This is the second of (only) two sermons on the topic of Giving. Every year around this time – early in the calendar year, but before Lent begins – we take some time to reflect on our financial giving. There is, let’s be honest, a pragmatic element to this. Today after the service, regular parishioners will receive a brochure, and a form to return to the Parish Council with your commitment for the coming year. They’ll trickle in over the next few weeks, then next month the Finance Committee will try to cobble together a feasible budget to be presented to the Parish Council in April, then to the Annual Meeting of Parishioners in June. The purpose of the commitment forms is to declare our intentions for the year ahead, so that the budget can be drawn up with confidence. I usually explain it by inviting people to imagine that you have a job where the boss says they will certainly pay you something, but they won’t say when and they won’t say how much. If all we did was rely on passing around the plate and hoping people would throw in enough to make the place function – well, there would be no functioning. Planned Giving is our mechanism for establishing confidence in our income, and also for enabling all parishioners including me, to make a firm commitment.
Some people love numbers and some people can’t process them at all. I’m a bit ambivalent about numbers, having failed maths in Year 12, but I’d like to give you a bit of a sense of how money works around here.
On the income side, about 80% of income comes from planned givers. There are about 40 households who are planned givers, and the total given is about $86,000. So that averages out to about $2000 per household – though obviously some give a bit more and others a bit less. Planned Giving is the bedrock of our income – 80c in every dollar comes from those who make an annual commitment, and then deliver on their commitment by putting cash or a cheque in the bags at the collection or, most commonly, arranging an electronic transfer or direct debit.
Most of the rest of the income for the parish comes from what we might call ‘unplanned giving’ – mainly from the collection on Sundays. People who use the facilities usually make a donation - $6000 or per years comes in from that. But that’s it. There is, as my Father used to say, no money tree. The work we do here is funded here.
But there’s actually a little bit more to the story. Because we don’t just fund work here. I sat down earlier in the year to try to quantify the money that we as a community give away. To the Chaplains in our local state schools we give more than $2000 per year, which is raised by people preparing afternoon teas for the Darlington Concert Series. The Chaplains access these funds to provide food hampers for struggling families, or to help kids go to programs to help them get through life. I try to get to our district meeting once a year to hear about where the funds go – and it’s always a story of good news. It’s heartwarming that the people stuffing their faces at the interval of a classical music concert are helping fill the bellies of kids who are doing it tough. Each year at Christmas and Easter, Michelle sells chooks and dunnies (and some other things) and between us we give away about 5000 bucks to help dig wells or plant crops for people who live in serious poverty in other parts of the world. On Good Friday, we give away another thousand bucks or so to the Anglican Board of Mission for aid projects around the world and in remote Australian communities. $700 or so goes to the Christmas Bowl at Christmas for international aid projects, and then there’s the ‘in kind’ stuff. It’s hard to put a dollar value on it, but I reckon at least $3000 per year in food goes from this parish down to Ascension Emergency Food Relief in Midland, and (I guess) $500 worth of undies and cleaning products to the women’s refuge, not to mention the persistent, grueling work of the World Vision team who are also raise money for international aid projects. As a community, the total that we give away is at least $12,000 and that’s just the money that passes through here on its way to some good purpose.
But that’s not all. Every parish and school in the Diocese of Perth contributes to something called ‘The Assessment’ which is the way that we pool funds to things that are best done together. Sometimes The Assessment can make Parish Councils roll their eyes, and some of my colleagues have made a fine art out of minimising the amount payable, but the money that we put into the central fund isn’t used to pay bishops or accountants (there’s an endowment for that). It (for instance) ensures that the newly arrived Sudanese refugee community have a church and clergy and community workers to help ease their transition into Australia. It ensures that there is an Anglican presence in the Goldfields. It means that the Social Responsibilities Commission can make submissions to senate enquiries and conduct workshops and advance our work of reconciliation with first nations people. It helps to train new clergy and funds the children’s and youth ministries commission. It puts Chaplains into prisons and hospitals, and also helps out parishes when they’re doing it tough for some reason.
So, from this relatively small faith community, about $25,000 is flowing out into the world to advance the Kingdom of God and share good news. That’s pretty cool. We don’t have a problem with generosity in this parish. We don’t want to get too cocky, but we have plenty to be proud of, and there’s lots of good things that we can point to and say ‘yes, we helped make that happen’, both here and all over the world.
But of course, the biggest expense around here is me.
You all very kindly provide me with a comfortable, well maintained house to live in. A vehicle in which to get around the parish, and $60,000 or so a year to buy chocolate, health insurance, maccas and Netflix subscriptions.
Sometimes we imagine that clergy are like normal people, and get paid to do a certain amount of work over a certain number of hours. In fact, priests like me are provided with a stipend so that we don’t have to work. The purpose of the stipend (and the Rectory) is to ensure that we are available. So when someone calls or drops in, we can be around. It gives us time to read books and think about stuff. It also means that some weeks are quiet, and some weeks are frantic, and some weeks feel very unproductive, and sometimes it can be very hard to gauge what ‘success’ looks like. But in a world in which personal worth is so strongly tied in to one’s job and income or lack thereof, I think there is something refreshingly counter-cultural about having people whose role it is to be available, to be creative, to spend time in prayer and reflection, and to help others do the same.
That said, I am conscious of the enormous privilege it is to be a stipended priest in a role where there is certainly plenty of work to do, but where the demands are not so onerous that I’m constantly stressed and fatigued. It’s also pretty sweet that this parish is OK with me toddling off to speak on radio or MC an anti-fracking rally. It has not always been like this for me, and is certainly not the case for many of my colleagues.
So that’s why the Parish Council and I will be nagging you to get your forms in. That’s why, this year in particular, we are encouraging people who have not been Planned Givers to get on board. It’s not because we love forms or even because we love money. It’s because there is a lot at stake. We do good together, with our shared resources, in ways that are not always immediately evident. But this creature, this ordinary little local church, has an impact far beyond these walls and far beyond the people who show up each Sunday.
When we give away a proportion of our income, with no strings attached and no expectation of anything in return, God blesses what we give and uses it to transform the world. That’s what I’ve learned in my own life, and what we continue to learn together as a community of faith. When I give, it is not a loss for me, but a profit for the world that God loves. Generosity is life-giving. It’s invigorating, and it changes us in the process.
The Lord Be With You