Harvest

1991 (Year B), 15 September / Pentecost 17

St Peter de Beauvoir Town

What you’ve got to do this morning is to use some imagination. Normally at the beginning of a Stewardship programme we get a visiting preacher, but the visiting preacher who has been used most to talk about Stewardship in Hackney in recent times is me. It’s all a bit sad, but I’m afraid that the best I can do is to get you to shut your eyes and just try to pretend it’s somebody else.

Harvest is a time of thanksgiving, for the glory of creation, all the good things we enjoy which our Divine creator has showered upon us. A most powerful symbol of those things was the meal we shared last night. We’ve come to give thanks to God, as is most justly due. We’ve also come to pray for those who have less of the good things than we do, and commit ourselves to working for a more just distribution of scarce resources. And of course we come, as has become something of a tradition in this church at this time of year to assess what is right and proper to give back to God.

Now the gift can take many forms, we can spend time and energy getting things ready for the meal as many people did yesterday. We can spend time in the service to others. Our gift may be our work or some skill which is particularly ours. It may be something which is precious to us. I guess the thing which is precious to all of us is money. For money is very powerful and it’s a very powerful symbol. We spend a great deal of time acquiring it. We are careful how we use it and it’s an incredibly good measure of the things which matter to us in life.

One thing we need to get clear at the beginning is that the church has no right to get all the money you give away. Giving to God means supporting the work of Oxfam, Cancer research, Aid to people in Somalia, Drug rehabilitation units, as well as paying taxes so that children can get a good education and the sick of this country are cared for. When we give money to those things we are giving back to God.

But the plain fact of the matter is this. The church needs money to survive. St Peter’s needs money to survive. If we don’t pay our bills then, like anybody else, we’ll go broke and at the end of this year we shall probably be £5,000 in the red. We are in the fortunate position of having some investments which we can draw on, but pretty soon they will come to an end and that will be that.

What we must face, and face clearly, is that it costs, according to figures provided by the Diocese, £22,000 to keep one clergy person in post each year. We have two. In addition we have a lay person in this parish who is also is also paid by the Diocese. If this parish had to pay the full salary of these people we’d be looking at something like £60,000, a year. In fact what we pay is £21,000, not quite the total cost for one. The rest is paid for by the Church Commissioners, through their investments, but those too are drying up, so much so that over the next three years they will cut what they give to the London Diocese for salaries by £1 million. The reality is that by the end of next year two clergy jobs in Hackney will go. That’s the truth. The jobs to go are not likely to be in this parish, but two will go and new ways of ensuring that the ministry of the church can carry on will have to be worked out.

But all that is a bit removed from us at the moment. We have to ensure that our books balance and the moment they don’t. I’ve said we are £5,000 light this year. The only income that St Peter’s gets is what comes in from those people who worship here, apart from a little bit we get from people hiring the crypt. It costs, as I said, £21,000 each year to pay what’s called the Common Fund Contribution, that’s what we pay towards the cost of clergy salaries. There are other costs; over £1,200 to keep the church warm for Sunday services; nearly £2,000 to insure the building, £250 a year to pay for Newsletters. All this has to be paid for by us – it doesn’t fall out of the sky like manna from heaven. Now of course we could make savings, we could not have candles during Holy Week, we could not buy music for the singers and musicians but I think we would be the poorer for chopping anything.

What we need is more income, not just to keep the present church going, but to ensure that it continues as those who came before us in the faith did. What we need to do here is expand the mission of the church, not see it contract.

The only way that the mission of the church here will expand is if the people of God will that it happens. And we will show what went want by what we do, what we are and what we give.

Put bluntly we need an extra £100 per week. Now I realise that things are hard for many people. Some might properly review what they give to the church each week and decide that they must reduce their contribution. Some will have to think hard because their partner doesn’t share their commitment to the church. Others could well look at their income and decide that they could give more. The important thing is that we make responsible, realistic and prayerful decisions. We don’t want you to make promises that you have no chance of keeping, nor do we want you to give to the church in such a way that you or your family go without.

Various guidelines have been given to assess how much you might give; £1 per week, for every thousand you get in income; one hour’s pay each week might be given to the church. If we did either of those two here at St Peter’s we’d be able to expand at a rate of knots.

We want everybody to be involved. Everybody. So over the next couple of weeks somebody from the church, you’ll see most of them in a couple of minutes, will call on you after first having fixed a time, to talk about some of the things which are involved in giving to the church. I hope you will receive them for what they are – friends. They will already have decided how much they should give and will come to help you make proper decisions. They will not tell you how much you should give, nor will they persuade you to give if you have decided not to, and they are not there to make you feel guilty. What they are there to do is ensure that each of us have the opportunity to think about these things. They will explain the best ways to give, because some are a bit complicated and if I tried it now we’d end up in a bit of a muddle. What you should know is that everybody is being asked to look again at their giving, that includes the people who live in the vicarage as well as you.

As you leave here this morning you’ll get a leaflet explaining some of the things which we hope you’ll think about over the next couple of weeks. Think about them and pray about them. Don’t feel guilty, but do think very hard about the whole business of giving back to God some of the things that have been given to you.

May God bless our endeavours so that the vision of glory may be seen by more people in this place and we understand more our place in these things. AMEN