Our Ledger of Love
Dear Church,
We had a curious conversation at our Finance Committee meeting a few days ago. You have some sense that this particular group of leaders typically pores over budgets—present and future, balance sheets, profit and loss for our entire organization. We came across the designated gifts accounting ledger looking at the various funds nearly entirely allocated to outreach in our community. Someone chimed in, “ahh, this is where the love-spreading happens.” I stopped short for a second and took myself away from the tables and spreadsheets. It’s easy to adopt that line of thinking because the story is so direct and clear. And. . .I respectfully disagree.
What am I trying to draw our attention toward? If you look at our budgets and tables you see items in a line, and those structures are important in our planning and strategy. In some cases, we have legal and professional obligations to report figures in a certain way. All well and good. Important. And, just as important for us to remember that each line and figure on every one of those reports support our informal mission of covering this valley with love like snow covers it in the wintertime.
You see, we don’t budget for snow removal so that our sidewalks are clear and the town doesn’t ticket us. We clear our snow so that the beloved of God might have unimpeded access to our pastors when the matters of the heart become too heavy to bear on their own. We cheerily pay our water bill because flushable toilets allow us to welcome hundreds of kids to our campus to enjoy and benefit from the sound and loving programming of Coombs Outdoors, our campus partner. We pay the landscaper to cut and maintain our greenspace because we know our church campus is a sanctuary and respite from the summer hustle and bustle of this mountain town square. We pay our staff well because attracting and retaining talent becomes a laboratory for creativity and innovation for spreading more love around this valley and well beyond. We pay folks to vacuum the carpet at night so that in the morning we can host hundreds coming to grieve, remember, and celebrate the life of a beloved patriarch.
And who does all that work? You do. I do. We do. We do it with our pledges to this church. Your pledge doesn’t fund the copier lease. Your pledge underwrites the spread of love, care and nurture through the creation of a funeral bulletin. Your pledge doesn’t fund the snow plow in the parking lot. Your pledge underwrites unimpeded access to the back door of Browse ‘N Buy where donors deliver goods that would be destined for the landfill, and alternatively sells on a reduced-cost rack to keep members of our community warm. These purchases fuel a part of the nearly half-million dollars of love spread back into the community. Every dollar, not just the designated ones, support this love-spreading. Every one.
Join me again in making a pledge.
Please increase it, if you can. Help us, together, continue and expand our mission. Come and celebrate it on Sunday, August 28 at 10:00 a.m. and join us for a celebration brunch after our worship together. And finally, thank you. Thank you for what you have done, are doing, and will do in the name of love and in the name of Jesus, and in the name of The Episcopal Church in Jackson Hole!
Love,
Jimmy
