“What in the World Are We Here For”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
… To Advance the Kingdom of God!
This message on Christian Stewardship was presented by Financial Advisor, John P. O’Keefe
I guess it’s time. After a few months of thinking about this, I think I may have made the wrong decision. But, we are here, we have all been called here for this day and this purpose and, I guess, this message. So thank you for allowing me to be here in a place that is kind of strange for me; but I am here, nonetheless, and I would like to say a little prayer.
Dear Lord, Please still my heart, my soul and my nerves. Please help this to be an encouraging message and consistent with your desire for us. Amen.
Well good morning, once again. For those of you that don’t know me, my name is John O’Keefe, your stewardship chairperson for 2010. In addition to stewardship I do things like sing in the choir; I have served on the Short and Long Range Planning Committee; I worked on the CaringWorks project; and a few more things. I have been married for over twenty-five years to my wife, Sara. I am the father of four and the grandfather for three granddaughters. In my spare time, I work as a financial advisor. For me, that is work that God has given me; he has provided me in work that I love. It is just really a blessing for me.
You know, people, I am sure many of you are thinking why would he take this job? Why would he want to be stewardship leader, chairperson? You know, after all we have been through— I mean the greatest financial crisis of our lifetime, not-for-profit organizations all over have experienced huge drops in giving; even Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral in California recently filed for bankruptcy—well I want you to understand my passion for stewardship. I hope nobody is offended by this, but I do want to tell you what has brought me to this day and to this place. First and foremost, my passion about the Church and our mission here on earth goes back to the lavish blessings that Jesus Christ has provided me and my family. You see I was about forty years old and I didn’t know Jesus Christ. I didn’t have a personal relationship with him. My life, you know, really… I went through the motions; it didn’t have very much purpose. Through a set of life circumstances, not all of them pretty, I was introduced to Jesus Christ by people from a church much like this one. These dear folks convinced me by becoming my friends that a relationship with Jesus Christ would change my life and would give me new meaning and purpose. It is those relationships that ultimately did change my life. I am a different person in Christ.
My friends in Faith, you folks out there, there are many, many people like me that are out there in this community, that are outside the doors of this church, that are not going to walk in here without us befriending them and developing relationships with them. You know, I called this message: What in the World Are We Here For? Well in my experience and in my life we are here to reach those people –for no other reason but to reach those people. So I stand here in front of you, unashamedly an advocate for those people. I also stand here as an advocate of this church because I love this church; and I stand here as an advocate for the people that we pay to work for us because they face challenges and I appreciate what they do. I am glad you do that, and not me. I stand here as an advocate for generosity, because I am going to call you to be generous. But most importantly of all, I stand here as an advocate for Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
So how did John O’Keefe as a new Christian, some years ago, twenty some years ago, become interested in becoming an advocate for stewardship? Well back in 1991 when I was a member of a large church in Edina, the church president asked me to lead the stewardship campaign. I just thank God for the encouragement of the senior pastor there and the development minister. Can you image that church had somebody whose purpose was to minister to people but to also raise money? They mentored me in stewardship. Our budget that first year that I did that was two point four million dollars. So it was not an insignificant thing and I didn’t know about how to go about doing that and raising that kind of money. So what I did was I relied on those experts, those professionals. I did a lot of research and I learned more about stewardship, and I made it a point to learn why people give and what motivates them. What I found, in some ways was very encouraging and in other ways was kind of discouraging. Many of the most prominent members of that church, because I had access to all the records, the giving records over time; now I don’t here, so don’t worry about that… I am not going to come to your door and say, “Well, come on. You know, give up!” But many gave moderately, gave modestly, at best. Their pledges were a few hundred dollars a year, although they had lavish weddings at that church for their daughters, and were featured in the media for their significant contributions to the Walker Art Center and the Minnesota Orchestra—pictures of the husbands and wives there with them… many thousands of dollars that they give. But they gave very little to the church. You know, I don’t know it as a fact, but I suspected that some of those people had multiple houses, maybe one in Scottsdale. I know for sure they had one in Long Lake in Brainerd, (Long Lake is in Brainerd, isn’t it?) and a ski place in Colorado; yet it wasn’t fashionable for them to support the church.
Well I think that is true for many of us. Jesus’ call is very uncomfortable. He asks us to be just, which is really close to impossible, sometimes for me, and he calls us to be generous. Jesus calls us to leave our comfort zone. He asks us to abandon our self-centered world. He asks us to love one another, to feed the hungry, to visit the sick, to comfort the afflicted, to seek justice for the oppressed. This, my friends, is really uncomfortable for many of us and I will put myself in that boat because going out and meeting new people is very difficult. Remember, but I do want to tell you that Jesus did give us a few warnings about this. I said this in one of my letters, I don’t know which one, but he did say it was “more difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel to go through an eye of a needle.” So he knows our nature and he knows how hard it is for us to think about others first and ourselves second.
