Giving Priority: Pledging Your Best

Dear Faithful Stewards:

With the crisp winds of October and the glorious colors of fall foliage, our hearts turn with the season to thoughts of church pledge cards… Of course, they don’t; but my project here is to suggest some musing over your giving projections for the coming year.

As I’ve mentioned before, we inherited our pledging system from three perhaps obsolete forces. First was the cycle of the agrarian year. In North American fall, stewards of the land had a solid estimate of their harvest and consequent revenue. Riding the cornucopia crest, churches asked for contributions and commitments from a portion of that bounty. Understanding the time lag between field and market, the pledge card functioned as a short-term futures contract on farm families’ final income.

The second pledge driver arose from the administrative requirements of a fiscal year. In the '50s and '60s, churches were plagued with financial scandals arising from loose bookkeeping procedures. Congregations were mandated to employ more accountable standards, including the development of annual budgets. Prior to that period, most churches functioned without annual financial reports, and the major consideration of each spending project was based on the church’s checkbook balance, sometimes enhanced through specific giving appeals. As budgets became the norm, annual pledging gave church treasurers a defendable amount to place in the general ledger’s income projection.

The third reason for the growth of pledging came in resistance to (I’ll use a term from former Fed Chair, Alan Greenspan) irrational exuberance. The pledge is an attempt to shake emotionalism out of the church giving process. This works both ways. Pledging protects contributors from being manipulated by impassioned appeals predicting institutional crisis if funds are not received immediately. Casually referring to the budget prepared at the beginning of the year, church members can analyze projected income and expenses and simply respond with their previously budgeted generosity. On the other hand, pledging protects the institution from the slammed checkbooks of the disgruntled. “I don’t agree with the pastor’s stand on ________ (fill in the blank), but I promised a giving amount for this year so I will give until the next pledging cycle.” This does give church leaders an opportunity to restabilize whatever has disturbed the membership, prior to budgeting for the next fiscal year.

All this brings me to our pledge-drive, stewardship-campaign, dedication-process project in preparation for 2023. Every annual cycle brings its own anxieties. Since the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008 (the consequent fallout resulted in the bankruptcy of my own business, LAMUS Consulting), we’ve all been a little skittish regarding income projections and our generosity capacity. As inflation and related portfolio income projections seem uncertain, it’s hard to discern what will be a reasonable church gift this January, let alone fourteen months from now…and yet we ask.

This year’s theme is “Giving Priority”. I invite you to turn that around in your head and heart before you consider your 2023 pledge amount. I suggest you think about making giving a priority even in the midst of financial anxiety. When income is robust and projections optimistic, it’s summertime and the giving is easy (thank you, George Gershwin). But, when the future seems cloudy and all we sense is stormy weather (a depression-era reference by Harold Arlen), giving happens by making it an intentional priority, perhaps against cautious prudence.

“Giving Priority” also asks us to consider what is important—our priorities. Is the mission and ministry of the First Presbyterian Church of La Grange important to you? Is it a priority among the many appeals to your generosity?

I invite you to look over your fields of produce and consider the harvest God has bestowed on you and your household. Breathe deeply the fresh cool air of fall’s promise and, as you endeavor to be good stewards of God’s gracious bounty, consider giving priority to your community of faith.

Pledging with our leadership to be a faithful stewards of your best gifts, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor