Some of you are aware of the work that the Committee on Ministry is doing by way of its periodic focus groups. Through the guidance of the committee, the groups are intended to give feedback on the spirit of the church and to assess our congregation's work toward its ministries. These shared ministries are best defined by the church's covenant/mission statement that is printed on the cover of our Order of Service this morning. There will be an article about the committee and these focus groups in the upcoming edition of the Gazette.

One of the issues, brought to my attention from last year's focus sessions, was an interest in hearing more about the meaning of stewardship, especially as it relates to the church. It seems that, while my annual Sermon on the Amount-given each March for our Canvass-may be an inspiring discourse for many of you, there is still a need to hear and know more about what it means to take care of our church community. You want to know more about what it means to be good stewards. I'm only too happy to oblige.

Today is our Second Annual Blue Jean Sunday, so this seems as perfect an opportunity as any to talk about stewardship. I would say to our visitors that, though blue jeans can often be seen in our sanctuary on Sunday mornings, there is a special preponderance of them here this morning. That is because following our service a good number of these folks will be working in a nuts-n-bolts, nitty-gritty kind of way, on our buildings and grounds. That's a good example of stewardship.

Last week when we welcomed new members into the congregation, I mentioned how important it is, how much we depend upon the gifts each of us brings to the church. "And we ask," I said, "that you commit yourself to the service of this church by your participation in it-with your resources: your talents, time and energies, your opinions, criticisms, and your hopes. We ask that you participate with all of these, and more; we ask you to financially support this church."

The truth of the matter is, the sum total of this church (as inestimable as that might be) is represented in the synergistic combination of all the gifts that people bring.

I strongly believe that most of us participate in this house of worship in order to be made more whole. As wonderful and beautiful as life sometimes is, we know that it's not always easy, that we live amid brokenness and loss. And so we come here in the hope of engaging in a larger picture, one that holds hope and promise, one that promotes a sense of connection and abundance.

We come here to be made more whole, and in that journey toward wholeness we recognize that we aren't capable of being whole ourselves, unless and until we learn to share what we have with others along the way. I don't live under the fantasy that wholeness is ever a real possibility in this lifetime, but I am convinced that our movement and labors toward that wholeness are the holiest and noblest of human efforts.

Such efforts are about striving for the sensibility to accept the brokenness of the world. They are about responding to it, not out of defeat, but out of a willingness to hold as many of those pieces together as we can both for ourselves and for one another. Stewardship is about taking responsibility for holding those pieces.

To a very great extent, this church exists to provide its members with opportunities of service. The church is here to help us figure out where it is we need to be helping. Then, if we are able to fulfill these opportunities of service, the church has promoted healing in the world, healing in the community, and healing in our own lives.

The church provides us a place to practice being whole. We have a microcosm of the world right here. If we can create a healing and enriching environment for this church community, the wholeness that we create can then flow through us and out into the rest of our world.

Lao Tzu wrote in the Hau Hu Ching, "Each individual is responsible for his [or her] own evolution, but true achievement comes mostly from one's virtuous fulfillment in helping and serving his fellow human being." A. Popwell Davies wrote, "I must feel again that love I owe to others."

We come here seeking wholeness. We learn that being helped and being served are the outcome of helping and serving. And so we continually recreate this church in order to have a place and a community where we can intentionally engage in this process of serving and being served.

Stewardship for our church, means protecting and preserving. It means developing and building this institution of liberal religion. It means that we can receive what we need by providing our time, talents and energies. It also means that, if we want this institution to be here and to be strong enough to meet our needs and the needs of others, we will provide that assurance through generous participation in the financing of this church and its mission. All of the gifts we bring are essential, but today I'd like to especially focus our fiscal stewardship of the church.

I have to say that I love the opportunity to talk about money at a time when I'm not really asking for it. The pledge canvass won't be until March, same as usual. But I am going to talk about money now. First of all, because some of you asked that I would, and second because year round the church must live within the fiscal boundaries we set for ourselves. We need to think about these things more than just once a year, so that when the canvass does come, we might be better prepared to play our part in it.

Too often, the topic of money is seen as a turn off when it is raised within the context of church, and most especially in worship. I think that nothing could be further from the truth. My colleague in the Unitarian Universalist ministry and feminist theologian, Judith Walker Riggs wrote that, "If we want to know what our theology is, we need to look at what we do. From what we do, we can determine what we believe."

Finance and money are not dirty or irreligious words. Only when we learn to identify the connection of money and its potential, with our spirituality, will we be able to support our church fully in a world where money is the greatest agent of influence and change. We might as well use that agency of influence and change in our attempts to make of the world a better place.

The predominant metaphor of our age is capital. The definitive indicator of power and influence is money. The most available ticket to social license and cultural inclusion is money. So why would money not be equally reliable as an indicator of the significance we place in our religious community?

Our congregation is hardly alone within the world of Unitarian Universalism in struggling with the relationship between money and spirituality. This past summer at the General Assembly of the UUA, an entire day was devoted to exploring and expanding our understanding of this relationship. As a congregation, we too might do well to examine the role of money as it relates to our values, our faith, our capacity to give, our capacity for gratitude, and our willingness to commit.

Money is rarely about money; it's almost always about something else. And the something else that it's most often about, given we have enough to survive, is our values. Think for a moment about how much money you spent on vacations this past year. Now think about how much you contributed to the church. If vacations aren't your thing, what do you spend money on that you value? And how does that value compare to the value you put in this church?

