Letting Our Giving Live

“The world of the generous gets larger and larger.”
—Proverbs 11:24, The Message, The Bible paraphrased by Eugene Peterson

We are living, as a gospel songwriter suggested, “in perilous times: each day brings new distress.” As I write this, I am mindful that the Congress of the United States has just passed legislation responding to the Treasury’s proposal of a massive “bailout” of the financial industry, claiming that, in a larger and very real sense, they are attempting to save the global economic system, as we know it. And now that we have commited $700 billion for this "quick fix" of "Wall Street," it doesn't seem to be restoring the confidence of jittery investors. At least not yet.

And what will happen to us back here on "Main Street"? In all likelihood, prices for goods and services, for gas and heating fuels and for other necessary services will continue to rise. And, quite possibly, our “buying power” may drop. It will require more, to buy still less.

But what of our “giving power?” In belt-tightening times like these, Christians roll up their sleeves, dig deeper into their pockets, and get busy! We find ways to do more. We find ways to give more. I met with the World Outreach Committee of the congregation I serve recently, and this group, composed of three returning members and three who are new to the committee, spoke energetically about doing more to help the hungry and the homeless in our community. Building upon our proven success of gathering donations each month for the local food pantry, they will propose creative and “fun” ways to encourage more varied and energetic participation in our donating food...and dollars to feed the hungry.

This fall, I proposed the stewardship theme, “Let Your Giving Live” to describe the response God wants from each of us. God wants our giving to live...and to thrive. Our giving needs to remain at the center of our lives. Our generosity, as the writer of Proverbs suggested, will cause our world to become “larger and larger.” The more we give, the more we will see opportunities to give. The more we are generous, the more God will reveal of God’s plan and purpose for our world. The more we respond to God’s generous heart with our hearts, the more our hearts will grow, and as our generous hearts become larger, so will our world.

These are perilous times, but for the Christian, these are also opportune times. Let us, like the Apostles of long ago, share the bounty of the Lord’s Table with “glad and generous hearts” (Acts 2:46c) and let us free our giving with glad and generous hands!

Yours with a grateful heart,

"Pastor Paul"

I'm encouraged by David Plouffe's strategy report for Barack Obama's presidential campaign that was posted on the web today.

But I believe that Barack needs to win back the daily news cycles to sustain the advantage he had. Here is my "grassroots" advice: have Barack announce a member of his Cabinet or one of his Senior Advisors each week; one or two each week. Since I and other Obama supporters are expecting that that will be a "rainbow" of highly qualified women and men, of various backgrounds, ethnicities and orientations, we need to seize back the excitement of McCain's choice of a woman as his running mate (however inappropriate or unqualified we may think she is.) This has never been done before, to my knowledge. From where I sit in rural Iowa -- one of the battleground states, as we all know -- I believe that we need people to get over their "Palin-fatuation" and realize that much more qualified women and men who truly possess the skills and the character to govern, will be standing with our next President in his administration from Election Day forward.

So, why keep it a secret? We need to invite Barack to reclaim the spotlight by his announcing, for example, one of the outstanding women that he intends to appoint to his administration. Then he can follow that up with, say, one of the outstanding Hispanics that he intends to choose. And then follow that with the names of the amazing array of qualified people, representing a variety of opinions and skill bases, that will comprise the Obama administration.

The Democrats need to reclaim the spotlight. We can do this. Yes we can.

Be Transformed — Discern the Will of God

[Jesus] said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” —Jesus Christ in Matthew 18:3

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds,

so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

—The Apostle Paul in Romans 12:2

I need to confess something to you: I don’t really like change. I like to save stuff. I like to enjoy the familiar. I enjoy living in the same place for years, knowing the same people.

But something funny has happened while I have believed that. I have moved twenty-four times in my fifty-seven years! But I do know about “not changing” because I lived from Kindergarten until my High School graduation in the same house in Connecticut: thirteen years. And my family and I have owned our own home in Urbandale for just over seven years. So most of those moves happened in the middle thirty-seven years. Change did not always feel good to me. But nearly every move, every change to a new school, or a new call to ministry, offered a bright side: a chance to sort, rearrange or discard my possessions, an opportunity to make new friends, new bike paths to explore or challenges to meet in a new work setting.

Lately my visits have brought me into conversation with a number of families who are making changes, especially by “downsizing” their household from their family home into a much smaller apartment. These people are discovering that they can not only survive with less material possessions, but many actually feel unburdened and relieved to have made the change.

Jesus Christ, and his earliest apostle, Paul, both challenge us to make change, or transformation, part of our plan. Jesus wants us to become like children, to recover innocence and wonder, an openness to sharing and, as the French would say, a certain “joie de vivre” – the joy of living! Paul invites us to renew our minds, presumably through study, service, travel and prayer, and to allow ourselves to be transformed.

At Central Christian, where I am called to serve, each worshipper is invited to be open to the changes that the Spirit of God is calling us all to make: to renew our minds by choosing a new Sunday School class or by attending a fellowship group, to stretch our attitudes by adjusting our personal or family budget to increase our generous response to those in greatest need, to be open to meeting different people, making new friends and changing our response to those from whom we have turned away.

Let us all be transformed...by the Spirit of God.

James Dobson Doesn't Speak for Many of Us!

On June 24, James Dobson came out with his literalistic and limited view of scripture and his strict conservative view of the Constitution, and then labeled Obama's views as "distorting" the Bible and a "fruitcake interpretation" of the Constitution. Does Mr. Dobson really take a Constitutional scholar such as Senator Obama and try to reduce his years of study, research and scholarly teaching to "a fruitcake interpretation?" Apparently, Mr. Dobson claims the audacity to do that and thinks he can get away with it. But is his criticisim of Senator Obama a "christian" response?

