West Mersea Giving and Thanksgiving service, January 30 2011

20110130 West Mersea Giving and Thanksgiving

Dear friends, we have gathered together this morning to consider our financial situation, to reflect on giving and thanksgiving – and it is a good thing to be together. We are a very diverse family of Christians in this church, spread across at least five different congregations, and that difference is a blessing and a strength. I believe that we should seek to be a broad church within which all manner of Christians can find a home and place in which to grow in faith, service and love of the Lord. Yet there are times when we need to come together to consider matters which affect the church as a whole, and this is one of them. Thank you for coming today.



Financial context
I would like to begin by sharing with you the financial position of the church, and the decisions that the PCC have been making, so that you are fully informed of the financial context that we operate in. This opening ten minutes will, I am afraid, be very dry. I want to make some comparisons between 2004 and 2010, (2004 chosen because it is as far back as we have computerised records) first with regard to our income, and then our expenditure. Our core income, by which I mean the regular giving from the congregation and money given to the collections during the services, rose from around £65k in 2004 to £76k in 2006 – that largely reflected our growth in numbers with the development of the 9.30 congregation – and it currently stands at about £78k, so an increase in what we might call the giving of our regular congregations of £13k over the period in question, most of the increase coming at the beginning. If we then include our other sources of income, such as fees and the hiring of the hall and so on, our income in 2004 was just under £86k, and in 2010 it was just under £93k – an increase in our total standard income of around £7k. You will realise that what this means is that the level of core income which we received from those other sources has actually dropped since 2004. It dropped from £7k in 2004 down to less than £3k in 2007, but has been built up again to just over £5k last year. This is an area that we need to strengthen, and the PCC has been considering ways in which to do that. Our income over this time was also supplemented by some legacies totalling around £35k or so, and some other one-off donations.

So in many ways this is a positive story. Our income has been going up. What complicates matters is that our expenditure has also gone up, and by significantly more than our income – hence this need to consider our finance!

Now our expenditure. In 2004 our expenditure was £75k, and that was the last year that our expenditure was covered by our income, excluding legacies. Our expenditure rose to £88k the next year, and built up to a peak of £107k in 2009 – that included £8k on the new boiler. Last year expenditure was £101k, and this year we expect to spend around £108k – the trouble is, at the moment we don't have £108k of income to cover it! A large part of that rise in expenditure was committed to employing Mark Brosnan as our Associate Priest – we spent around £35k on his ministry, spread over four years, and we made the decision not to continue that ministry on financial grounds. However, it is the expenditure in other areas which is the on going concern.

First and foremost is the cost of repairing the fabric. The expenditure that was saved by not employing Mark was then taken up by the increased cost of repairs, on which we have spent £15k over the last two years – compared to £700 in 2004 – and we need to maintain that level of expenditure for some time! It is my belief, shared quite widely I believe, that it would be right to appeal to the wider community in West Mersea for help with maintaining the fabric of the parish church. To that end we are launching an appeal for help with the fabric costs, which will 'go public' at the beginning of March, with a mailshot in Mersea Life magazine. We are going to appeal to the community for direct help with some urgent projects, but we are also planning to set up a Friends organisation – as has happened in the other parishes of the benefice – so that there is ongoing help into the future. Please do keep your eyes open for developments on that score and join in so far as you can.

I think it is important, though, to share with you what we spend your money on. If we take out what we spent on Mark, and what we spend on major repairs then our core expenditure has risen from £74k in 2004 to £95k in 2010, an increase of £21k per year. Two things about that.

