Let’s Talk More About Money!
Photo from Photos.comEver since my ordination I’ve liked to talk about money from the pulpit. I get the sense that this makes me unusual. So I’d like to tell you about my experience of talking about money. Our parish has been committed to the bishops’ vision of stewardship for eleven years now. (I think it’s more a gospel vision, but I’ll credit their 1992 pastoral letter Stewardship: A Disciple’s Response as one of the best things the conference has produced to improve parish life.)
I was delighted when we cut down the BINGO sign at the parish after I had served there as pastor for the past eleven years.
I was more delighted when, five years ago, our parish finance council saw that we could expect budget surpluses for several years ahead and agreed to my suggestion that we ask the parish what to do with the extra money—and the people chose, in a discernment process, to give much of it away outside our borders to the poor.
And I’ve been most delighted many Augusts when I can announce to our staff that their salaries are going up, so that we’re beginning to pay just wages to those who work for the church.
But I usually don’t talk about money for what it can do for the parish: I talk about money for what it does for discipleship—including and beginning with mine.
Turning Around
I’ve told our parishioners that I used not to give money to the church; I told myself I was underpaid and overworked, and thus my time and talent were enough. I’ve also told them that I disagreed with some diocesan policies, and my not giving was a reaction to them.
My hearing the stewardship message turned me around: not only about my giving, but about my need for control and—mostly— about how I understood God’s generosity to me. I found that I had been asking, in effect, “How little can I give and still be at peace with myself?” Then one day I realized, “I hope God doesn’t feel that way about me!”—and I learned that attitudes about money can be a powerful lens into the heart of discipleship. TP
*This article is excerpted from Today’s Parish magazine (September 2004).
Msgr. Vincent Rush is pastor of Our Lady of Grace Roman Catholic Church in West Babylon, New York. He was pastor of St. Hugh of Lincoln Roman Catholic Church in Huntington Station, New York, when he wrote this.
