Twitter Exchange

Recently I got involved in this exchange on Twitter:

Person X: Listening to Cliff Christopher. How will we convince a new gen. that the church is the best place for their $?

I responded: Is your problem a lack of evidence or a lack of shared values regarding meaning of "best"?

Person X: lack of being able to make a convincing argument why our mission matters (nonprofits often make a better case)

To me, Person X’s response seemed more like a restatement of the original problem. It’s hard to make nuanced explanations in 140 characters, so I can’t fault X for that. I wonder, however, if X has considered the possibility that “nonprofits often make a better case” because nonprofits have a better case. I don’t know for sure that they do, I’m just saying not to rule that out. That’s what I was getting at in asking whether the problem was lack of evidence or lack of shared values.

I decided to Google “Cliff Christopher” and see what s/he had to say.

It turns out the person referred to is J. Clif Christopher, author of a book called Not Your Parent’s Offering Plate*. All I know about the book I garnered from a review here, and I’m not planning to run right out and buy it. The reviewer begins by saying

Common wisdom holds that younger generations of Christians do not give as abundantly or regularly as their parents and grandparents, but few people offer insight about why this change has taken place and how to encourage better giving in this new environment.

Then she goes on to say,

One of the most important points that Christopher makes is that “people want to be a part of something that changes lives.” (13) The competition for gifts is increasing as non-profit entities multiply rapidly. What the non-profit sector knows and practices—and the church generally does not—is that what motivates people to give is a desire to change lives.”

This raises a question. Is the problem really that “younger generations of Christians do not give as abundantly or regularly as their parents and grandparents”, or that younger generations of Christians do not give as abundantly or regularly to their church as their parents and grandparents do? X’s tweet, the one that sent me off on this whole train of thought, seems to imply that younger people are giving to secular non-profit organizations. Unless of course what her first tweet meant is “How will we convince a new gen. that the church is the best place for their $ instead of Ikea and the local liquor store?” Good luck with that.

Whatever amounts that younger Christians are giving to charity, it’s fair to conclude from what I have read so far that Christopher, Pastor Jennifer and Person X want them giving it to their church or at least to church based charities, rather than to United Way, Red Cross, UNICEF or Partners in Health. The problem is making a case.

So let’s start with the criterion of “a desire to change lives”. That’s where my question to person X comes in. The most obvious way to persuade people, young or old, who prefer giving to secular non-profits to give to faith-based charities instead is to offer evidence that the faith-based charities do a better job of changing lives. The evidence may be out there, for all I know. Certainly some faith based charities, like UMCOR, Catholic Charities or the Salvation Army, have a lot of boots on the ground in countries where disasters may strike and the local infrastructure not be up to handling it. They have the potential for making your dollars go far.

On the other hand, with faith based charities, not all your dollars are going to food, or clothing, or medical care. Some of your money is going to spreading the faith.

For instance, I remember how interested I was to hear a Methodist missionary to Cambodia come speak at our church. I knew from people who had returned from mission trips that there were two big mission projects going on in Cambodia. One was a school to teach young adults to be auto and motorcycle mechanics, so that they could earn a living. The other was the dumpsite ministry. From what we were told, whole families in Cambodia live near city dumps and prowl through them to find items that can be recycled and sold. The children do not have a chance to go to school, so the church is setting up schools near the dumpsites. These sounded like worthwhile projects that I would want to give money for.

Only it turned out that the mechanic school had an interesting curriculum: Bible study in the morning, then mechanics classes and practice in the afternoon. The school wasn’t just there to teach them to be self-sufficient, it was there to convert them from Buddhism. So every dollar I gave would be split between buying wrenches and buying Bibles, hiring mechanics who could teach engine repair and equipping missionaries who could teach theology.

Of course, the people who attended the trade school were adults who could decide for themselves whether to sit through Bible study in order to get the training they wanted, or even to embrace this new religion because it made sense to them.

But the school for children also had religion classes, where they, too would be taught Methodist flavored Christianity along with reading and writing and arithmetic. Their parents would have to decide for them: allow their children to get the only schooling they were likely to have and be trained up in a religion different from that of those parents, or keep them working at the dump. And again, every dollar spent on Sunday School books and Bibles is a dollar not spent on microscopes, globes and computers.

Of course, if you believe that unless you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you are going to hell, my reservations make no sense. Bible study is a feature, not a bug. I'm not here to argue anyone who holds that belief out of it.

If you’re someone whose last rapidly fading connection to her church is that church’s history of care for the poor and dispossessed, the tradition of “do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can”, the idea of attaching a price to that good, in the form of converting or at least appearing to, is troubling. Shared values - or the lack thereof.