The first thing is that almost half of that increase in costs is directly attributable to the rise in our parish share. This year we are paying a little over £60k to our parish share, and that is by far the largest item of expenditure in our budget. The parish share is what we pay to the Diocese to employ clergy, and we don't have much latitude in negotiating that (For interest, the average cost of a vicar, if everything is included is nearly £60k). The remainder of the increase in our underlying costs since 2004 is made up of an increase of £2.7k in our utility bills, £4k in charitable giving and the remainder in our office costs. Our scope for trimming our expenditure is actually quite small. Even if, for example, we decided to stop giving money to charity from the PCC, it would probably only grant us a year's grace before the problems arose again. Put simply, we can expect our expenditure to increase by around £4k a year, and so we need to raise that money from the congregation and from whatever fund-raising efforts that we can put into place. For the last several years we have managed to increase our income enough to have met the previous years commitments – not the present years. Hence our reserves have slowly been drawn down as you can see clearly from the graph on the circulated sheet.

Let me emphasise the most important points. In order to make our budget balance this year, and not including any fabric repair costs, we need to raise our income by around £10k, and we will then need to raise our income each ongoing year by 4 or £5k per year simply in order to maintain the ministry that we are presently providing. Some of that we might be able to make by having more 'events' like concerts; but I expect that most of it will have to come from you, the regular congregation. As I say, this does not include the money that we need to spend on the fabric; we are very much hoping that the separate appeal to the community and the setting up of a Friends organisation will address that aspect of our obligations. However, we have also run down our reserves, and it would be prudent to start building them up again.

Now there is one feature of our giving which I would like to spend more time on. The Diocese calculates the average giving per church member per week, and I have the figures for the Colchester Deanery. They are a few years old (to end 2007) but I don't believe the underlying picture has changed. The average member of Colchester Deanery gives just under £9 a week to their church. That average hides quite a lot of variation. In North Colchester, in Myland and in St John's, they give around £12 a week each; here in Mersea we give an average of £6 a week each. In other words, the typical church member in Colchester gives 50% more to their church than a typical church member in the Mersea benefice, and church members in North Colchester give twice as much as church members here.

Now averages can be misleading. I am well aware that there are many people here who give sacrificially of their income, who simply cannot afford to give any more, and to them I would say: thank you, take heart from the story of the widow's mite, for the Lord looks on the heart, not the quantity of cash. Jesus is clear that giving to the God does not displace our obligations to families or to the poor. What is given is between you and God, and nobody can ever second-guess or judge another person in this regard. As St Paul puts it, “Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” But yet. Having said that. Pondering that discrepancy, between the average giving in our neighbouring parishes and the average giving in this parish, I do wonder if a large part of the explanation is simply that we, as a church community, do not understand what it is to have a Christian attitude to money. And if that is the truth then I must take the foremost responsibility for that situation as I have not properly spelled out what a Christian understanding of money actually is. Before writing this address I looked back through some recent annual meeting addresses, and it seems that, in each of the last four or five years, I have said then what I have said to you again this morning: we need to raise our level of giving; as a church, we do not give enough to make ends meet. That sort of appeal has not been successful, and so I feel that I need to become more explicit in describing how we are to understand money.

Theology of Money
You may have noticed that the Church of England is greatly exercised about two related matters at the moment: women bishops, and homosexuality. These two matters, on which so much of our hierarchy's energy is being expended, are not matters on which our Lord Jesus Christ says a single word. You cannot say the same about money. Jesus teaches repeatedly and explicitly about money, and we need to pay attention to what he says because, to put it in very stark terms, what we do with our money is a salvation issue. It is much more of a salvation issue than our sexuality.

So what does Jesus say? He says this: “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” What this means is that what we do with our money has to be placed under what we do as disciples, what we do with our money has to be directed by our faith. If we do not do that – if we simply go along with the habitual patterns of our society – then we are not worshipping God, and consequently our salvation is at issue. If you think that I exaggerate, I would refer you to the story of the rich man and Lazarus from Luke's gospel, where Jesus is very clear about the implications.

