John's Epistle

The Good News and THE Good News

Over the past few weeks, I have been pretty anxious, to tell the truth. In November, our Finance Committee realized that despite our best efforts as a church, we would fall woefully short of our financial goals for 2010 if something dramatic wasn't done.

You need to know that I believe God can accomplish unbelievable things. But I also believe that God uses us to accomplish much of what turns out to be amazing. And I knew that getting even close to climbing the mountain we had before us would take every one of us pulling together and doing everything we could.

As it turned out, the people of Buckingham came through not once, but twice. The letter I sent at the beginning of December put the matter as starkly as possible: We needed and additional $25,000 in giving during the month to meet all our financial goals. That means we needed $25K on top of what we would normally expect to receive during a typical month. And, as I said, you responded with great generosity, making December a very strong month for us financially. We ended up the year having paid all our bills, with no staff cuts as many churches have done in the past couple of years.

But this still did not mean we met all our goals. As most of you know, as a United Methodist Church, we send a significant amount of money each year to support the mission of the UMC in our region and around the world. The money we contribute is called "Apportionments," and it allows us to be in ministry in places we could never go ourselves. Most importantly, our Apportionments-also called "Connectional Giving"-keep us from being a group that is inwardly focused. They are similar for our church to what our personal giving is to Buckingham, a spiritual discipline that we accomplish together that keeps our focus on mission and ministry.

So I asked the Finance and Stewardship Chairs of our church to support me as I sent a personal letter to the congregation. You see, I am not just your pastor; I am also a Christian, trying to be faithful just like you. I looked at my budget and picked a figure that would both challenge me and allow me to be faithful to my giving for 2011, then I challenged each one of you to do the same.

I expected a generous response, because you have always come through when we made this kind of appeal. I thought we might raise an additional $2000 or so. Honestly, I was anxious about that prospect, because we really needed more like $10,000 to complete the goal. As soon as the letter was sent, I began working on plans for how we will be able to reach 100% for 2011. (More on that in our next Newsletter.) I asked everyone to be sure that you were not taking money away from your 2011 giving to pay for 2010, because I know that reaching our goal this year will require us to start off in a strong position.

Once again, you responded generously! In fact, the response was much greater than I expected. Following the close of 2010, we had paid only 55% of our goal, with no additional funds available to send to the Conference. By the time I delivered our final payment on Tuesday, however, we had reached 85%. Although I am not satisfied with paying anything less than 100%, I am much happier with the place we reached than I was just a couple of weeks ago.

Before we break our arms patting ourselves on the back, we should consider what all this means to us as a church. The response was fantastic, but we hope for a day when such measures are not necessary, a day when extra giving at the end of the year can be used for supporting local missions or capital projects or whatever we want. We continue to give faithfully, yet consistently need special appeals to meet our regular financial needs. No matter how wonderful it may be that we step forward in times like these, we yearn for a day when these times are no more. As one of our church leaders put it, "I'm so happy that we raised so much money and so mad that it took this kind of drastic measure to raise it."

The way we respond in such times is similar to the way that we dig deep to help out a family member in a time of crisis. We do it willingly, out of love. When it seems, however, that family member is constantly operating in "crisis mode," we begin to wonder if the crisis isn't of their own making. As we approach 2011, we need seriously to address the question: Are we really equipped to support the budget we have agreed to support?

My answer is YES. We do have what it takes. We have proven it before and now things are really beginning to move forward in so many areas of our church. New people are coming into our fellowship, our efforts to reach out to our community are producing results, and we are about to embark on long-overdue building improvements that will help us welcome new families.

So let me put all this into another perspective. We have found some really good news about our church over the past couple of weeks: The people of Buckingham believe God is working here and are willing to step forward to support our work financially.

But there is something much greater at work here: THE Good News, as in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Sometimes, we fall short. Yet God's hope-the hope we have found in Christ-never falls short. I believe with all my heart that 2011 is the year that we have yearned to have for so long, the year that God blesses us beyond our wildest dreams. I believe that in this critical time, we will see just how great the power of God is and we WILL meet our goals. Thank you for what you have done and even more for what you will do this year.

Grace and peace,

Pastor John