To begin talking about this, I want to ask you a question: Have you ever taken the time to look at all the items you spend your money on throughout the year? Within our credit card app, we can see where we spend our money and it’s quite a revealing list. Like most people, I spend the vast majority of my money on housing, food and transportation. But there’s a lot of little things that add up over time. We pay for our cell phone service and several subscription services like Netflix, Disney+ and music services. My sons like to play video games, so they are always asking for money to purchase Robux, which is the currency used in Roblox to buy items in the games (if you didn’t understand that last sentence, count yourself fortunate).

We read this morning from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” In other words, what you spend your money on is a reflection of what matters most to you. And based on the Lang credit card statement, what we care about most is ourselves because way at the bottom of this list is a section about how much we give to charity. It was a tiny little sliver of this larger circle. Altogether, we spent about 5% of our income on charity, which felt kind of low to me, but then my wife reminded me, that’s just the charity we pay for with our credit card.

That doesn’t include what we give to the church (because we pay our offering with a check) and a lot of other things we do. For instance, Courtney will buy gift cards to grocery stores for homeless people and give them out if she sees someone begging on the street. If a friend needs help with paying for something, we’ll pick it up. These wouldn’t show up in that report. After she talked me through it, I felt a little better because, compared to what we’re spending on ourselves, what we’re giving to others seems rather insignificant.

But I think that’s true of most people. It’s in our nature as humans to hold onto resources for ourselves. According to numerous studies across several different charitable organizations, the average person in the United States gives anywhere from 3-5% of their income to charity with lower income individuals giving a higher percentage of their income to charity and higher income individuals giving less. For example, let’s say a wealthy person writes a check for $1000 to a charity and a less affluent individual writes a check for $100, that $100 often represents a much higher percentage of the less affluent person’s total income than that of the wealthy individual.

In other words, the more money you have, the less likely you are to give it away, which is such a fascinating paradox. You would think that a person with more money would be more charitable because they can afford to be more generous, but in fact the opposite is often true. The question is why? Well, it’s not because wealthy people are inherently more selfish than everyone else. It’s because your mind is going to perceive the world differently based on your understanding of abundance and scarcity.

For example, let’s say you have a thousand dollars in the bank. You’re living paycheck to paycheck and any small expense to your car or your health is going cause you to get behind on your bills and you’re going to lose your home. How does that person, who is living so close to homelessness, perceive abundance? Well, if I give you $1000 to help you with your expenses, I’ve just doubled your savings and provided twice the cushion you just had. From your perspective, that $1000 has provided enormous abundance in your life.   

Now let’s change the example. Let’s say you have a million dollars in the bank. I think most people would say that’s a lot of money. If I give you a thousand dollars, how does that impact your perception of abundance? Well, I’ve increased your net worth by 1/10 of 1 percent. The increase is miniscule compared to what you already have. To even increase your net worth by 1%, I would need to give you $10,000. Your concept of what constitutes abundance is so incredibly different compared with the person who has $1000 in their bank account.

But here’s where things get interesting. In the same way that increasing your wealth changes your perception of abundance, it also changes your perception of scarcity. For the person whose living paycheck to paycheck, scarcity for them might be falling below that $1000 threshold in their bank account. Whereas, for the person with a lot of wealth, scarcity might be falling below that million-dollar threshold, which is why someone with a lot of money is less likely to give it away because their understanding of scarcity has changed in accordance with their perception of abundance.

Now, in my opinion, one of the major goals of Jesus’ teachings in the gospel is to break this correlation between abundance and scarcity. What Jesus wants from us is the opposite of our natural reaction. Rather than becoming less generous as we gain resources, Jesus wants us to become more generous. Utilizing our previous examples, Jesus wants our scarcity threshold to remain low, even as our abundance grows. I mean think about it, if you view scarcity as falling below $1000 and you have a million dollars in the bank, well that means you have $999,000 to give away!

So when Jesus says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also, what he’s really telling us is that we have to change our mindset. To really become a charitable person requires us to rewire the way we think about abundance and scarcity. And the early church, they understood this problem on a deep level, so they came up with a real out of the box solution. According to the book of Acts, everyone who joined the early church, took all of their money (whether they had $1000 or a million dollars) and put it into a large pool. They then used that money to feed, clothe and house everyone associated with the church. By giving their money to this larger pool of resources, everybody who was a part of the early church was now working with same definition of abundance and scarcity. 

Now I’m pretty sure that if I asked you to sell your house, your car and give your entire life savings to the church, you would tell me to go jump in a lake, which I understand. But if we pooled our resources, we could afford to buy that lake that you want me to jump into! The fact is I don’t expect us to live like the early church, but what that means is that our definition of abundance and scarcity is going to vary a lot, which is why our giving can vary so much from person-to-person. So we have to think outside of the box in a very different way if we’re going to get on the same page, which is what brings me to my Come to Jesus moment for this sermon. The Session (your leaders) wants you to know that they are thankful for your generous support of our church, not just during our regular stewardship campaign, but also during the capital campaign, special offerings, and all the other ways that our members support the life of the church. Unfortunately, the pandemic and the associated economic stress have impacted the level of giving.