So if Person X has the stats to show that the money young people can donate will change lives for the better, then lay them out there. If the problem, however, is a lack of shared values, in young people who were reared Christian, then s/he has a bigger problem than how to get a hand in some young adult’s pocket.

  

*Okay, minor picky point, but this whole “not your parents whatever” meme started, as best I could tell, with Oldsmobile ads back in 1988, when Oldsmobile began using the slogan, “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile” and customers responded, “Yeah, that’s kind of the problem”. If you were old enough to buy a car in 1988, you may very well be the parent whose offering plate this is not by now.

Baking for Jesus

I’m waiting for some butter that was in the freezer to soften so that I can bake Root Beer Float Cookies for the St. Anonymous UMW spring bake sale. I have never tried these cookies before and have no idea if they will be any good or not, but the person who posted the recipe to Pinterest loved them and they look a lot faster and easier to make than the Logan’s Roadhouse style yeast rolls I was going to make.

Yesterday I got an email with a suggested price list for our products. The suggested price for a dozen cookies is $3.00. The root beer concentrate and buttermilk that I had to buy for the cookies cost just under $6.00. That doesn’t count the cost of the other ingredients that I already have around the house. Every year at this time, and again in the fall, I debate whether to just donate ten bucks to the United Methodist Women and save myself some baking. When I was younger, I used to love to bake, and once stayed up most of the night baking Danish pastries so they would be fresh and hot for a similar UMW bake sale. Now I look back and wonder who was that woman, and why was she using my name and my face? 

The money we make from selling baked goods is supposed to go to missions. “Missions” always sounds vaguely like the money is going to exotic foreign lands but a lot of the missions we support are here at home: programs for children and youth, women in prison, and for a church run food bank.

I think the idea of bake sales dates back to the days when most women did not have an income, but did have time to spend baking, canning, or making small crafts. (Our "bake sale" actually sells a variety of items, not just baked goods, but the baked goods are most prominent.) I've heard stories of women bringing store bought items to donate, some still in the box. Having a "no-bake sale" in which everyone just chips in ten or fifteen dollars might make sense, but I think most of us would miss the bake sale.

So as soon as the butter softens, I will be baking cookies. This time, I will be sure to protect them from ants.  If they are actually any good, I'll let y'all know.

Anadama

I used to love to bake. I learned to bake bread when I was in graduate school, and home-baked bread was often the only bread I could afford. I tried all kinds of breads. I bought The Farm Journal Book of Homemade Bread, which I still have and which has all kinds of short-cut recipes, such as CoolRise French bread and brioche.

One of the cliches that puzzles me about baking is that baking recipes, unlike other recipes, must be followed precisely and don’t allow for innovation. It seems to me that if that were true, there would only be one recipe in the world for banana bread, or whole wheat bread, or ordinary white bread. I’ve even run across more than one recipe for croissants, which are all kinds of fussy to make. Somebody must have been playing around with these recipes.

So I am perfectly happy to mess with baking recipes. By swapping out cottage cheese, instant minced onion and dill seeds in Dilly Casserole Bread for Campbell’s Cheddar Cheese soup, chives and parsley, I made a batter cheese bread that got honorable mention in a local contest. 

My favorite bread recipe to mess with is Anadama Bread. My Farm Journal book gives the history of Anadama Bread as follows:

A Massachusetts fisherman, tired of the cornmeal mush his wife, Anna, spooned up for meals, added molasses and yeast to it and baked the first loaf of this bread while muttering “Anna-dam’er, Anna-dam’er” (or so the legend goes).

A batter bread with the addition of something thick and mushy allows for a lot of messing around with. The Book of Homemade Bread even offers one such variation, with oatmeal substituted for cornmeal. My own variation is made with a can of sweet potatoes, blended to a mush. It gives the taste of potato bread but is a lot faster and easier to cook.

I had promised to bake pumpkin bread for the UMW fall bake sale, and had actually been planning to use my trusty Anadama recipe with a can of pumpkin in place of the cornmeal, when I saw that Libby makes a pumpkin bread kit, with all the ingredients for two 9x5 loaves or three 8x4 loaves (or one 9x13 pan or cupcakes). Recalling that quick breads seem to sell faster than yeast breads anyway, I  opted for the easy path. The kit even came with a glaze to put on top. What could be easier?

Saturday evening I baked the three 8x4 loaves in disposable pans. After cooling the breads according to directions, I put them back in the pans and glazed the tops. I wrapped them each in plastic wrap, not too tightly so as not to mess up the glaze. I thought about putting them in the refrigerator, but I had read somewhere that putting baked goods in the refrigerator dries them out faster, and it was a cool night. I thought about moving them across the room to the baking center, but I’d have to clear it off. So I left them on the counter near the window.

