A Pledge

My church started pledging a few years ago. Pledging is a process where each family, household or giving unit is asked to complete a form indicating how much money they expect to give in the coming year. Churches can use it to plan their budget so they don’t spend significantly more or less than people expect to give – less likely to have a surprise surplus or deficit!

I’m on the finance committee now and I know that pledging helps the committee plan the annual budget. But the more interesting piece was the effect pledging had on my husband and me. Pledging forced us to go home and actually think and talk about how much we gave to the church.

Money is the last big taboo. We’re pretty silent about incomes, giving, saving debt and spending, even amongst family and close friends. We did talk about money in our house but I don’t really recall any conversations about giving, at least not until the pledging card showed up in our church mailbox. Once home, we set aside some time to look at our income and talk about what we felt we should be giving and what we could be giving. We ended up giving a lot more than we had previously, all because of a card and a conversation.

We’ve also set an annual target giving amount and, if it’s not all out by end of November, we sit and figure out where it’s going to go before the end of the year. It’s kind of fun to have some extra giving money available to meet needs and opportunities that arise.

What about you? Have you ever really thought about giving? Do you give already?  Have you ever talked about it?

Things I know

I read a good article the other day written by Sherri Grosz at Mennonite Foundation called "Things I Know."  She mentions some important life lessons connected to finances:

• Mentors are not just for work
• Build good money habits
• Good enough for now is a smart decision
• Try living below your means
• Give generously of time, talents and money

Do you think about how your financial decisions affect your life?  How does your faith affect your financial decisions?

You can read the full article here. http://www.canadianmennonite.org/articles/things-i-know

Global Rich List

You may, in fact, be richer than you think.  I, for instance, am richer than 97% of the world.  How rich are you?

No Stuff Christmas

Christmas is about giving.

Actually, no, it’s about buying.  No, it’s about spending time with family.

It’s really about celebrating the birth of Jesus, Emmanuel – God with us.  (I can’t really say no to that… but that doesn’t cover it either).

The fact is the Christmas season has become a real mishmash of religion, culture, traditions, family, time off, angry-shopping, over-eating, gatherings, singing.  And the experience of Christmas is quite different from one person to the next.

But for many people it is associated with buying stuff. 

But not for me this year.  To celebrate the fact that Canada’s household consumer debt is the highest it has ever been, I am going to implement my first ever Buy Nothing Christmas.

Don’t worry.  I am not a downer Scrooge.  People will still get gifts.  But this year I am not buying stuff.  Here are some ideas I came up with this morning.  

Both my Reesor and McDowell families have a food-based gift exchange.  I don’t know what you call the game that we play but it involves stealing gifts from each other for about 2 hours until it miraculously ends with a selfless aunt choosing the unknown last gift from the middle (my friend Heather just told me the game is called “white elephant”...is that true?).  Instead of buying a box of chocolates, I am going to give the gift of a homemade dinner at my place.  I have been on a curry kick lately (I think the recipe is on page 171 of the More-with-Less cookbook) so it will likely be that.

For my mom, dad, brother, and Somphou (the IVEPer who lives with my folks), I am going to pay for a family night out to celebrate that we still love each other (and to thank Somphou for putting up with us…).  Dinner, a movie, a concert?  Whatever it is, it is going to be about people, not stuff.

Ok, so maybe it doesn't fit the official Buy Nothing Christmas criteria.  But you get the point.  This Christmas I am focusing on people, not things.  Let's call it a "No Stuff Christmas" (sorry, I haven't had the time to make a really cool No Stuff Christmas website yet).

Whatever you do, my suggestion is this - be creative.  And always remember to give to people who can’t give anything back.  "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me."  Always remember that what you have is not yours - it is Gods.  We are stewards of what we have been given.  So give off the top, not with what is left over.

If you need some ideas on how to share what you have, consider some of these options:

1. Donate through MCC’s Christmas Giving Catalogue, or
2. Mobile Give $10 to MCC with your cell.  $10 allows MCC to buy school books and a uniform for young students around the world: 
1. Send a text to "45678" with "MCC" in the comments section where they would normally type their text message
2. You will immediately get a return text message confirming that you are about to make a donation to MCC
3. Reply with "Yes"
4. text someone else and tell them to do the same.

Merry Christmas!

Mutual Aid with Ben Janzen

Faith and money are very much connected, whether we like it or not. Often we try to avoid making the connections, because thinking about faith and money can lead to some pretty difficult decisions - ones that force us to think about how and how much we spend, give, and save (give and save?)...


And many of the habits that we develop (ones that you and I are developing right now) stick with us for most of our lives. Unless, of course, we are willing to consider some pretty tough questions, and also consider the possibility that we may have to change the way we spend, give, and save. And maybe even where we bank...

About 47 years ago, a group of Waterloo Mennonites got together to explore a response to what they were seeing and feeling in their churches around faith and economics. At the heart of their discussion was the concept of mutual aid, “bearing each other’s burdens”. That led to a discussion about how a faith-based credit union could be an ideal way for church members to support each other, their churches and to conduct financial business in keeping with their faith.

“Why a credit union and not a bank?” you might ask.

Here’s a video (thanks to some credit union friends in Alberta) that shows some of the reasons why: