A Body Budget

“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

Thermometer or Thermostat

Today’s blog post is written by Pastor Jen.

I don’t know how I did this, exactly, but for the second year in a row I was due to write a blog on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

And for the second year in a row, I opened my planner yesterday, looked at my note to “write blog” and groaned a little.

Because what, really, do I have to say about the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., or about the work that remains to be done?

It feels tone deaf at best, and hypocritical at worst, as a white person to tell you all about MLK and how we should understand him.

So, for the second year in a row, I will not attempt to do that.

Instead, I will share a thought that other people – BIPOC leaders who I respect and learn from – shared with me yesterday: Which is that, before we do any quoting of MLK, we should re-read his letter from a Birmingham Jail. You can find the full text here, and at many other places on the internet.

It’s especially important for those of us who style ourselves as moderates to do so, and as white Christians, because his words were particularly addressed to white church leaders who criticized his work; who might have agreed with his goals but denigrated his methods.

He writes beautifully in this letter about civil disobedience, about faith, about unjust laws and the way of nonviolence, about a deep love for the church and a deep disappointment in its response.

Perhaps most compellingly, he writes these words that I think deserve our continued reflection:

“There was a time when the church was very powerful—in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.”’ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent—and often even vocal—sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.“

So what will it be – thermometer or thermostat?

As anyone in the greater Chicago area (perhaps the entire Midwest) knows right now, we are in a terrible cold snap. So cold that certain things stop working…like my thermostat yesterday.

And let me tell you, when it went from being an effective thermostat to being a thermometer, I got COLD. I got uncomfortable. My sweet dog woke me up because she too was uncomfortable, and demanded something be done about it.

I had to turn that thermometer back into a thermostat – and thanks to God, some electrical tape, and the internet, I’m happy to report that I did.

But I’m not often in the place of being uncomfortable and forced into action like that.

To get back to MLK’s letter, I am one of the people most benefitted by the status quo – white, straight, non-disabled, middle class, college educated. So things as they are work for me, in general.

But they don’t work for a lot of people. And part of our call as Christians is to be the family of God; the body of Christ, and to recognize that when one part of the body is hurt or sick then all of us suffer.

That is when things will change.

When we realize that we’re all affected by injustice, and it hurts everyone. Then we, the comfortable, will be moved to act. I pray that day is soon. That maybe even it is now.

I don’t have much more to say that hasn’t been said many times, more eloquently, and by people with much more credibility and experience than I. But I will leave you with this question, which remains as urgent for us now as ever:

What will we, the church, be: thermometer or thermostat?

yours,

Pastor Jen

Thermometer or Thermostat

Today’s blog post is written by Pastor Jen.

I don’t know how I did this, exactly, but for the second year in a row I was due to write a blog on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

And for the second year in a row, I opened my planner yesterday, looked at my note to “write blog” and groaned a little.

Because what, really, do I have to say about the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., or about the work that remains to be done?

It feels tone deaf at best, and hypocritical at worst, as a white person to tell you all about MLK and how we should understand him.

So, for the second year in a row, I will not attempt to do that.

Instead, I will share a thought that other people – BIPOC leaders who I respect and learn from – shared with me yesterday: Which is that, before we do any quoting of MLK, we should re-read his letter from a Birmingham Jail. You can find the full text here, and at many other places on the internet.

It’s especially important for those of us who style ourselves as moderates to do so, and as white Christians, because his words were particularly addressed to white church leaders who criticized his work; who might have agreed with his goals but denigrated his methods.

He writes beautifully in this letter about civil disobedience, about faith, about unjust laws and the way of nonviolence, about a deep love for the church and a deep disappointment in its response.

Perhaps most compellingly, he writes these words that I think deserve our continued reflection:

“There was a time when the church was very powerful—in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.”’ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent—and often even vocal—sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.“

So what will it be – thermometer or thermostat?

As anyone in the greater Chicago area (perhaps the entire Midwest) knows right now, we are in a terrible cold snap. So cold that certain things stop working…like my thermostat yesterday.

And let me tell you, when it went from being an effective thermostat to being a thermometer, I got COLD. I got uncomfortable. My sweet dog woke me up because she too was uncomfortable, and demanded something be done about it.

I had to turn that thermometer back into a thermostat – and thanks to God, some electrical tape, and the internet, I’m happy to report that I did.

But I’m not often in the place of being uncomfortable and forced into action like that.

To get back to MLK’s letter, I am one of the people most benefitted by the status quo – white, straight, non-disabled, middle class, college educated. So things as they are work for me, in general.

But they don’t work for a lot of people. And part of our call as Christians is to be the family of God; the body of Christ, and to recognize that when one part of the body is hurt or sick then all of us suffer.

That is when things will change.

When we realize that we’re all affected by injustice, and it hurts everyone. Then we, the comfortable, will be moved to act. I pray that day is soon. That maybe even it is now.

I don’t have much more to say that hasn’t been said many times, more eloquently, and by people with much more credibility and experience than I. But I will leave you with this question, which remains as urgent for us now as ever:

What will we, the church, be: thermometer or thermostat?

yours,

Pastor Jen