My father used to tell a joke about three ministers discussing how they prioritize the spending of the offerings. The first told the others "I draw a big circle and then stand in the middle of it and throw all of the money up in the air. Whatever lands in the circle is God's and whatever floats to the outside is mine. "That's a good way," said the next minister. "I do something similar. I draw a line down the center of the room, stand on it and throw all the money up in the air. Whatever lands on the right is God's and whatever lands on the left is mine." "Yes," said the third minister "That is something like what I do. But I don't draw any circles or lines. Instead, I stand in the middle of the room and throw all the money up in the air as high as I can. "Whatever God can catch, God can have."

Money is a kind of score card for humans. It is presumed that the more you have, the better you are doing. Yet we here at Germantown Mennonite Church know the value of money and where it stands in the grand scorecard of the universe. God does not value us on the basis of our financial success. We know that in this congregation. This fact is implicit in all of our sermons. I believe this knowledge is reflected in a pattern of generous giving. On the basis of what I can extrapolate as I've been comparing our congregation to other congregations in the US I think that our rate of giving is pretty good. We are supporting close to a full time pastor, a part time secretary, paying a mortgage and meeting the expenses of a small Church program with just around 100 members -- which means we are doing quite a bit better than many other congregations of our size who often don't have a mortgage or a full time minister.

But I must confess to being anxious as I approached this sermon. Even when you have good things to say, talking about money is not an easy thing to do. Money is dangerous. It inspires resentments and jealousies. It makes people proud and arrogant. It makes people judgmental. As it says in Ist Timothy 6:10 "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil." Certainly, the misuse and overvaluation of money is the most condemned activity in the Bible, more then hypocrisy, more then worshiping false idols, more then the breaking of any one of the ten commandments. Money shows where our values are and we often don't end up looking very good.

I had lunch with a colleague at the Mainland Inn when I took a week of for vacation earlier this year. You know the Mainland Inn. It's one of Philadelphia's top ten favorites according to Zagat's. Continental Cuisine, wonderful salads, the freshest fish, great sorbet's, service that rivals Le Bec Fin. It is a tad pricy.

My friend Mark is the chair of his synagogue's finance committee. So we compared notes. He talked about their million-dollar fund raiser, how they have "A," "B," and "C" list families and how they tap the "A" list families via visits from the Rabbi and the chair of the development committee and how "B" list people get a visit from a committee member. I guess the "C" list people are lucky to get a phone call. I listened attentively when he told me that in one small series of meetings with three families the rabbi was able to raise $100,000. I thought about our little impoverished Mennonite Church with a tiny $100,000 annual budget and joked that we needed to borrow his rabbi. He suggested that we borrow the families instead. Later -- and this was the quote of the year for me -- after I told him about our unfinished building he teased me -- "So how can you eat lunch at the Mainland Inn when you haven't finished renovating your Church yet?" He was, of course, tweaking me, but the point is well made. Where are my priorities? I know what I believe, but do I believe it sufficiently to act on in with my money?

This is the theme that I kept getting back to when I was boning up on Church finances and giving patterns in preparation for being Stewardship Committee Chair and doing this sermon. I found a huge amount of varied information about stewardship and giving. But each time I meditated on the meaning of the information I kept getting back to one thing: our values are in the right place. We need only have confidence in them.

Many of you have heard me comment on the recent research in psychology about happiness. The American Psychologist in October of last year had an article by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi entitled "If We Are So Rich, Why Aren't We Happy." He notes "a study of some of the wealthiest individuals in the United States, found their levels of happiness to be barely above that of individuals with average incomes." In a study of big lottery winners it was found that "despite their sudden increase in wealth, their happiness was no different from that of people struck by traumas, such as blindness or paraplegia." In another study it was found that "although the adjusted value of after tax personal income in the United States has more than doubled between 1960 and 1990, the percentage of people describing themselves as "very happy" has remained unchanged at 30%."

Even more striking for me is research done among adolescents. A study done last year found an inverse relationship between social class and happiness. That means that the higher the social class, the more likely adolescents are to be unhappy and the lower their social class -- the less money and education their parents have -- the happier they are.

What does this mean? Social science is catching up with the wisdom of the ages. Money does not equal happiness. The reasons for it are complex and subtle. But the ancient truth remains.

I was reminded of the motto that graced my parents wall throughout their married life. It was a mass-produced glass painting that was a gift to them from my grandmother Martin, remarkable only for the message of the poem that was etched in my young mind:

Said the Robin to the sparrow

I should really like to know

why these anxious human beings

rush about and worry so

Said the Sparrow to the Robin

Friend I think that it must be

that they have no heavenly father

such as cares for you and me

Another source of the same message is in Luke chapter 12, as we heard earlier in the service:

27"Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 28If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!

This is what we know about the value of money. We know these things. We have known them for many years. We don't need to improve our values, we just need to have confidence in them.

I found, in a book called Money Matters by Hoge, Zech, McNamara and Donahue, four different reasons why people make donations to Churches. These four are reciprocity with God, reciprocity with the religious group, giving to extensions of the self and altruism and thankfulness.

