A few days before I saw the report of our fiscal year, I was reading Ministries of Mercy, which is Dr. Tim Keller’s excellent book on the work of deacons and the challenge of doing mercy ministry as a church.
First of all, the report of our fiscal year, 2013-14 is a “good news/bad news” sort of report. One the one hand it shows that giving exceeded actual expenditures by $4300 (receipts of $949,482 and expenditures of $945,108). All bills are paid and our missionary commitments totally fulfilled. God has provided our “daily bread” and for that we give thanks to him and to those of you who faithfully support the ministry of our church. The primary reason we met our expenses is that we are not paying a full-time senior pastor.
On the other hand, giving was short of our budgeted target by $25,700 but of greater concern, our giving was $60,000 less than it was in fiscal year 2012-13. No doubt there are various reasons for this decline, but it needs to be noted and given some attention. The new ’14-’15 budget is a slight reduction but only because it anticipates a senior pastor for only half of the new year.
So there is clearly a challenge before us, but the challenge goes deeper than greater giving to New Life Glenside to the challenge of serious giving to the work of the Lord. This is where the reading of Tim Keller’s book touched me deeply. The particular chapter I read a few days ago was “Giving and Keeping: A Balanced Lifestyle.” Tim builds his approach to mercy ministry by meditating on the parable of the Good Samaritan. In terms of giving, “the service that the Samaritan rendered was very expensive.” (p. 67). There was not only the money he gave to care for the man who had been robbed and beaten, but the time and willingness to risk. That leads Tim (I use the more familiar name because Tim Keller wrote this book in 1989 while he was active with our church.) to ask us to examine our lifestyle. The measure of our giving, he contends, should be such that it actually affects our lifestyle. He asks us to consider three guidelines for what he calls, justice living:
1. We should give so that we feel the burden of the needy ourselves. “If your giving to the needy does not burden you or cut into your lifestyle in any way, you must give more.” (p. 75). He comments that the tithe law is valid and a reminder that God owns all things, but it must not be seen as a limit that keeps us from following the pattern of Jesus himself who became poor for us, or appeals to live modestly and be rich in good deeds (I Timothy 6).
2. We should only keep whatever wealth we need for our calling and ministry opportunities. He points out that mercy, helps, and service are listed as spiritual gifts. This means that while all Christians are called to show mercy, there are some whose calling will take them to extraordinary steps and even impoverishment in showing mercy. So there is a valid balance between being thoughtful stewards of what we have been given, and being generous as Jesus was, and that balance will not look the same for all of us.
3. We must not be generous in such a way that we or our families become liabilities to others. Again, there is an important balance and prayerful consideration will lead to different conclusions. How much should we have in savings? How much should we put away for retirement? If we are poor, those are not questions we ask. But for many of us, we wrestle with how much to properly put aside and how much to give away. Tim observes that we will almost always rationalize the need for too much investment in our persons and families rather than our response to those in need, nevertheless the Scripture is clear that we have a primary obligation to make sure our families are provided for.
I have no doubt that as we allow the Spirit to shape our view of giving and lifestyle, one of the consequences will be greater generosity toward giving to our church. But God has in fact supplied our needs—we should rejoice in that before we focus on what we would like our giving to be.
