This sermon was given by Jonathan on Sunday 14th June. Given the importance of the message it was felt that it was right to publish it here for those who may have missed it.

Giving in The Bourne : Sunday 14th June, 2009

At the last PCC meeting where we discussed our income, some members expressed a felt need for “a lead from the pulpit”; “some biblical teaching on giving”.  I am always amazed when people give so high an estimation of the effectiveness of the preacher’s words, but I have been stung into action- and here is my attempt.

Our readings this morning are serendipitous.  They speak of growth, of the mysterious growth of the Kingdom of Heaven, of the way God works in human hearts to be manifest in the world. The first from the prophet Ezekiel speaks of a sprig of cedar which becomes a noble tree in which the birds of the air will find shelter and build their nests.  In the Gospel, Jesus speaks of scattering seed on the ground, and of how it grows day by day. While we rise and go about our business, it grows from stalk to head to harvest.  And then he echoes Ezekiel in the tale of the mustard seed.  His readers would have been familiar with the tale of the cedar sprig becoming a great tree.  Jesus points up the miraculous wonder of the Kingdom of God- which is a vision of human beings living their God given-potential- by ludicrously replacing the cedar sprig with a mustard seed!  Yes, in God life anything is possible!

But the background to this sermon has been the stagnation which our church community has endured for several years now.  New givers are just replacing those who are moving to a higher plane- where finance is not a concern- but please note the essential importance of remembering your church in your will!

The result of this stagnation has been a steady decline in the resource of the church community.  Since 2004 we gave gone from being a church with three paid full time clergy to one.  In part this has been due to diocesan policy, but only in part.  The sad truth is that we could not now afford to pay, house and resource a second priest, let alone a third.  If we employed even one, our giving would have to be £40,000 a year greater than it is- or a rise of 50%.  That would be £20,000 in pay, and £20,000 in housing and employer’s costs.

This has impacted on me more than anyone.  Only very slight reductions to our pattern of Sunday services have been accepted.  Due to the generosity of our unpaid clergy much has continued as before, but they are not available during the week so much.  They have jobs and they have private lives.

I have especially noticed the multiplication of funerals, baptisms and weddings which I am now responsible for, as also the multiplication of meetings which used to be shared responsibilities, and the knowing realisation that one can in no way replace three when it comes to pastoral care and parish initiatives.  One is too busy just keeping up.

None of what I say detracts from my appreciation of all that ordained and lay colleagues do, or my anticipation of Liz Powell’s role.  But it has been a sobering experience for me since Vicki left us in November 2007.

The root of this problem is with our giving to our church community.  Just in case anyone is in doubt, your church is not funded by government, or Her Majesty (God Bless Her!), neither is it the richest landowner in England- at least since Henry VIII did his bit. Yes, there are the Church Commissioners- they help you by paying my pension entitlements up to 1998, and for the Bishop, but the rest is down to us- £200,000 a year, £4000 a week to run this parish and its buildings and activities, our ministry to hospice, hospitals and schools, and our share of the costs of the diocese and the national church.

This we do and it is fantastic that we do- but the other side of the story lies in our giving.  I hope that these figures are becoming familiar:

National average per week per committed giver:  £8:50

Guildford Diocesan average:                                £12:50

The Bourne Parish:                                               £8:53

The Bourne expected Target:                               £15:00

Now the PCC have discussed this and said:

“but some people are richer than others,

and some have high demands and others low

and some are on fixed incomes

and some are pensioners

and some are asset rich but cash poor.”

All this is true, but the fact remains that St Mark’s Bordon give the diocesan average- and compared to them we are not poor- not any of us.

Now I have no wish to lecture anyone, I do not know your circumstances-

but I can talk about me.  The clergy stipend is a public fact.  You pay for it in your giving, and you decide how much I am paid through your representatives on diocesan and national church bodies.  My P60 tells me I am paid £23,760 gross.  Five of us depend upon that as our main income.  In addition I have been cherishing a cash ISA savings account against retirement when we will lose our tied work accommodation.  The church does not provide housing in retirement.  My saving fund now holds £24,600.

So Jane and I have looked at our church revenue need.  I am going to try this £15 a week level.  It is going to mean less beer, newspapers and fripperous purchases because I am going to have to save in order to give.  But I have realised how much I want this church community to succeed.  This is now the culmination of nine years of my life and I will not look back on it as a waste, a failure, a sitting in neutral because of lack of commitment, lack of giving, lack of generosity for all that God gives to us.

That is our mustard seed, our seed scattered on the ground of The Bourne.  Will it find good soil and bring good harvest?

Such giving is not really lost to us, it is a transfer from personal wealth to community wealth, what used to be called commonwealth.  It is a transfer from “me” money to “us” money, from “mine” to “ours”.

