 My brothers and sisters,* whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, 3because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; 4and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.
5 If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. 6But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; 7, 8for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.
Back from the Diocesan Convention where our delegation was not seated. This was a consequence of our decision not to pay all of our 2009 Diocesan Assessment. When we received the budget report for the past year, we had an almost $100k reduction in giving.
This may have been caused by several things; the economic crisis and resulting job loses, uncertainty about the economy, loss of membership, dissatisfaction with the National Church policies, and death. What ever the reason, there was a short fall.
We opted not to pay our assessment as a tithe, but rather put it back at the end of the year so we would not have to face the tough decisions about staff reduction, and other cuts that may have been necessary to meet the assessment. We were thinking practically and I think it was a best intentioned decision. We presented a balanced budget to the parish that year and while there was discussion and concern, however; we all opted against making some hard decisions; or I now wonder, against acting in faith and adopting a deficit budget.
Ultimately we received some year end gifts and were able to pay our loan principal, and put $14k towards the $66K assessment. This however did not fulfill our dues, and was the reason we were not given vote or voice in the Diocese.
Would a faith based budget precipitate a crisis? Yes it would have when the money started to run out. Would that have motivated the parish to come forward and raise additional funds, we won’t know. We doubted.
What have I learned? Well the budget is in the same shape, we have the ability to avoid making tough choices about staffing because we have the balance of our Rector’s salary and elimination of his expenses for seven months of the year. We are paying our current assessment, but will not have money to pay a new Rector and pay the assessment and keep the staff if we happen to find our right person to call.
We asked folks to “step out in faith’ this stewardship season. Perhaps we need to better communicate the realities and the effects of our current level of commitment. Perhaps this is a crisis that only faith will solve.
I have to have faith, I have to trust the congregation, so the Stewardship Committee is going to be bold, and is going to have to ask again. It will mean all will have to make some sacrifice. Sacrifice is testing, testing builds endurance, and that endurance will complete us.
It's all good so far 