I believe that the Christian community has to learn to agree to disagree amicably. Some of us take the Bible literally. Others take it seriously. How we interpret what we read determines the priorities we choose: personal salvation or justice for the the poor and the oppressed. Some would say we need to have both viewpoints in our vision. Clearly, I need an inclusivist to speak for me. Barack Obama, like many believers I know and serve, tries to claim an inclusive vision of God's justice, judgement and grace.

A Time for Grace

Today, on the eve of the Kentucky and Oregon primaries, it is increasingly clear that the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate will be Senator Barack Obama. By tomorrow evening, he will have a clear majority of pledged delegates. And soon he will have a majority of all delegates, elected and appointed.

But we as progressive people of faith and conviction are missing an opportunity whenever we tear down the Democratic candidate that we have not chosen to support. In my case, that's Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. I've admired her for years, and in fact, went to hear her speak in Washington County, New York when she was first running for Senator from New York State. And yet, sometimes, I find myself reading the pundits and bloggers who want to criticize Senator Clinton, or worse, hurl epithets at her.

She is a great woman of faith and conviction and has done a great deal in the past seventeen months to prove that a woman can run for the highest office in our nation and be taken seriously. She has earned the passionate support from people in every state and from every walk of life. She has campaigned with vigor and determination.

And yet she will probably not win the nomination. This is a time that calls for everyone, across the political spectrum, offering an olive branch of grace: appreciation for the sacrifice she has made and for the conversation she has started. Let us thank her for her contribution to the national dialogue and express our anticipation that she will be making significant contributions in the future, as a United States Senator, or in the Cabinet, or as a member of the Supreme Court.

And then let us come together as progressive people of faith and conviction who love our country and want to get back our moral standing in the world and return to an agenda of protecting the earth, the poor and the children.

Where Faith and Politics Come Together

We live in a northwest suburb of Des Moines, Iowa. Just ten miles from downtown which was "center stage" for all the candidate speeches on Thursday evening, January 3. Our precinct is one of eleven in our suburban city, a neighborhood of apartments, condominiums and smaller single-family homes, nestled against much larger "McMansions" a little further west.

Our city is served by a Republican in our state legislature, so I assumed that we Democrats might have one of the smaller caucuses. In 2004, we had about 200, which was my point of reference. Maybe we would have 250 if it was a very good night, I thought. So imagine my surprise, shock and ultimate pride and joy as my neighbors just came pouring in to the elementary school gymnasium that the Democratic Party had assigned to us for the evening. When the registrations were complete, at 6:56, the precinct chair announced that 374 had registered to caucus.

After the required preliminaries, we had our first count. Each interest group, for Biden, Richardson, Clinton, Edwards, and Obama, plus a group that were still undecided, counted the number of people who were standing up for their choice. At that moment, my candidate, Barack Obama, had 39 per cent of the caucusers support, with 20% for Edwards, 18% for Clinton, 13% for Richardson, 7% for Biden and 3% undecided. A hush fell over the room as the percentages were announced. We Obama supporters could see that we had a big group, but packed together like that, it was hard to tell where one group ended and another began without reading the campaign sticker on people's clothing. What many people who have not been to an Iowa Caucus do not understand is that the party has set up the process to "winnow" out those candidates that will not be "viable." In our case, we were going to send nine delegates to the county convention, and 15% was the cut off. That's why some candidates (such as Biden and Dodd) appeared to receive almost no support in Iowa, because all the Biden people and the undecided's had to go find another group, and the Richardson people welcomed 18 of them to join their group, making Bill Richardson "viable" for the second and final round that would be reported to the party headquarters. I smiled to myself, since Bill, whom I met in an Iowa State University bookstore some weeks earlier, was my second choice. But Barack also picked up eight and the rest scattered among the other two candidates' groups.

Senator Obama actually had almost twice as many delegates as his closest competitors: Barack had 147, Edwards 83 and Clinton 77 and Richardson 66 after the caucusers whose candidates who were not "viable" shifted their positions. So if the caucus in my precinct had been an actual election, Senator Obama would have been even further in front of the rest of the pack. By the rules of the caucus, a delegate can only support one candidate, so there was some more complicated math that ended up giving Obama three delegates and the other three candidates two each. This tends to level the playing field somewhat, at least in our case we would have needed one or two more people to come over to our side to get the fourth delegate. When all is done and the results are called in, the Associated Press reports the percentage of delegates each candidate received, and the number of people present.

I was never prouder to be an American than I was that night in that elementary school gym, for all of us, hot, uncomfortable and crowded together, were exercising our right as citizens to choose our President! And as a Christian, I took particular delight in sharing what I knew to be true: that Barack Obama is an active participating member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. I had heard him speak to a statewide denominational gathering, so I also shared what I remembered from that day last June: that his faith and his politics belonged together because what he had learned from Dr. Jeremiah Wright, the esteemed pastor of that very large congregation, was the "audacity to hope" and the importance of service in acting out one's Christian commitment. In Barack's case, he gave his time and legal expertise to helping people organize in Chicago's south side. His life's work was then, and is now, a living out of the meaning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, even though an evangelical Christian might not hear him say the familiar "buzzwords" that would convince them in the way I am convinced. For me, and for a growing number of Americans, together with millions of onlookers around the globe, people are impressed that Senator Obama can integrate his faith and his politics in such a way that he paints a picture of an inclusive nation, a nation in need of being healed, in which all people are welcome at the table.