When I next looked at them Sunday morning, little black specks were moving across the glaze: sugar ants. I said a quick “Anadama!” or at least one syllable thereof and thought frantically for a moment of just scraping off the glaze before realizing the ants were all over the pans and the bread had to be tossed out. If I had made the yeast bread, this wouldn’t have happened. If I had just moved the bread across the room to the baking center, it wouldn’t have happened. I donated the amount the breads would have sold for to the bake sale and made a note to call the exterminator the next day.

I’m still going to try the Anadama pumpkin bread just for fun. I’m not going to leave it anywhere near the window.

We're Building God A Parking Lot. I Hope he Likes It.

I was brought up as a Methodist.  For the past 25 years, I've been attending the same Methodist Church a few miles from my house.  My husband and I were married there, and although he was brought up as a Catholic, he began attending with me when we were engaged.  As members go, we haven't been the most active and we haven't been the least active.  We used to belong to a Sunday School class until most of the members moved on to other places.  I belong to UMW.  We don't tithe, but we do pledge every year and give what we pledge plus extra at Christmas.  I give about 3.5% of my gross income to the church and 10% of my take home pay to various charities, church included.  From what I have read, that's pretty much in line with what the average Methodist gives.

My church, let's call it St. Anonymous, has recently embarked on a fund drive for some new building projects, specifically a new parking lot, new covered drop-off, expansion of the education building, and some remodeling of the sanctuary.  My husband and I voted against undertaking the project at this time in light of the current economic situation.  We were in a decided minority, but we weren't the only ones.

Part of the project involved hiring a consultant to help with the fundraising.  Hubby and I expected a hard sell, and we weren't disappointed.  As a result, I found myself up late one night writing the following musings.  Since I'm not likely to send it to my pastor (whom I actually like and respect, even when we disagree), I decided to post it here where no one will ever read it anyway:

Why I Am Not Giving to the Building Program

1)  I want my charitable donations to serve God.  

God wants us to feed the hungry, clothe the ill-clad, tend the sick, and let those whose actions have placed them outside of human society know there is always hope for redemption.  There are many organizations in this community that do that, and every dollar that I could give to St. Anonymous to pave the parking lot I can give to them instead.  On the other hand,  God made his opinion of building projects known in that little episode of the Tower of Babel.  

2) There’s a recession on.

That means that all our community organizations that  feed the hungry, clothe the ill-clad, tend the sick, visit the prisoner, help victims of domestic violence, supplement utility payments for the elderly, and fund the organizations that do are fighting harder to keep what funding they have. My husband and I have increased what we give to some of these organzations by 50% to help meet that need, despite our concerns about our shrinking retirement fund just as retirement grows near.  

3)  Giving to the building program is not really giving.  It’s paying for creature comforts for ourselves. 

The only one of these improvements that is by any stretch of the imagination necessary is expanding the Education Building.  The rest of them are luxuries.  None of these improvements is anything different from what a country club or health club might try to provide for its members, but the country club or health club isn’t going to suggest that giving to their building project is the same thing as giving to God, or that there is some magic proportion of my income that God wants me to give for a new lobby.  Yes it would be nice to have a covered drop off, but it’s nice in the same way it would be nice to have a new purse. Either way, it’s money spent on myself.  

4)  We’re having a day of prayer and what for?

I don’t recall us ever having a day of prayer to end world hunger or to cure AIDS in Africa or for world peace, but we’re having one so we can have new chairs in the sanctuary.  I’d be embarrassed to pray about that.  Seriously.

5)  Whenever “sacrificial giving” is mentioned, it’s always with respect to giving to St. Anonymous, not on behalf of the  special collections that actually go to missions of the United Methodist Church or to community organizations.

We have “Change to Make a Change” Sundays, which suggests that whatever dimes, quarters, or small bills we have in our pockets is plenty enough to give to community organizations.  We’re told that we don’t even have to give to the 6 or so special UMC collections we have during the year, and no one is ever invited to speak on behalf of those missions to tell us what they are and what they do.  Those are the programs that provide services directly to people in some kind of need.  Those are the programs that serve God.  

6) Stewardship?  Oh, yes, let’s talk about stewardship.

 Stewardship is the wise use of resources to serve God.  Stewardship is not trying to divert money that is needed to feed the hungry and otherwise care for the unfortunate into a building program. Stewardship is not mistaking a church building for God himself.  Stewardship is not pampering ourselves and pretending it’s what God wants.  Stewardship is not just giving money to a church; it’s making sure that money is prayerfully and wisely spent on behalf of the greater good.  And stewardship is the reason I’m not giving one dime to this building program.  

More and more it occurs to me that if I just stop attending church, I’d have more money to give to the people and organizations, secular as well as religious, that really do God’s work in the world.