So what does it mean to direct our use of money by our faith? Well, it is not that money itself is intrinsically evil or disordered – Scripture has a very positive attitude to material wealth – the trouble is that the love of money can mislead us, and take us a very long way from God. This is the burden of some of Jesus' teachings about the Kingdom. When the merchant finds the pearl of great price, all else is given up in order to purchase it. Or when the man who found the treasure hidden in a field sells everything else in order to buy that field. What is on offer from God through Christ is a share in something so marvellous and wonderful that everything else simply pales in comparison. “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!” It is not that 'everything else' is wrong in itself, it is that if we get distracted by those other things, wonderful in themselves, and lose our sight of God, the source of wonderful things – then we lose everything. What does it profit us if we gain the whole world but lose our own souls? No, first we must seek God's kingdom and God's righteousness and then all these things will be given to us as well.

How does this love of money that Jesus criticises, and which is so toxic to our spiritual health – how does it manifest itself? Well, the obvious way is seen in a character like Scrooge, the classic miser who is concerned simply to hoard up his bags of gold. Yet such an obvious disorder is not, I believe, the prevalent way in which the spiritually toxic love of money manifests itself in our society. There are two key ways in which our views on money can be disordered.

The first relates to fear. I'm sure you will have heard me say in previous sermons that the opposite of faith is not doubt but fear. It is fear that destroys faith, whereas that faith which is perfect love drives out fear. In a closely related fashion the spiritual poison which is a love of money does not lie so much in an explicit hoarding of cash as in a fear, a fear of poverty, of not having enough to live on. If we are afraid of not having enough then we will tend to try to hang on to what we have got and this is the root of the behaviour that turns someone into a scrooge. The spiritual cure for this is to listen to the most-repeated command in Scripture: do not be afraid. Then, instead of having the closed fist of fear which squeezes tight, we have the open hand of faith onto which God can pour his blessings. It means listening closely to St Paul when he talks about learning to be content with what he has. [Malachi 3.7-12] I think there is also some truth in what the Psalmist writes: “I have been young and now I am old, but never have I seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging for bread.” (For that to be true would mean – especially in our present economic context – that the church starts to take material wealth, and the need for members to support each other, much more seriously than we do at the moment. Exploring the full implications of that is a matter for another time.)

The second way in which our approach to money can be distorted relates to materialism, that is, when we use retail therapy to cover up a spiritual void within us. Some of Jesus' most challenging words were addressed to the young lawyer who wanted to be perfect. He had a very good understanding of the law, and was living what seemed to be a very righteous life. Yet he was aware that there was something more that God was asking from him, and so he asked Jesus for advice. And Jesus said 'Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasures in heaven. Then come, follow me'. Our culture tells us so very loudly, through all the advertising and media within which we swim, that purchasing is the path to happiness. This is a lie, a wicked lie, and one that has incredibly destructive consequences. All that the world wants from us is to increase our greed, because it is our greed that will keep the economic engines stoked. This is our contemporary idolatry. We do not burn children for Moloch, which the ancient Hebrews did when they had fallen away from the faith; we simply ask them to work until their fingers bleed stitching cheap clothes to add to our wardrobes. What we do with our money matters. God will hold us to account. And yes – Thou shalt not shop at Tesco!

So must we give up all our possessions and sell them to provide for the poor? After all, St Francis is revered because he did just that, and there have been all sorts of wonderful consequences flowing from his decision. I do not believe that the way of that young man, the way of St Francis, is necessarily the right way forward for everyone. Yet I also do not believe that we will come to a right understanding of money unless we hear those words with full force, as if they were addressed directly to us. What I mean is this: all that we have belongs to God. The Earth is the Lord's and all that is in it. That includes everything that we possess, it includes all that we earn. Unless we recognise that everything that we have is a gift from God, which we only enjoy on a temporary basis, which is ultimately for him to dispose of, we will never have a right attitude to money. So I believe that we must be prepared, in principle, to follow the advice that the young man rejected, and which St Francis followed. Unless we are prepared to give up all that we own, I do not believe that we are worthy to be called Christ's disciples.

What might it look like, once we have heard God's call and accepted that all that we have is God's gift? Well, we give thanks for what we have. In response to God's giving, we respond with thanksgiving. And that means worship, and it means sacrifice, which in the end are the same thing. The Hebrew word for sacrifice has its origin in that simple word: thanks. Thank you God. Sacrifice is simply giving back to God the things which are God's. It is recognising that the Lord gives and the Lord takes away – Blessed be the name of the Lord. Here, I believe, is where we are called to hear the importance of so much of the Old Testament literature, which describes the processes of sacrifice in the Temple, and lays down the regulations for what the people should offer up to God, such as in our first reading from Nehemiah. The shepherd should offer up a perfect lamb. The one who grows fruit on the tree should offer up first fruits. Those who grow grain should offer up the best grain. The father should bring his first-born to be dedicated to God forty days after his birth – ah yes, in the Christian tradition that is called Candlemas, when we remember that happening to Jesus, as described in our gospel – we are celebrating that today, specifically in a choral eucharist tonight in Peldon.

What Scripture teaches is that the needs of worship, our sacrifice of thanksgiving, this comes first. Unless we bring our monetary affairs into the context of our worship then we are simply paying lip-service to the idea of serving God rather than mammon. Giving to the church, giving to our worship – this is the primary way in which our attitude to money becomes rightly-ordered. When the Hebrews did this it did not mean that they then became completely righteous in every respect; what it meant was that, by sacrificing their wealth rightly they learnt the right attitude to money, that is, that God is more important than anything else. Giving up the first fruits, giving up the perfect unblemished lamb, dedicating the first-born child – in other words, giving up those things which are most valuable – this is how the right attitude to material wealth grows in us. Unless we do something similar, we have no hope of becoming righteous with our money.

At the heart of this process was the notion of the tithe, that is, the ten per cent that went to the priests, in order to maintain the temple, to meet the needs of the poor and to enable the community to be reconciled with God. We no longer have that Temple. Jesus destroyed it, and it was replaced after three days by his body – and what we do when we break bread together achieves what was achieved by the temple. Yet the principle of giving to God in worship remains. We no longer slaughter small mammals and birds – we share a cup of wine. That is what our eucharist is – the word eucharist is simply the greek word for thanksgiving – and our eucharist is our sacrifice of thanksgiving.

Yet the spiritual principle at issue here has not gone away. It remains the case that by bringing our first-fruits to God we are rightly ordered to material wealth. We are called to give to God what is right, not what is left. The Church of England therefore teaches that each Christian should give away 10% of their income – half to the church, half to other charities. In practice a member of the Church of England actually gives around 2% of their income to the church. I believe that we, as a local church and as a national church, have not heard God's message with regard to our money. We do not acknowledge that all wealth belongs to God, that all things come from him and what we give is a thanksgiving. Because of this our church is financially stressed, distracted by the storms of the world's preoccupations, and failing in its mission to share and live out the gospel. When we are obedient, then the peoples will praise God.

I do not believe in asking people to do more than I do myself – here is a form in which I am raising my contribution to this church. I'm not going to tell you how much I'm giving – as I said earlier, what we give is a matter between ourselves and God. Yet I would ask you please, as a very serious matter, to review your understanding of money, the role that it plays in your life and especially your spiritual life, and to consider, prayerfully, whether you can significantly raise your level of giving to the life of this church. Work out what it would mean to give 5% of your income to the church, what that would mean on a weekly or monthly basis. We cannot go on as we have been over the last several years.

A Christian understanding of money can be simply stated: all our wealth comes from God and belongs to him. We acknowledge that truth, and we become rightly ordered in our attitude to our money, when we give to our worship and do not neglect the house of our God. In practice that means tithing our income – 5% to the church, 5% to other worthy causes. We give with thanks, because first we have received. We love, because we have first been loved.

Let us pray for God's guidance:
Holy God, you are the source of all good things, from whom all blessings come;
we ask you to send your Spirit and guide our hearts and minds
so to order our attitudes to our wealth rightly
that we might do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly before you all our days;
this we ask, in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen.