Three Blogs on Stewardship: #3 "Buy" the Numbers

Okay, so my last post about paid and unpaid, professional and amateur Christians sparked some discussion. I need to be clear about something from the beginning. I am not a cynic. I know that it is tough to discern tone from prose, but am not jaded, fed up, or otherwise done with the Church. In fact, I love the movement that Jesus started. I am spiritually fed by what people would consider “typical” church worship. As we have been clear from the beginning, Southside Abbey is not a move away from anything, but rather a branch of the same limb.

The reality of the numbers is stark. What are the two largest expenses facing every Episcopal church in the land? Property and Personnel. Southside Abbey is a model of another way to be church without a building. Notice I said “a” model, not “the” model. We are providing one solution to the problem of the expense of a building.

Now what about that other expense? Can't you just feel the collective sphincter tightening at the very mention of this issue? In the Episcopal Church, we like our priests. We like to have someone up there we can point to as the expert on God, someone who will interact – on our behalf – with those we don't want to see or know.

Let me break it down in our context. The Diocese of East Tennessee's minimum compensation package for full time employment is $47,000. Church Pension adds eighteen percent, or $8,460. Include (as we must for full time work) health insurance to the tune of $11,148 for the cheapest plan for a couple. Including the life and disability insurance offered by our diocese adds another $1,036. That makes a total of $67,644. If we are to take the Church Pension formula, the math is similarly inflated. Their minimum compensation for full time work is $18,500, which costs $34,014. Now that you know the context, let me put it in perspective.

Southside Abbey's budget for 2014 was $33,811. For that amount we:

• Kept the seasons of the Church Year, engaging in liturgical worship with our community.
• Served over 3,000 meals as part of that liturgical worship.
• Celebrated St. Nicholas' Day with presents & meals for 175 neighborhood children & families.
• Shared 250 pounds of Epiphany pickles as a way to hear our neighbors' stories.
• Shared 400 cups of homemade soup as an excuse to visit retired folks in section 8 housing.
• Gathered over 200 pairs of shoes & socks for the local elementary school on Maundy Thursday.
• Held a chili cook-off with with about forty gallons of chili from members of our community.
• Made over 210 lunches for neighborhood children on fall break, shared at an Oktoberfest.
• Housed a theologian-in-residence who worked with us while obtaining an STM from Sewanee.
• Were brought under the 501(c)(3) umbrella of the Episcopal Church.
• Became a Jubilee Ministry Center of the Episcopal Church.
• Raised nearly $50,000 to be spent on outside ministries as part of the Southside Jubilee Fund.
• Were featured in articles from Christian Century to the Chattanooga Times-Free Press.
• Mentored three Education for Ministry (EfM) groups.
• Trained leaders, forming 4 postulants, 1 aspirant, 2 seminarians & a lots of lay ministers.

We did these things with help, particularly from the Holy Spirit. We also had some terrestrial partners, perhaps too many to mention, but look at what we were able to do with $34,000 – $34,000 that did not include a clergy compensation package! Such a package would either double or triple our budget depending on which “minimum” we can get away with.

This reality is what makes it difficult to “buy” these numbers. I realize that I am an important part of this ministry, but am I really that much more important than all of my brothers and sisters in Christ who follow Jesus just as faithfully but do it at no cost to Southside Abbey? That is what we as a community and I am personally wrestling with. This is a really cool possibility. I just have to be brave enough to say “yes” to the Holy Spirit. Your prayers are most welcome.

This post was originally published on the Episcopal Church Foundation's Vital Practices Vital Posts blog on February 27, 2015. It has been reprinted here with permission.

3 Blogs on Stewardship: #2 Just What Exactly Are We Funding?

As I mentioned in my last post, Southside Abbey's funding is up. More accurately, my funding is up with the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee in August. It has really been on my mind of late that I am confusing these two issues. Nothing about the funding of Southside Abbey's ministry is jeopardy. The Holy Spirit doesn't call us to ministries without providing for them. No, the only change will be in my compensation.

If I think back to three years ago, I was perfectly willing to do this ministry for free as this was as clear a call as I had ever heard. It's fascinating to me just how quickly I got comfortable with the notion of full-time employment once it was offered through the diocese.

Without going too far down the rabbit trail, I am concerned about the two-tiered system of those who follow Jesus. There are “professional” Christians and “amateur” Christians. Before I spark a firestorm with this distinction, remember that Olympians are considered “amateur.”