This is a very “me” “mine” culture we live in.  There is less “us” and “ours” than there used to be.  The whole vision of church and of our Build for the Future is the move from “me” and “mine” to “us” and “ours” and even “for them”.  And this is where God comes into the equation:

“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God;

everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” 1Jn 4:7

The “us” and “ours” and “for them” leads from “my” space and “my” wealth to God space and God wealth.  Our new extension is God-space, and we need God-wealth to complete it.

That is why we give, but we can only give when we are full of generosity, when we are possessed of the certainty that gripped King David when he said:

“Yours, O Lord are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory and the majesty: for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours…

..All things come from you, and of your own do we give you.” 1 Chron Ch29.

I cannot say what each of you should do, but I can say that as the members of this church, this body, you do have a duty to consider this very carefully indeed. Your decision on giving decides and determines what it is possible for us to be.  The keys are in your pocket.

So that is our first need; a revenue need of an average £15 per week per committed giver.  By the way we have 289 people listed on our Church Electoral Roll as members, and 189 committed givers by standing order or envelope.  The two should really be equivalent.

But we have a second need, a capital need for our New Build- not to build it, but to be able to fit out the second eastern portion at the same time as the main Lantern extension, rather than leaving the eastern end as a shell to be fitted out at some later date.  A capital need for £250K.

And so back to me.  A verse which is haunting me at the moment comes from Jesus as told by St Luke:

“For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?  Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish!” Lk 14:28

Now we have enough to finish the New Build structure, but not to fit out the eastern block.  It may be left a hollow shell.  We have to make some decisions fast, because if we do not find the extra £250K by the turn of the year, we will have to defer, and deferring will raise the overall cost.

And that makes me realise just how much I want this Build for the Future built as we have planned it for so long.  This is the Cedar I want to spread its branches to shelter the birds of The Bourne.  This will make God’s House also Our Home for all who live in this parish and beyond.  This will be a place where the local community share not just an hour a week but their lives with one another, the young and the old, the richer and the poorer.  This will make this church the best equipped church in the diocese.  I have put my name on the line and I don’t want to be laughed at in the Diocese because the hubris of The Bourne could not be matched by completion.

So we need funds.  We are planning a series of exciting fundraising events and activities.  We need your help with this, everyone’s help, just as we are asking for your comments on flooring and carpets this morning.  These events will be stylish and fun, and they will build our sense of community, of belonging to one another, of being one body as well as raising funds.  But I will tell you a story about fundraising:

When I was a young curate in Weymouth the mid ‘80’s, -younger even than I am now- we had to raise funds.  Now in the summer the town was thronged with trippers and hollies down from Swindon and Wolverhampton- by tradition because the Great Western Railway used to use its own resorts for the workshop outings.  We held a weekly Jumble sale on the church steps during the beach season.  Every Saturday was spent carting old clothes and bric-a-brac from our store, setting out tables, and then putting much back again.  The experience was horrendous.  The sweating bodies.  The haggling over pennies.  The arguments between customers wrestling the same item.  The elbows in the ribs.  The sheer avarice and human veniality on display!

In the end I made the small committee an offer- for £5 a week each we would make as much money and could stay at home and call off the sale.  It was a bargain!

We are generating a great series of fundraising events for the “Build for the Future”.  They will be stylish and fun.  They will build our community and raise funds.  They will not be Jumble sales for day trippers.  But despite their immense value they will not substitute for core financial giving by us.

So back to me and my mustard seed.  What could we give from our personal capital, our personal savings, to this community church project to make it truly “ours”, and not “the church’s”  or “theirs”?  We thought at first a thousand pounds for the “For The Future” Build.  I asked God about it.  After all, it is his Cedar tree.  It will be his building.  But that would take 250 others to give as much.  Would that happen?  So we decided on £2000, and when that is covenanted and the tax reclaimed that will be one hundredth of what we need, and it is reasonable to expect on average that if this lost sheep can be found by the Shepherd and brought into the joy of gracious generosity, then the other 99 will find their way home to the sheepfold.

When I swapped churches for six weeks with an American Episcopalian Rector from Salisbury, Maryland, one thing impressed me above all other: that though the Americans are the richest nation on earth, they are also the most generous personally, and the most self aware, grateful and thankful of their good fortune.  In part this is expressed in the national festival of Thanksgiving, but also every Sunday at the offertory, when the groaning plate was brought forward.  It represented all the standing orders, direct debits, legacies and bank mandates by which they funded God’s church in response for the many gifts they had received from him.  I stood.

The organ had bells on, and a carillon rang out Old Hundredth and the congregation (normally quite conservative and reserved- this is The Old South- south of the Mason Dixie Line) this congregation raised their hands and faces to heaven and sang the words of Bishop Thomas Ken:

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,

Praise him all creatures here below,

Praise him above, angelic host,

Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Today, we are going to give it a go, just after the offertory hymn.

Amen.