GIVING

Interesting. I have always been a tither, most of the time to the church. It is one of those things that I was raised to do even when times were lean. My Dad was convinced that God would zap you if you didn't tithe and he was not even a regular church goer. The only thing he was more strict sbout was support of the Jews.  

Now, that I'm somewhat slack on going to church, I mostly do what you are doing. I am fairly generous to Jackie's church as they promote a strong Palestinian ministry. I have about a half dozen causes that I give to and actually seek out special things. One of my best ones is this coffee house run by these two gay guys. I would go in weekly and invariably a class of developmentally disabled kids and adults would come in with their teacher. They would take up half the tables and never buy anything. I started giving John and Art what we would expect them to buy if they ever did. My thoughts were that this unusual generosity (letting these kids have a place for an hour or do a day) should not go unrewarded. I give to beggars, bums, homeless, various sorts of street people, i. e., musicians, etc. I always operate with the Augustinian principle, "since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection to you."

Quick war story. When I was a civilian pastor, I was amazed at how little people gave. The Church never had money issues. They didn't owe any money and relatively speaking, they paid me almost next to nothing which was good as I said or did anything I wanted with the idea that they could fire me and I could care less. Lots of freedom in that attitude. But, we did have a kind of pledge week and one Sunday afternoon, I went into the office for something and the treasurer had left the pledge sheet out and I stupidly looked at it. I was appalled. We had at least six or eight bigtime millionaires (natural gas money) in the church. They pledged like a dollar a week. We had a couple of hundred families in the church. It was astounding. Jackie and I were by far the biggest givers to the church. In some ways, I wish I had known this earlier as I would have tried to help the church develop a philosophy of giving (which I think is important for all of us). Oh well. Thanks for giving me this chance to share.