I’m confused and a little nervous about the stewardship campaigns this fall in our local churches.

Just think about it for a moment. The stock market continues to go down in spite of the fact that some economic indicators say that personal earnings have increased.

Some farmers are facing severe drought conditions. Some of them say that they will not have a corn crop worth harvesting this year.

Many retired persons have seen their pensions cut or disappear because of the business scandals across the nation.

If we study the economic indicators and the mood of the country, we might come to believe that we are facing hard times this fall as congregations ask their members for financial projections for the year ahead. In fact, we could get downright depressed about it all—and I sometimes do.

That is, until I remember what I learned to sing in Sunday School: Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so...

This simple yet profound song reminds me that I am not alone. In the hard times and the good times, Jesus loves me...and you.

These words may sound simplistic to a local church budget committee. They are trying to balance the budget, comparing income and expenses, and I suggest we sing the Sunday School song. But, finally, it is not about numbers that add up or don’t add up. It is about what we believe is most important in our lives. What and who do we love the most?

I like the Consecrating Stewards’ materials, published by the UCC and written by our own retired staff member, Earl Miller. They remind us that our giving begins with asking, "What do we believe in? What does our faith cause us to do and be?"

It does not begin with the budget needs or the income projections. It begins with each person discerning what God is calling us to do with our lives and our resources. What would Jesus have us do with our resources in difficult economic times? I can’t answer that question for you, but I have to answer it for myself.

My wife, Sue, and I have been tithers for a lot of years, both good and difficult. We are not changing this year, no matter what the stock market does, no matter what the corn crop is like, no matter what the budget projections are or are not. Tithing is a habit which has helped us to discern where to allocate our gifts, no matter how small or large.

I encourage you to think and pray to God about what you will do this year from your faith perspective in the support of those things important to you. I know that Jesus loves me and you, and that love is calling us to love others as well.

At the Annual Gathering I said that my favorite Bible passage is Luke 10:27. Love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.

I am less confused and lot less nervous about the future when I remember those words. What are the Bible words that guide your life? Remembering them may make you less nervous about the future as well.

Surely we have economic challenges before us as a country and as churches, but God will be with us, no matter what.

That is Good News!

I believe that the American people are once again building toward a time where we will have to decide which side of the "peace" movement we are going to support.

In many ways it feels like the early days of the 1960s when the American people were confronted with differing points of view about our involvement in Vietnam. The Presidents, both Democrat and Republican, were asking the American people to sacrifice our loved ones to save the world from Communism by supporting our troops in Southeast Asia. Leaders of peace movements were asking the U.S. to withdraw and get out of Vietnam.

A lot has happened since those days. The famous "Wall" has come down, Russia is now seen as a friendly nation, we can go to Vietnam on vacation, and China is one of the United States’ major trading partners.

Now the "evil empire" is Iraq. Our President is calling for war on the empire because he feels its leader threatens the well-being of human kind. How much those words seem like an echo of the words of the 1960s.

I wonder what we have learned over the years. We have learned that it is not in our best interest to fight with any nation where U.S. business has a major economic relationship. We have learned that we live in a world where communications are so constant that we can see the horror of war live on CNN and a dozen other TV stations. Or we can "talk" with persons on both sides of the conflict via Internet connections.

I have been reading and seeing in the news an increased activity by "peace" groups during the past few months. I applaud those efforts because I believe that we as Christians are called to have an active hand in peacemaking. I am aware how tension-filled confrontations can be between those who favor peace by nonviolent methods and those who favor peace by violence.

History has some things to teach us. In their book A Force More Powerful, authors Peter Ackerman and Jack Duvall have outlined how nonviolent efforts have changed the course of history in powerful ways.

There are many examples of nonviolent efforts that have worked for positive and peaceful change:

What do these movements teach us? When people are together, when they stand up and say that they will not tolerate violence any more, change takes place. What often appears at the beginning as a weak effort by a few "misguided" souls turns into transformation.

I believe some people must have thought that Jesus was not a threat to the well-being of the Roman Empire as he walked in the Holy Land.

One of our UCC pastors, Rev. Tracy Hughes, in Wooster, Ohio, is an active Peacemaker in Palestine. She has stood and will again stand with others between the tension-filled lines in the Holy Land.

Tracy is a trained member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, a group of persons who stand in Hebron between the opposing Israeli soldiers and the Palestinians.

Some would ask, "Why would one do that?" It is because Tracy and others believe that nonviolent peacemaking is more powerful than guns in changing and saving lives. If you want to join her and a delegation from the Ohio Conference that will be going to the Middle East, January 19-31, 2003, you can contact her at 330-264-9250.

It is time for us to talk of peace with one another rather than war. It is time to find ways to work together as people of the world rather than seeking to destroy one another. We don’t need more events like 9-11-01 where people hate one another so much they will do anything to destroy one another. We, the U.S., do not need to exact terror on other nations in our world.

I have been curious about something for a long time.

What causes people to have a particular "mind set?" What causes us to develop particular ideas that we assume form the correct way in which to view life?

Of course, there are the usual ways our ideas are formed: our family heritage and experiences, educational experiences, social conditions under which we live, how much money we have or perceive we do not have, personal crisis events, world events and more.

Who we are and what our philosophy of life becomes are determined by a combination of these things.

I know that my life has been shaped by persons and events which caused me to develop a mind set about what commitments are important to me.

I am always surprised when I discover that my mind set is too narrowly defined or at least is not fully enough open to be sensitive to the perspectives of others whose life experience is different than mine. I am surprised because I have always thought that I am fairly open to others’ opinions.

In local churches I have observed that there is often an accepted mind set about how things are done that closes off new ideas and alternative perspectives.

I was in Germany recently visiting our partner church, the Evangelical Church of Westphalia. Members of a local church board shared with me the challenges they were facing as a congregation. They reported that they didn’t know what to do to appeal to the large numbers of "foreigners" (non-Germans) in their neighborhood.

I asked if the church offered worship opportunities for them. They replied that these "people" didn’t know German and didn’t like their style of German worship.

I asked if they might offer alternative worship services. They suggested that was not possible because it was not the "German way."

Their thinking seemed very narrow until I reflected about our own congregations who are unwilling to offer other ways of experiencing worship because "it is not the way we do things around here."

Did Jesus speak only German or English? The Apostle Paul went to many different places encouraging people to "know Jesus" in their lives and communities, even in the ways of the Greek culture.

I wonder if the persons that Paul met also had "narrow mind sets." Probably. But what gives me hope about the narrowness of my own mind set is that God keeps presenting me with "opportunities" that cause me to reconsider it.

In Ukraine recently on a SARA trip, I was struck again by how much I take my own faith issues for granted.

I watched 50+ children singing a song of joy (in a yet-to-be-finished church building) when they lived in homes that were hovels, when sanitary conditions were terrible and when schooling was not possible because of discrimination and fear that they would be treated badly at school.

Yet they sang for joy. Tears were in my eyes as they sang. My mind set was changed in a blink of an eye when God graciously showed me other ways to experience faith.

In Phillippians 2, we read, "Make my joy complete, be of the same mind." Paul advances his thought.. "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others."

What a change in mind set that is for us. It is not about worshiping only in our own accepted language or style. It is not about determining which ideas are acceptable in the church and which are not. It is about looking with openness to the opportunities that God places before us.

I know that I am thankful for the nurturing I received in the past, but I also know that it conditioned me to a particular mind set.

I feel that God continues to challenge my mind set so that I will be open to the leading of God’s spirit in my life. It is hard because I get comfortable with believing I have everything all figured out. Discovering that I don’t is not always easy to accept.

How about you and your church? Are we open to the spirit leading us to consider that maybe our mind sets are keeping others from experiencing Christ?

I believe too many wars have been fought in the history of humankind because of mind sets. Too many church fights have happened because of stubborn mind sets.

Too often we don’t even see the foreigners or the singing children because we have closed our mind and it is set not to open. The Apostle Paul said it this way: "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus."

As I move closer to my retirement date of March 31, I find that I am more reflective about how the ministry has changed and yet has also remained the same over these past 40+ years.

When I began my ministry at Emmanuel UCC, Bluffton, Ohio, I was blessed with serving a congregation that was a caring and teaching congregation for a young pastor. I was their first full time pastor since the 1870’s.

They were taking a leap of faith by assuming the stewardship responsibility for calling a 24-year-old, full time pastor who had never served a congregation before.

We experienced five exciting and growing years together. During that time, we built two new parsonages and a new church building because a tornado destroyed the sixty year old church building and the two year old parsonage.

I learned a great deal—not just about replacing buildings but also about what it means to be a pastor with people who face a crisis and whose faith remains strong as they work through the problems.

Crises of faith remain in churches today as well. But what also has remained the same over the years is a strong, abiding faith in God which will meet whatever challenges may impact us.

It is by God’s grace that we are able go forward into a future with hope. The vital role of pastoral caring and support during the "hard times" continues to be a hallmark of what ministry is all about.

1962-1967 were years of great conflict in our society. Viet Nam was being fought not only in a far off place we hardly knew about but also on the streets of America.

As I counseled with young men who wanted to become Conscientious Objectors, it was not without disagreements among some of the members and citizens of the community.

Today we also find church members and community people who struggle with pastors who, urged by their faith-filled consciences, act for justice. There are pastors today, as then, who feel strongly that the push for war is not wise or warranted. Even the idea of war is abhorrent to them.

Differences of ideas and opinions continue to challenge congregational life as pastors and laity work together in addressing the questions of justice for our world.

In 1962 some folks questioned the wisdom of using a Bible translation other than the King James version. Today we use many different translations and paraphrases of the Bible, but some people struggle with the use of inclusive language related to references for God.

Pastors and laity often work hard to develop healthy ways to express different faith perspectives. It will probably always be so. But this is also what ministry is all about.

Pastors and lay leaders in most congregations must deal with the need for more membership growth, stronger giving by members of the congregation, and the expansion of ministry with youth and children. Unless there are radical new steps taken to address these concerns in local churches, the majority of our congregations will have fewer members and older members in the future.

More congregations will be forced to close their doors because of the lack of financial resources. Church membership has been trending downward for more than 80 years in our society.

It was recently reported in USA Today (Cathy Lee Grossman) that the average church member gave just 2.6% of their income to support the church in 2000. This is down from 3.1% in 1968.

On average, 85%of the giving stayed at home to support the local church in 2000, compared to 79% in 1968.

While these figures could bring on a good case of depression, I am reminded that Jesus carried out His ministry with a lot less. But His was not a ministry of serving oneself; it was focused on serving the needs of others, usually society’s outcasts.

This challenge of serving others rather than ourselves has not changed over the past 40 years. It is the same Gospel message that causes us to wrestle with our own personal priorities as well as those of our congregations.

What I have learned over the years, because I have had the privilege to see with my own eyes the needs of persons around the world, is that we cannot change our priorities until we see and feel the pain of others in personal and compelling ways.

I learned the terror of war’s aftermath when I sat with a Sri Lankan pastor and his family in what used to be a closet in their bombed-out church. I witnessed the effects of the horror of ethnic cleansing when I looked into the vacant eyes of a child from Kosovo in a refugee camp in Macedonia.

I learned that hate is so powerful a motivation that only with God’s love living through us can we turn it around in this world.

I have also witnessed the love of caring people who reach out in unselfish ways. The dentist who tells a patient to please give what would have been his fees for dental care to SARA to support orphans in the Ukraine. The person removing muddy, dirty carpeting from a house devastated by floods—the home of a person whom they first met when they arrived to help as part of the Ohio Conference Disaster Response Team.

There are also hundreds ways that pastors serve, like sitting with a family member while their loved one is in surgery facing a life and death situation. Hope and love are shared.

I have witnessed a lay person spending hours at the food bank handing out food for hungry people when she felt ill because of painful cancer. Tears come to my eyes very easily when I see God’s work being done by the hands of persons who believe that they are doing what Jesus wants them to do.

It is not about being conservative or liberal. It is about God’s love being shared.

I could reflect about a lot things and go on for many pages, but enough for now. I thank God for the privilege of being a pastor of the United Church of Christ, a church that nurtures me through the people by their love.