This two-tiered system is less about lay and ordained as it is about paid and unpaid, but don't think that ordination isn't often a deciding factor in who is on what side of that line. I really have to face the fact that I am a professional Christian. I get paid to do all of the great and wonderful things to which Jesus is calling me everyday. Would I do the same if I didn't get paid? Does the pay merely free me up to do that which all of us should be doing anyway? What a blessing, right? Before the reader jumps up in arms over “the laborer deserves to be paid”-type cherry-picked bible verses, hear me out.

Recently, clergy from our portion of the Diocese of East Tennessee gathered for conversation, led by our bishop, George Young. When we were asked to share our anxieties, I spoke up. I do not think that the model of professional Christians is either sustainable or, truth be told, very biblical. Routinely the best Followers of Jesus I know are those who don't get paid for it. This shut the conversation down. It was too much for those who had dedicated their lives to this system. No more fears were shared and the conversation turned pretty pat-on-the-back-ish after that.

I have written about working myself out of a job before, but I am really starting to wrestle with what that means. Am I being called to be a tent-maker or bass-player to pay the bills? Maybe there are some places that are really making bi-vocational ministry work, but here in the South, I haven't heard too much about it. Here, it seems to be something that is done as a last resort.

These days are days of deep discernment for me. I often meditate on a would-be-throw-away line from Steve Martin's autobiography of his stand-up career, Born Standing Up. Steve tells the story of being on Johnny Carson's couch on a tonight show break. After Steve has delighted Johnny and his audience with prestidigitation, jokes, and rope tricks, Johnny leans over and whispers to Steve, “You will use everything you ever learned.”

Johnny's words both haunt and inspire me, as they could the Church. How could we use what we learned from the Early Church, a time when there was no distinction between professional and amateur Christians? How could we use what we learned from Paul who made tents or Peter the fisherman?

So, I return to the title of this post, just what exactly are we funding? If two generations of young clergy walk away from the expectation of compensation for following Jesus, what do we lose? More importantly, what might we gain? At thirty-five years old am I really already that much a slave to the Church Pension Fund? For every “the laborer deserves to be paid” I hear, I can find a “do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.”

I feel like Southside Abbey has broken open a way to be church without a building. Maybe we are being called to break open the system of two-tiered Christians.

This post was originally published on the Episcopal Church Foundation's Vital Practices Vital Posts blog on February 20, 2015. It has been reprinted here with permission.

3 Blogs on Stewardship: #1 Year 'Round Stewardship

I have to be honest, I agonized about the apostrophe in the title of this post for much longer than I should have. I share this with you to show just how much I still have to learn about stewardship (particularly stewardship of time). Take this post with a larger-than-usual grain of salt.

As I have been aware since our beginning nearly two-and-a-half years ago, diocesan-funded compensation for a full-time priest atSouthside Abbey is up in August. Our leadership council has seen this as an opportunity to step up. Or, as our wonderfully super warden, Kim Smith (who also unicycles and can often be found in caves) put it, “it's time to put on our 'big-girl' panties!”

Before we head to the Changes book for a prayer about the transition to grown-up underwear, I guess some background is in order. At Southside Abbey we make our budget a little bit differently (of course). We begin with a few questions:

• What do we want to do again?
• What is the Holy Spirit already doing around us that we can jump on?
• What are we being called to do that is new?

As I understanding it, this is a bit different than what some parishes do: wait until the pledges come in and decide what gets funded.

Our process? We asked the leadership council (and others in leadership roles, as all of our council meetings are open) to answer these questions. This led to modules named for different colors as there was less hierarchy than using number or letters. The group then prioritized the modules and the budget is the result. This meant that some things did not make the budget, but they are in our hearts and on our minds in case the Holy Spirit drops some “opportunity” in our lap.

I feel pretty good about this budget. If you would like to see the fruits of that work, we share our budget (along with liturgies and all kinds of other stuff) on our website.

If you get far enough down the 2015 budget, you can see that in order to accomplish the modules that did make it into the budget, we still have to raise about $44,000 or so. Divide that figure by twelve months, and that is around $3,600 per month. While this sum may seem like peanuts to some readers, know that half of Southside Abbey's congregants are homeless and the other half are working-class.

This means we are going to have to venture out into the community. So far, I have not asked for any money for Southside Abbey outside of grant applications. We do not pass a collection plate. So far the Holy Spirit has provided for us to do as much ministry as we can handle. I expect this year to be no different. Year 'round stewardship? It may be that we as a church need year 'round trust. The Holy Spirit will provide, year 'round.

This post was originally published on the Episcopal Church Foundation's Vital Practices Vital Posts blog on February 13, 2015. It has been reprinted here with permission.