Canvass Sunday, March 16, 2008
Reverend David Robins
Let me get right to the point. We need to have financial pledges of $120,000 for the new church year beginning on July 1st. The church’s financial year is July 1 to June 30. We need those pledges from about 100 families and individuals. Over the next two weeks, a volunteer from the church will call you and ask if she or he can visit with you, and bring your filled out pledge card back to the church treasurer. The church treasurer, Peter Harrison will add up the pledges and tell the Standing Committee if there are enough pledges to meet the budget.
We plan to pledge $2000 to the church for next year.
It is fairly simple and straightforward, but then again, it is about money, your money. Your money is important to you. My money is important to me. Your money represents your labor and your time converted into currency, and that currency is used for food, shelter, clothing, education, medical needs, travel and entertainment, and donations that add meaning to your life.
A church is not a charity, although we do give money away with five to six collections a year, fundraisers for Save the Children, and money for the Community Supper, the UU Service Committee, Monadnock Area Transitional Shelter, and other charities that we consider important to our world and our community.
In sociologic al language, the church is a voluntary association. A voluntary association is made up of people who join voluntarily. No one makes us come to church. America has more voluntary associations than just about anywhere else on the planet. We are a nation of joiners.
But a church, like other groups, is more than a sociological term. Typically, churches and houses of worship have been in the business of saving souls. We may not say we are saving souls, but isn’t that part of what we are here for?
- A soul in search of hope, not hell, will find a saving message here.
- A soul in search of the exhilaration of wide vistas of spiritual freedom will find a saving environment here.
- A soul in search of healing will find compassion here.
- A soul in search of unconditional love will find a vision of a loving God here.
- A soul in search of eternity, will find the message that a God of love, embraces all, forever.
- A soul in search of Truth will find respect for the integrity of reason in religion.
- A soul in search of interdependence, in search of community, in search of a place on the web of life, will find neighborliness and neighborhood here, an evergrowing awareness of the ways in which we are connected to one another, to the community, to the earth.
- A soul in search of peace may find rest and trust in the deep Mystery from which we come and to which we return.
A soul in search of personal truth, can ask here, what is the truth that will set you free, that will grab you by the heart and mind, and spend your life in goodness and mercy?
For, you see, churches and houses of worship are not just made for saving souls. They are primarily made for spending souls. For the religious question is, when one’s time comes, whether it is young or old, now or tomorrow, will I have spent my gifts in little ways and medium ways, and big ways.
I would have been a member of a Unitarian Universalist church even if I had not been a UU minister, because I feel as though I fit this religious glove. Not always, never the same way twice. But the fit is usually good. I was lucky enough to find when I applied to seminary that they would pay for all of my tuition. That is the only way I could have afforded to attend seminary, and it is why I continue to give, modest though it is, to my seminary.
The UU church would have been my home for spending and saving my soul even if I had not become a minister, because I was given two important gifts in childhood. One, was a devotion to church that I learned from my parents. Two was an abundance of love given to me by my parents, which fills me up everyday, even though they are deceased, and which I spend by the end of each day. My parents were not perfect. They were perfectly disabled from my early childhood. They spent money they didn’t have. My father never met a calm situation that he could not turn into a crisis. But they were the channels for an unconditional love that exists in deep Mystery, and which I have access to, for the spending of my days.
Our church’s mission, that we read each Sunday, is a testament to spending our souls for goodness, truth and beauty.
We need to adequately, properly, and fairly fund this church so that it will continue to be our home for saving and spending our souls. We need to do this so it will be here today, and be here tomorrow.
I make no claim that we do this better than anyone else, simply that we do it differently, uniquely.
We save and spend souls with love and light. Love and Light. Compassion and Truth. Caring and Reason. Love and Light.
You light up the world as you save and spend your souls.
Lisa Beaudoin’s choice of themes for this canvass, 'You Light Up The World,' is perfect for our congregation, and I think should be our permanent motto.
The church literally lights up the community every night with floodlights on the tower. We light up the community every Wednesday night with the Community Supper. Our wonderful clear glass windows, heat conductors that they are, also allow so much light inside that we rarely have to turn on the electric lights for worship. Our religious education lights up our children’s lives every Sunday and Tuesday.
This beloved church building was built to save and spend our light and love. Light is its symbol.
Over the top of each one of our sun drenched windows, is an architecturally decorative piece that might be called a fan, or ventilator. These pieces are also known as horizons, or sunbursts. Each one has a horizon line on the bottom….the top of the sun peeking over the line, and magnificent rays being cast outward like a glorious sunrise over Mount Monadnock.
We have six windows and six sunrise horizons inside the sanctuary. We also have six sunrise horizons over each window on the outside of the building. We have three sunrise horizons over each door at the front of the church and one 15 foot long sunburst horizon that spans across the front of the building outside.
This church was built to light up the world. It was built to hold the people who hold the souls to light up the world. What ever wattage you’ve got, 15 watts or 200 watts, the sunburst horizons remind us whenever you are here for worship, whenever you pass by, that we were made for lighting up the world.
The church needs you to make a financial pledge for next year, as generous as you can be. Your valuable money will keep the lights on, the heat on, the water running, the building maintained well, and pay a living wage with minimum benefits to a dedicated, hardworking staff of people, Vanessa, Sarah, Maria, Deb, Joanna, Priscilla, and myself.
Light up the church….and light up the world.