Now, someone who gives money hoping to get money back from God will, I think, be sadly disappointed. There have been ministers who preach that if you give generously to God, God will give generously to you. I've heard, second hand, that there have even been some who say that if you give a particular sum in offerings God will return this to you with interest, or even doubled or tripled. This is simply not so.

The second category is reciprocity with the religious group. The idea here is that if we give money to the group we will get something from the group in return. What might that be? Status in the group, perhaps, or the group may make a decision in a way that we prefer. Maybe we will get more visits from the pastor, public recognition, or some other thing that we value. In general this reasoning has not been supported by the philosophy of this group, which takes seriously the dictate that in giving the left hand should not know what the right hand is doing.

These first two reasons for giving are not likely to be often represented in this congregation. But this next one is.

Giving money to a charity or church as an extension of the self is, I think, the primary reason why we give. Speaking for myself here, I am very identified with this congregation, and for what it stands. I want it to flourish. I want it to have a full time pastor, a finished building and at least 10% of its budget going out to missions outside of our immediate needs -- much more as soon as we can. I want it to be more than simply a congregation that pays its own way, but a congregation that contributes to the well being of its community and to other like minded groups. Having a strong healthy church is something that is good for me, and I am not just willing, but eager, to give to make that happen. I hope that the rest of you feel the same way.

The authors of this book suggested that this reason for giving is morally inferior to their last reason -- altruism or thankfulness. This category of motivation suggests that gifts are motivated by a sense of gratitude to God or love for others that has no connection to any selfish or personal reason. Now I certainly understand the feeling of gratitude to God. But I have trouble with this reason. It seems to me that no matter where we give, we give to extensions of our selves. We are children of God, members of the family of God. When we give to others we give to members of our own family. When we give to this congregation we are giving to members of this family who are, perhaps, more closely related to us, but who are no more members of this larger extended family than the people we give to via our donations to MCC, MDS or our purchases from Ten Thousand Villages.

So I think all of our giving is, in effect, gifts to ourselves. In fact, our giving even has some of the reciprocity that was mentioned earlier. What we give we do get back -- not in money, but in something far more valuable than that -- as a sense of satisfaction that we are living according to the values of the Kingdom of God.

Ross Perot was fond of saying "It's your money." He would lambast the government for spending too much of our money, for taking too much in taxes, for spending it wastefully. He would build up an indignant lather about this and shout "it's your money" "It's your money." Well, I'm sorry Ross, but it isn't your money and it isn't our money. It's God's money. God permits us to have it, and God allows us to use it in ways that demonstrate what we value most in this world. We all know this. We know what God values. All we need is the confidence to live these values.

Giving is a reflection of our values. Giving is, in this way, a spiritual discipline, it is a spiritual activity. More than anything else we do, it reflects what we believe.

Again from Money Matters, five factors emerge that predict strong individual giving -- High family income and high Church involvement are the two strongest, followed by conservative theology and planning ones giving on an annual basis, either by tithing or pledging, and finally, a weak factor is that strong giving is predicted by small congregation size.

There is no doubt in my mind that the first factor -- family income -- is one of the biggest reasons why some people give more than others. This society has stratified income levels. Those in the upper income strata control a greater percentage of our wealth both in terms of income and in terms of capital. The same is also reflected here in this congregation, though perhaps to a lessor extent. We do not all make the same amount each year nor do we have the same expenses. For those of us who make more the burden and the joy of supporting the work of this institution is disproportionately ours. For those who make less and can give less, the burden and, I hope, the joy as well is in accepting the generosity of others.

But this is only one factor.

High church involvement also predicts comparatively high giving. We are a congregation with great strength in this area. We don't let the pastor fill the pulpit every Sunday. We spread the work of the congregation out so that many of our members can participate. When I look around the room, there are few people who have not contributed to the life of this congregation via committee membership, Sunday school teaching, worship leading, choir membership, preaching, or contributions of time to fund-raising events like the one we had yesterday. This high level of participation predicts a high level of giving.

The third factor that predicted high levels of giving in this study was a conservative theology. We often think of ourselves as liberal Mennonites. But over the years in my interactions with other groups, even among other Mennonites, I've noticed that in comparison we are not liberal. We are not even moderate. Rather, we are conservative in the true sense of the word. Our strong advocacy of peace and justice issues, the financial lifestyle choices many of us have made, the levels of commitment that we have to Kingdom values in work and avocational activities all show the strongest of faith that is deeply rooted in the Anabaptist revivals of the 15^th century as well as the more recent Christian revivals marked by Quakerism, Methodism and even, to a certain degree, Evangelicalism. These revivals center on issues that include the priesthood of all believers, identity and action within the context of a community, individual responsibility in the form of an emphasis on accountability as well as adult decision making, and, over all, the primacy of our allegiance to Jesus Christ over our allegiances to governments, institutions and even families.

