March 13, 2022

Spring is our campaign pledge period.

The pledge process is a support for me here at St. John’s and was in my church membership before St. John’s.  For me strong intention is not enough for me to act on my desire to help financially as much as I am able. I’ve found that when the congregation gets a smart and helpful system together to support members in thinking about and acting on financial support, that helps me get it done, and everything St John’s sure does help me.

That structure helped me create a spreadsheet showing my main expenses, including past and planned giving to the church and the other things I want to support.

My dad taught me the importance of planning ahead for financial things as I headed to college. Of course, he was using 12-column ruled ledger paper, not Excel software. Back then I was pretty daunted by all the laborious entry with a pencil on a paper spreadsheet. And the difficulty of correcting entry errors (and all the errors in the resulting calculations). But the idea of it stuck with me because the payoff was clear—being able to see what it is you’re thinking about in numbers, and how they do or don’t add up.

The ancient idea of tithing was another help. For me it’s a lighthouse shining in the fog of uncertain and limited resources, not to mention my own fuzzy thinking about my resources and my goals. The 10% figure is there in my spreadsheet, guiding me. I don’t know if I’ll aver achieve it. But the process has helped me get my giving closer to it, staying a bit ahead of inflation. 

I know that spreadsheets are not that useful to everyone. But I would guess that setting aside time and effort, along the way recording intentions and the numbers that go with them, can help most of us.