If you were here last week, you heard Gary Gehm, the chair of Administration and Finance tell us that our contributions have fallen short of the needs of our operating budget for the last two years.  While we were able to fill the gap with the PPP loan in 2021, this year, we had to draw on our financial reserves. We need everyone to give an extra $400 per person if we are going to close our $200,000 budget deficit.

This deficit has been exacerbated by two factors: 1) A membership decline worsened by the pandemic and 2) the impacts of inflation on our budget, which means that everything costs more for you and for us. Your dollar today does not go as far as it did last year and, as a result, your concept of abundance and scarcity has probably changed a lot over the last year. In fact, my guess would be that, if you’ve had to tighten your belt to survive, then your natural inclination is going to be to give less to charities, like the church. But here’s the thing, if everybody does that, then our church will very quickly fall into crisis.

The Session could cut personnel and program costs dramatically to balance the budget, but we fear that would have a negative impact on the church. Right now, the Session is proposing to use some of our financial reserves next year while keeping the operating close to 2022 levels. We will be looking for as many opportunities as possible to contain costs while trying to broaden the appeal of our church to get more people through the door. But what we need more than anything else right now is your financial support so that we can address our deficit for 2023.

Therefore, I’m asking you to think outside of the box when it comes to the church. I want you to push yourself to reexamine the way you think about abundance and scarcity. And to do this, I want you to understand what it is that you’re supporting at First Pres and how the money you give here is changing lives.

Our Stewardship theme for this year is New Beginnings: Our Promises for Tomorrow. The concept behind this is campaign is that we are entering into a new phase in the life of our church. This is happening in a variety of different ways. First of all, we are finally at a point where COVID has moved from a pandemic to an endemic. Like the flu, we will be dealing with new iterations of COVID for years to come, but thankfully it’s not as lethal as it was during its initial spread back in 2020. This means we can be together again as a community without fear of large swaths of people dying.

This is not to dismiss the fact that the last two years have been really hard on all of us, mentally, physically and emotionally. The staff here at the church have been working incredibly hard to provide you with quality worship and programs. Indeed, if you’ve visited other mainline churches in our area, you are probably aware of how many of them are struggling because they shut down completely during the pandemic and now they’re having trouble getting restarted. Their people aren’t coming back, but you’ve been faithful to our community and that has paid dividends.

We took a chance in 2020 and launched a capital campaign to make portions of our building more accessible. Although redoing our hallway and chapel may not seem like much, we’ve now made the entire south wing of our church accessible. The only floor that still lacks accessibility is the top floor of the CE wing, but other than that, you can now get around the entire church. This has been a long time coming and I’m so delighted that everyone can easily move through our campus.

Another way that our church is entering into new beginnings is by redefining our missional purpose. For the last 6 years, our church utilized Family Night as a way of reaching the underserved in Arlington Heights through our partnership with Faith Community Homes, which is now known as Family Forward. After the pandemic began, the missional side of Family Night became harder and harder to maintain. So, we’ve been exploring different ways to make a positive impact for those lacking the necessary resources to survive. We’ve been helping people who have lost their jobs find new jobs through Career Transition Resources, which is run by Marilynn Graves. The pastors have worked closely with many indigent individuals and families who cannot afford rent, food, transportation or medicine. And the mission committee is working with Chalice House and Refugee One to help incoming refugees get established in the Chicagoland area.

Finally, we have maintained and expanded our programs over the last two years. You’ve seen this with some of the amazing music that Adam and Chris have programmed on Sunday morning and in the concert series. You’ve seen it with Service Saturdays, where we are providing opportunities for our congregation to get out and make a difference in our neighborhood. You’ve seen it with the elders on Session who have been really thinking outside the box about how the church needs to evolve and change to be a 21^st century church (the videos you saw were created by the Session).  

There’s a whole lot more I could name, but you get the idea. This church is doing really amazing things and that’s because of you and what you have given to this place. And I need you to keep giving. Remember that the average person in the United States only gives 3-5 percent of their income to charity, so there’s definitely room for us to grow. This year, if it’s possible, I need you to adjust your sense of abundance and scarcity and give more. Even if it’s only a few hundred dollars, that can make a huge difference.

If you’re new to our community and you’ve never made a commitment before and need a benchmark of what to contribute to the church, a great starting point is $45 a week. That comes out to $2340 for the year for an individual and $4,680 for a couple. Of course, if you can give more, every dollar helps. If that sounds like a lot of money and you’re wondering, “Easy for you to say, Alex, but do you actually give that much money yourself?” I will tell you that I do and that I would never ask you to do something I am not doing myself.

For some of you, I know $45 a week is not easy, but its time for a New Beginning. We need to make our promises for tomorrow, otherwise this great community that you all have supported and nurtured over the years is going suffer. Next week is Commitment Sunday, when you will be asked to write down on your commitment card what you plan to give to the church in 2023. Please prayerfully consider how your commitment to First Pres will make a tangible difference in sustaining our congregation as we enter this new phase our church life. If you can’t be here, make sure you mail it in or fill out your commitment online on our website: https://firstpresah.org/contribute/pledge/ Together, we’re going to make a difference by doing our part to building God’s kingdom right here in Arlington Heights. Amen.