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Living the Mission - Building in Faith : capital campaign
Pastor’s Corner (from the February Newsletter)
I love our home.
Martha and I have lived in our home for six years. We loved the planning and building process and continue to enjoy working on our home. It seems we always have a project going. Over the years I have landscaped the yard, built a courtyard, installed cabinets in the laundry room and the list goes on. Working on our home is one of our great joys in life.
For Christmas a friend gave me a devotional book containing quotes from Richard Rohr who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque. One of the daily devotional readings brought me up short. He wrote,
In America we don’t have anything even close to Europe’s great cities with fountains, cathedrals, promenades and parks. I know we’ve only had two hundred years to work at it, but the point is, Americans don’t dream of building a great city. The American dream is having one’s own house.
In America, we have moved from the great Christian consciousness of the community, of building the City of God, a great people, to taking care of our houses, protecting our neighborhoods, so that handicapped people and people of other skin colors don’t move into it and kill property
values. We have got to call this what it is: narcissism.
I put down the book stunned. Is all the work I have done on our home simply narcissism? Is the time and energy I spend on this labor of love just loving myself? Is that what working in the garden and building shelves comes down to? Maybe so. I will have to spend more time contemplating Rohr’s critique and engaging in some self reflection. But, in the mean time, I will also continue to invest in our communal life – in prayer, in worship, in community service, because that’s a part of life I cherish as well. In the next month Martha and I will talk at length about our long term commitment to the community as well. That’s what this renovation project represents for me.
Two summers ago touring France and Italy I found Notre-Dame in Paris, Notre-Dame in Chartres and St. Peter’s in Rome magnificent, even breath taking. Yet, I’m not sure I would have ever contributed to building those structures. I’m too much of a pragmatist and not enough of an artist. A building has to serve a function. It can be beautiful while serving that function, but not tip the scale of being primarily beautiful and only secondarily functional. Still, I agree with Rohr, I am pathetically selfish. I want to invest as much as possible in my own home and as little as possible in the common good unless it serves me. It seems to be a part of the American DNA.
Like you, Martha and I will be talking this month about our financial contribution to Living the Mission, Building in Faith. The contribution will be competing with other commitments, most of which serve our family – home, car payments, utility bills, education, savings, travel and entertainment. Few of our commitments serve the common good or build a lasting legacy that reflects our most fundamental beliefs. The commitment we make to the renovation project will be an investment in the mission and continuation of Peace Lutheran Church like no other financial commitment we make. Fifty years ago a small group of Christians made the commitment to building a small church at 1701 Missouri Ave. The street was dirt. A house cost
$20,000 and a postage stamp cost 3 cents. I’m sure some told the charter members they were crazy and asked them what they thought they were doing. But they moved forward, Living the Mission, Building in Faith. They invested for themselves, but more importantly, they invested for those who would follow them.
We inherited their investment and have been living off of their investment for over fifty years. I can only speak for myself, I know it’s my turn to invest in the future and leave the next generation of Christians at Peace a tool for mission and ministry that they can use for decades to come.
Pastor Steve Loy
Weekly Bulletin Insert 1 2 3 4
A Boston Marathon runner’s Stewardship Sermon
Temple Talks You Really Don’t Want to Miss
Prayer Vigil Guide The Gatherings
Ten Days of Prayer - Materials
Chart of Giving
Quotes to Ponder