Do your estimates indicate the values you might like to espouse, or is there room to more accurately and adequately put your money where your values are? Money gives us the opportunity to do with our lives what we've promised with our lips. Money provides us with an opportunity to make real the aspirations we claim for a better world.

Money is also about faith. When we have more than enough money to survive on, we often invest in opportunities that will help to secure our future. Investments are statements of faith, not only that there will be a future (which is a statement of theological faith) but also that the vehicle we are investing in will play a part in forming that future.

When we give generously to the church, our stewardship of investment secures this place for the development of faith. It funds the inward and outward programs which are the statements of our faith in action. The investment creates a faith in our mission, in the future of our children, and in the future of this institution.

Money is about the capacity to give. All too often this function is greatly misunderstood. The most important part of giving to the church is not what the giving does for the congreg

ation. Although I would not totally dismiss that aspect as unimportant. But even more important is what giving can do for the giver. Giving helps us to feel more whole and complete. Those of us who are parents or who have had close relationships with children, know how giving to those children provides us with a sense of fulfillment.

I would like to invite you not to limit yourselves in this area of enrichment. There are no boundaries to the fulfillment you can achieve by giving to the church. If anyone tries to limit or stop you from giving as much as you'd like, please tell them that this is a free church and that you are free to give here, just as generously as you please. And let me know if that happens!

Money is about our capacity for gratitude. Based on our blessings and on our experience of feeling blessed, we are capable of giving back. Aristotle, on being censured for giving alms to a man who had been identified as a bad man, answered: "I did not give it to the man, I gave it to humanity."

Gratitude is about recognizing the incredible blessing that is the gift of life. It is about recognizing the many blessings that support that original gift. Gratitude is about a celebration of those blessings. And it's about giving back-to humanity-or in some way to the source of those blessings that, no matter how hard we might try to convince ourselves otherwise, we did not earn nor do we deserve.

Money is about commitment to community. The difference between being a spiritual person and a religious person is that religious people belong to religious communities. Religion is the institutional home for our spiritual explorations and development. When we generously support our religious institution, we help to fulfill its present and to secure its future. That's all well and good.

But also through our commitment we identify ourselves as a part of this community. It is we, and we are it. In our homes we don't say, "Well, I don't know how much I want to identify with this family so I'm only going to provide the most minimum amount of my income so that I can feel somewhat connected."

No! We give whatever it takes for our families to thrive and to accomplish the goals that we've set out to achieve. Do we want any less for our church community? Or might we rather take on our part of the ownership, making certain that we are giving what we can so that this church can be and do all the things we know this church is capable of being and doing. What sense does it make to hold out on ourselves.

There is a factor that sometimes gets in the way of this sense of identity and our commitment to the community. It's called the chump factor. People are sometimes afraid to give what they are really capable of giving because if others aren't that generous, well I'm going to end up feeling like a chump.

In the first place this fear creates a kind of self-fulfilled prophecy. If I hold back because I don't want to be a chump, others are likely to hold back for the same reason. And then we all keep ourselves from moving forward. This creates a very self-defeating and unnecessary cycle that isn't helpful or healthful for anybody.

Second, why should you allow someone else's fear to limit your capacity for gratitude, your joy in giving, your sense of wholeness and fulfillment derived from the expression of your values and your faith, your capacity to give and your capacity for gratitude. You are never a chump for living out your values. You are never a chump for expressing that faith.

You are never a chump for having given what you are capable of giving, when that gift goes toward the creation and recreation of a religious community that is your home, your home where you are free to be the religious person you are. Your home where you don't have to pretend beliefs that are not your beliefs. You are never a chump when you have done all that you can do for a good and worthy cause, because it makes you a part of that cause. You are never a chump when you get that kind of return on your giving.

Here's the church.
Here's the steeple.
Open the door,
And see all the people.

Each of us is essential to the life of this community. And so we ask that you commit yourself to the service of this church by your participation in it-with your resources: your talents, time and energies, your opinions, criticisms, and your hopes. We ask that you participate with all of these, and more; we ask you to financially support this church." It is in this way, by being good stewards of our religious home that we create a space for spiritual growth and development; that we create a space for transformation and fulfillment.

It is in this way, by being good stewards of our religious home that we secure for the children of this congregation-present and future-and the children of our broader community an environment in which to explore and learn, so that they might recreate this world in ways we can only dream of.

It is in this way, by being good stewards of our religious home that we support the work of antiracism and do our part to dismantle the institutional structures that are hell bent on oppression.

It is in this way, by being good stewards of our religious home that we take up our part in the fight against homophobia and other social disease; that we promote the power of love over the power of fear, the power of justice over the power of self-righteous indignation.

It is in this way, by being good stewards of our religious home that we reach in and reach out in the service of a purpose larger than ourselves. And somehow, with grace, we pray to be blessed and transformed by our participation in that service.

It may seem very strange to hear a sermon like this when it is not accompanied by a plea for contributions. The purpose though is not to seek contributions. The purpose is that we might examine our relationship with this, our religious home. The purpose is that we might consider what it could mean to be good stewards to this liberal religious cause. The purpose is to promote the possibility of conversion, because it is through conversion-a turning of the heart-that we turn more fully to our potential as spiritually fulfilled and socially responsible human beings.