Ship of Fools: Using one's pledge to send a message

Thread: Using one's pledge to send a message Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Acolyte91786 (# 15293) on :

What about a thank you meal for the Top 10 Givers: those who gave first, gave for the first time, gave more than they did before, as well as, for those who gave the most. No one would know how much anyone gave or who is in which category. Conversation topic: what are your hopes, dreams, goals, and values? (Status quo: feedback from the "Other" Top 10)

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

No no no no no.

Way to incite jealousy and arrogance in the congregation. Plus your real humble givers (often the most sacrificial) will refuse to come.

Posted by Crucifer (# 523) on :

Agree with Lamb Chopped.

Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on :

Jesus doesn't seem to praise the "big givers" in this passage.

[ 25. January 2013, 04:22: Message edited by: Anglican_Brat ]

Posted by Acolyte91786 (# 15293) on :

It seems that the leadership pays more attention to those who delay, decrease or stop their pledge to send a message. How do we listen to everyone? Including the humble giver and poor widow?

Posted by Rosa Gallica officinalis (# 3886) on :

The easiest way to do this is for the 'spiritual' leadership to not know who gives what. There is no need for anyone other than the treasurer, and in he UK possibly a gift aid secretary, to know how much individuals give.

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :

Agreed. I have been Minister of my present church for over 7 years, and I have no idea who gives what - although I do have one or two "suspicions".

Perhaps I have been lucky, but in over 25 years of ministry no-one has ever come to me and threatened to withdraw their financial support in order to get their way.

I did know of a Minister who went to a new church. Unbeknownst to him, it was in the middle of a major internal conflict. Shortly after he arrived, the two major "givers" left the church, the finances collapsed, and within a few months there was no money left to pay him. Not nice.

[ 25. January 2013, 08:45: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]

Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :

The church giving officer should be the only one who knows - if people give by envelope then anyone else only gets to see a number, not the name, against the amount.

Some people are always going to give more - this may be because they are more generous, but often it is simply that they have more to give. Why they should be rewarded for being rich, I really can't understand.

What is needed instead is imaginative ways of inspiring people to give more - the Ship is rather good at this, we have had several campaigns where people have been urged to contribute to a special cause. Then people won't need special rewards, they will give willingly to support the cause anyway.

I have withheld my weekly donation to a church in the past, while I was considering whether to stay or not - but it really doesn't seem right to withhold on a regular basis from a church you still continue to attend. You are then taking from a church without giving to it, which seems rather selfish to me.

Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :

Sometimes I think we could to go back to pew rental. It would supply the needs of the parish and make it entirely obvious that supplying those needs is merely a basic obligation of membership in a parish.

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

Members of the Church of England don't really get the idea that they are paying for the church. "After all," liberals would say, "it's a church for everyone in the nation not just those who can pay".

Our clergy are paid for centrally and traditionally we had substantial endowments.

Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :

I don't imagine it's terribly helpful for the CoE that a fair number of its nominal members imagine there is "some fund" that keeps the affair running. Its largest source of income by a wide, wide margin is donations.

Posted by Augustine the Aleut (# 1472) on :

Our office's United Way campaign used to have little coffee & good cake events for the 50 biggest donors ($2,500 and up) and, while it was interesting to see who was there and who wasn't, I must admit we did enjoy our little preen. Aside from a few people from the little francophone RC Mass & meditation group and two of the (again) francophone bible study group, there were not that many others. Almost half of those there were Jewish or Ismaili.

It was finally canned the year someone publicly mentioned that none of the department's senior managers were among the number and hadn't been for some time.

I must agree with Lamb Chopped in almost every respect, other than that he expressed himself too moderately. As far as the conversation topic is concerned, there would have to be an awful lot of good wine in front of me.

After many years of objecting to the idea of using one's pledge to send a message, I found myself in a parish situation where I had grave reservations about how things were going. In the last few years as everything deteriorated, I directed my (significant) donations to specific projects to which I had no objection, so that it was clear that I did not want one f***ing piastre to go to the rector's stipend.

Posted by The Silent Acolyte (# 1158) on :

Or, not one piastre to the Diocesan Apparatus.

Posted by Augustine the Aleut (# 1472) on :

Piastre is an archaic French Canadian word for dollar (or five shillings, if you're really going back). Apologies for the vulgar language in my last post but sometimes it seems appropriately expressive.

Posted by seasick (# 48) on :

Threads like this make me very glad that my stipend is paid centrally.

Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Sometimes I think we could to go back to pew rental. It would supply the needs of the parish and make it entirely obvious that supplying those needs is merely a basic obligation of membership in a parish.

An interesting idea - the church I attended as a child had numbers on each pew door. Although we didn't have to pay by then, it was a constant reminder of how things happened in the past. When we started going to that church, we were allocated a number and that became 'our' pew.

I guess these days, you could sponsor a pew in the church, making sure it was clean, well-polished and generally looked-after. The money would go towards the overall fabric and upkeep of the church, but you would have a special interest in one particular part of it.

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Sometimes I think we could to go back to pew rental. It would supply the needs of the parish and make it entirely obvious that supplying those needs is merely a basic obligation of membership in a parish.

I tend to agree with the sentiment behind this idea. I think that stewardship committees sometimes spend so much time trying to inspire people that they fail to mention the fact that you really do need to get your pledge in so that the vestry can set a budget, and the fact that the church needs your money or the lights might go out. Thinker / judgers like me are far more moved by the latter plea than a story about the first time you came to our church.