These are ancient values. They have been our values for the twenty or more years that I've been aware of this congregation, they are still our values now and I expect that they will still be our values twenty, fifty and one hundred years from now. These are values that prioritize the Church community and go a long way in explaining why our congregation has elected to engage in ambitious projects and why it has steadily increased already generous giving to meet the demands of these projects. We have made decisions that are consistent with our values and our corporate decisions have often shown strong confidence in these values. We need to maintain this confidence.

It has been a tenet of my understanding of the Christian life that each of our thoughts and actions is a prayer, a reflection of our portion of the daily conversation we have with God. And in this way our spending and our giving are spiritual actions.

In this context I would like to address the fourth of these factors - planned giving. In the Money Matters study congregations fell into three categories: offering congregations, pledging congregations and tithing congregations. As you may guess, this is in order of the magnitude of giving as well. Congregations that encouraged members to give what they can spare from week to week tended to collect the least amount per member. Congregations who asked their members to be intentional about their giving by making a pledge on an annual basis did somewhat better, improving the average by more than 50%. Tithing congregations did best of all, more than doubling the average of the offering congregations. Tithing congregations did not ask for pledges, but preached regularly that it was God's requirement that a percentage, usually 10% of income, be given to the Church.

Now we are by definition a pledging congregation. We have been soliciting pledges from our members for quite a while. Pledging allows for planning for the budget and it presses members to be intentional about their giving. We could, perhaps, improve our giving if we were a tithing congregation, but I don't think there is support for that. Personally, I have a problem with suggesting a hard and fast percentage that each member should give. At a given time some individuals and families may have sufficient demands on their resources that I believe it would be wrong for the group to ask that they give more than a token. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that if we pressed ten percent as the goal some people would end up giving less than they are giving already. So I think the pledging process is the right one.

The Stewardship committee is going to present an increased budget to Church counsel this year. There are two primary increases. First, we will offer an increase in building maintenance. This estimate has always been misleadingly low. Second we will be increasing our out of church giving. Several of you have pressed the congregation to give 10% of its budget to missions outside of our immediate congregational needs. While we haven't increased giving to that percentage yet, we have moved it up by $2000 with the hope that we will be able to steadily increase this number until we meet and surpass the 10% mark. All of you will get to be involved in this discussion before the final budget is set, but regardless of how the numbers turn out we will need your pledges.

Now, to the part I think many of you have been waiting for. We have been polling the congregation as to whether we should proceed in taking the next steps to complete this building. As the new Stewardship committee chair I asked for this vote so that I was certain of congregational support before I took the next steps in fund raising. David tells me that he has not heard from everyone in the congregation, but that preliminary trends suggest that the congregation is likely to approve this by well over the 2/3rd's majority set by council as the cutoff for proceeding with basic renovations. David is committed to getting everyone's vote, yeah or neah, so if you have not voted, please save David a phone call and do so today.

If this recommendation passes, I do not know how Church council will have me proceed in fund raising for this, whether I will be called on to take each of you to the Mainland Inn, or only to make phone calls, or announcements. Perhaps they may ask me to find a fund raising rabbi somewhere to take around to the "A" list people, none of whom, as Monica once pointed out, attend this congregation.

But let me review where we are in this process. Charlie McGloughlin and his Dad have generously done a survey of the building with an initial rough estimate of what it would take to make it usable. This estimate is preliminary, but it looks like we can finish things up with less then $100,000 if we are willing to add a fair bit of sweat equity. The elevator is the big ticket coming in at around $40,000. There is foundational work to be done in the furnace room for around $10,000. Fixing the windows is likely to cost $5000, insulation if done ourselves $1500. Painting the auditorium, again if done ourselves, $6000. Professional woodwork and plastering another $7000. There is currently no estimate for heating and electrical work.

Now I have not been eliciting pledges. But I am aware of some resources that I would like to share with you. First, an unsolicited pledge of $10,000 has already come in. Secondly, my sister Dottie and I have decided to set up a memorial fund for our parents John and Dottie Freed, who dedicated much of their lives to serving in urban Mennonite settings. This will be a strong source of support for this project. Finally, I have heard from people outside the congregation that they are eager to support this project once we ask. Last time we asked we were given $10,000. I expect that given the larger nature of this project the gifts will be even more this time.

Finishing this building clearly falls under the category of giving to extensions of ourselves. The Church building is not God's house. God's house is in our hearts and in our relationships. The Church building is our house. It is the home of this congregation. Like with our commitment to maintaining our own residence, our decision to finish this home is a commitment not only to our own comfort, but also to our future hospitality to others in the larger church and in the larger community.

As I've been saying throughout this sermon, I believe that we have the right values. What I would like to encourage us to do is to have confidence in those values. And as you make your plans, just remember, you can spend freely, because, unlike conventional wisdom would have it, it is not your money.

Let's pray together:

Almighty God we thank you for the many gifts you have given to us. We thank you for sending Jesus to tell us the good news of your love and for adopting us into your family. We thank you particularly today for the opportunity you have given us to emulate your generosity with gifts of our own to other members of your family both here locally and throughout the world. We pray your special blessing on our gifts as they are used to care for and extend the community of your people.

In Jesus Name we pray, Amen.