To Love As God Loves, Give As God Gives October 30, 2012
Posted by Dan R. Dick in Generosity & Giving, Money and the Church, Stewardship.Tags: Christian discipleship, Giving & Generosity, Stewardship
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This was printed in our conference newspaper, Reflections, but I am receiving requests for an electronic copy and the right to reprint it. If anyone wants it, here it is:
It is easy to forget why we are here. There are so many demands on our time, so many deadlines to meet, so many bills to pay, and only so many hours in the day. We work hard to make a living, and the cost of living is measured not only in dollars and cents, but in time and energy as well. If we are not careful, life becomes little more than getting through the day in order to make ends meet. Is this REALLY what we believe God intends our life to be all about?
In our American culture, we do a pretty good job with the “getting” side of life – a good education, a decent job, a home, a car, a family, and a thousand and one necessities and luxuries that make life fun and enjoyable. We struggle a bit more with the “giving” side. Recent studies show that there is a slight decline in both charitable dollars and volunteer hours adults in the United States give to church and other good causes. The top two reasons that people give for this decrease is that they are too busy and that they lack adequate resources. These are interesting answers in light of the fact that Americans have never had a higher percentage of disposable income and that hourly demands are essentially unchanged over the past 70 years. If the amounts we have to work with are the same or greater than we have had before, what’s the explanation?
Homophily Abounds October 3, 2012
Posted by Dan R. Dick in Christian witness, Church growth, Core Values, The United Methodist Church, Transformation and Change, U.S. Culture.Tags: The United Methodist Church, Values, Christian Community, Church growth
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Recent church visits strike me with an undeniable pattern — we tend to associate only with those most like us. I have yet to visit any church that does not consider itself “friendly,” yet rarely is there a deep level of awareness that answers the question, “friendly with/to whom?” Two brief illustrations. First, I was a guest preacher in a mid-sized urban church where the attending congregation only nominally reflected the neighborhood where it is located. Four visitors showed up on a Sunday morning — the parents of a couple who attend regularly, a torn blue-jeaned young man with beard and unkempt (by the standards of this congregation) hair, a swarthy, olive-skinned middle-aged man of mixed ethnicity dressed in slacks and a nice shirt, and a young, nicely dressed white woman with a very sweet 2-3 year-old daughter. Go ahead — predict who was greeted and who was not? Simplistic stereotyping? Maybe, but I was the only person in the church that morning who spoke to either of the two single men who visited the church. In fact, I watched a number of people physically keep their distance from the swarthy middle-aged man, eyeing him with suspicion and breaking eye contact the moment he looked back at them. The young guy hung to the side of two or three groups, waiting to be noticed, until I went over to him. He was very inquisitive, asking where I am a pastor, who the pastor was in the church we were visiting, why there weren’t any other young people, what kinds of Bible studies and small groups did the church have, etc. I took the young man over to the lay leader to introduce him, thinking he would get more helpful answers from someone who actually knew the church, but the lay leader kind of nervously backed off, retrieved a brochure about the church’s program, gave it to the young man, then excused himself to go greet the visiting parents of the couple who attended church. I noted that he stood and chatted with them for a good twenty minutes.