Regarding the opening post, in my church, we try to focus on your pledge of time, talent, and treasure. I may be on a student loan payment budget, but I can make up for what I cannot give by volunteering hours a week to sing in the choir and by doing coffee hour on my wedding anniversary. This kind of stewardship would not be recognized in the proposed reward system.

Posted by John Holding (# 158) on :

Well, the reason we got rid of pew rents is that someone realized that having them kept out the poor. That may, I suppose, be a desirable outcome for some people but not, I'd have thought, for a christian community.

John

Posted by PeteC (# 10422) on :

I agree with John Holding: I am appalled at those who would bring back pew rents.

It is not just the rich who have more to give; many give more because they feel it is their duty to support.

In my experience the rich are the most mingy of all.

Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :

quote:
I agree with John Holding: I am appalled at those who would bring back pew rents.

I am appalled that the Church of Christ is reduced to beggary just to keep the lights on.

Before pew rental, the priest came to your home, inspected your books, and walked away with 10 percent of it all. It was more a tax than a donation.

Posted by John Holding (# 158) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:

quote:
I agree with John Holding: I am appalled at those who would bring back pew rents.
I am appalled that the Church of Christ is reduced to beggary just to keep the lights on.

Before pew rental, the priest came to your home, inspected your books, and walked away with 10 percent of it all. It was more a tax than a donation.

Not in the Anglican church they didn't.

Pew rentals will specifically exclude anyone with an income below a certain level -- I guess the gospel isn't meant for them in your eyes -- and will ensure that visitors who come to church inquiring either have bad seats or have to stand.

If a church is so badly off that pew rentals make the difference of surviving or not, it deserves to close.

John

Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :

quote:
Not in the Anglican church they didn't.

Yes they did.

quote:
Pew rentals will specifically exclude anyone with an income below a certain level

Willy you come off it? First, a hardship case would only need to ask the priest for a free pew. Second, I didn't actually say we ought to bring back pew rental, I just wondered at the possibility.

Edit: Before you bother arguing about tithing, tithes were abolished in the Church of Ireland 1871, and rolled over into rent charges on grain in England in 1836 before being abolished in 1936. Source.

[ 26. January 2013, 19:44: Message edited by: Zach82 ]

Posted by Augustine the Aleut (# 1472) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:

quote:
Not in the Anglican church they didn't.
Yes they did.

quote:
Pew rentals will specifically exclude anyone with an income below a certain level
Willy you come off it? First, a hardship case would only need to ask the priest for a free pew. Second, I didn't actually say we ought to bring back pew rental, I just wondered at the possibility.

In the old days, servants and hardship cases could use the galleries or, if infirm, a few pews at the back, near the doors, were always available.

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

zach - I think you have a very good point that church membership requires commitment, which for most will mean financial commitment. I'd be the first to stress that the primary meaning of "the church" is not, no way, "the ordained" but "the baptized".

However in England prior to 1850 or so, pew rents merely embodied the extent to which the church colluded with existing unfair power structures.

It was a very big thing for the Tractarians and the ritualists that the church was not merely for those who could afford it and used it to complacently bolster their social position.

I can't remember whether I have actually seen or merely heard about it, the notice "All seats in this church are free". But so it ought to be.

Establishment is the more weird, the more I think about it.

Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :

Yeah, given my choice I would go with the tithing model. Well, given my choiceychoice I would go with members freely and cheerfully giving their first and best to God in the form of a tithe, but I'm a powerful cynical soul.

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

Doesn't sound cynical, zach, sounds deeply idealistic.

Liberals whinge that fundamentalists have so much power in church structures, but can't see the connection with financial commitment.

Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :

quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Liberals whinge that fundamentalists have so much power in church structures, but can't see the connection with financial commitment.

I think liberals are well aware how much of that power is due to money. They're also well aware of the bullying and guilt tripping that goes on to "encourage" congregation to tithe.

One thing a church I was a member of tried was breaking down the parish share into a per capita amount and making it clear how much was needed for the church to "pay its way". It wasn't wholly successful (parish of 1500 people in a deprived area does not make for easy pickings).

Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :

The problem is that people demand goods and services of their parishes like a handsome building, childcare during the service, and a professional organist, but then refuse to give enough to pay for the services they demand. I suppose the collectivity of the situation lets individuals blame everyone else for not giving enough. Worse, they expect the most possible service for the lowest possible price.

Posted by The Silent Acolyte (# 1158) on :

quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
I can't remember whether I have actually seen or merely heard about it, the notice "All seats in this church are free". But so it ought to be.

The last time I was at All Saints, Ashmont, in Boston, I saw the words "All Seats Free" chiseled in the cornerstone.

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :

Certainly in England this was a central feature of the Methodist "Central Hall" movement in the late 1800s - anyone could sit anywhere, for free.

However, as we all know, it doesn't take long for certain people to claim rights to "their" pew and glare meaningfully at anyone else who tries to occupy it!

Presumably the act of taking up offerings during a service must have come in at much the same time?

Returning to the OP, I think there is a subtle difference between someone who "blackmails" the Minister and leaders of a church by publicly threatenng to withdraw their financial support at the drop of a hat, and someone who comes quietly and privately to say that they have been thinking very seriously about the direction the church is taking and that, in all conscience, they cannot support it.

On a slightly different line, I was once a member of a missionary society which sent its candidates traipsing the country in order to make themselves known and raise support (though the latter was never mentioned explicitly). The problem was that someone who was an eloquent speaker and going to work in a "sexy" pioneer situation found it much easier to raise support than a diffident speaker who was going to be a nurse or an administrator - yet their work was just as important. Something similar can occur in the way churches vote to support different projects and minstries.

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