Oh, I am supposed to be driving the slides, too. I forgot about that. I need an assistant. So let’s back up here or back forward. O.K. There is our beautiful logo that Bob and Deb Knutson created for us. Thank you, guys. …I’m not too far behind. So What in the World Are We Here For? So forgive me if I get a little lost. I believe we are here for three reasons, the first of which is to be reconciled, to be reconciled to each other and to Jesus Christ. Second: to honor the past. We stand on the legacy that has been given by many thousands of people who have been members of this church and have made an investment in our relationship with Jesus Christ. And third, finally: to claim hope for the future because Jesus Christ gives us hope, great hope for the future.
First: to be reconciled. So why do I believe this is so? Well again, I believe it is so that we are called to be reconciled because Jesus said so. In John 13:34 and 35, on Holy Thursday, the day before he was to be crucified, and I think he was a little preoccupied, but you know what he was thinking about— his disciples. He was thinking about what they were going to be confronted with when he wasn’t there and you know what he said to them? He said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Folks, Jesus told us that this is going to be the distinguishing mark of a Christian community, the love we have for each other. So I believe this is extremely important.
I was part of the Short and Long Range Planning Committee as I mentioned to you before that was assembled to better help us understand, all of us understand, where the critical issues are that we face here at Faith Church. We surveyed current and former members; we held town hall meetings. We learned that some of our members have been hurt and that there are some unresolved misunderstandings for others. I pray that we can now look forward and we can make an effort to heal those hurts and to seek better understanding. In general, I do find that people are pretty touchy these days inside the church and outside the church. It is just the way things are. We kind of live in a “throw the bums out, get revenge,” reality show age where Donald Trump gets applauded for saying, “You’re fired!” We “vote people off the island,” and we feel we deserve to have a say so in everything. You know, that isn’t very Christ-like, that isn’t what Christ called us to do.
Last summer I ran into a little situation that surprised me, and I am not going to embarrass anybody by saying who exactly was involved in this; but I ran into it. In July, Pastor Chris appeared at our CaringWorks tent at the Raspberry Festival dressed in his Army uniform. A few people commented to me afterwards that they were offended and angry, because Chris wore his uniform that day. Now, this is just to illustrate a point, mind you; it isn’t really a big deal. But ironically, I was the one who just hounded and badgered Chris to wear that uniform. It wasn’t his fault yet everybody was mad at Chris. “Chris, please forgive me. I am really sorry that I got you into that. You know, dumb old John, I thought that this would be somebody that people would approach and talk to, somebody in uniform, and that was simply why I asked him to do that. Because, we are called to engage people and I thought: Oh gosh, we could use Chris as a tool, in his uniform. So, please forgive me.” The point here is that we can choose how we are going to act toward each other and what we are going to believe about each other. Can we be loving and graceful as Christ asked us to be? I also want to tell you that I asked to preach today. So if that is an issue with any of you, come talk to me.
Dear brothers and sisters, in all seriousness, if you have an issue with anybody in the church, the greatest gift that you can give each and everyone of us, all of us here, is to talk to them, to seek forgiveness, to offer forgiveness. If you aren’t happy with any of our pastors or staff, reach out to them. You know, they are big people and they will respond lovingly. If you have a grievance with another member of the church, seek them out and be reconciled and do that today. Remember when Peter asked Jesus in Matthew 18 how many times he should forgive his brother. What Jesus said was seventy times seventy. Folks, that’s a lot of forgiveness. That is a lot. Let us decide to love each other as often as needed. Let us ask for forgiveness seventy times seven or seven hundred times seven. “By this all men will know that we are his disciples if we love each other.”
I am so nervous my finger won’t work to move the slide. The second thing we are called to do is to honor the past. I pray that we will honor the past. Our forefathers and foremothers, I am not Abraham Lincoln, but our forefathers and foremothers of this church have left us with an awesome legacy as I said before. One of my most favorite Biblical images is of the “cloud of witnesses that surround us” in Hebrews 12. Those people are here with us right now cheering us on, folks. They are going “Stay strong to the end because this is a long journey,” the journey of Faith. These folks sacrificed for us and many others over the last hundred and twenty-five years. They have endured very difficult times, probably more difficult than we have endured. This church and its people have survived world wars, mergers, fires, loss of staff and members, and even the Great Depression. I am sure there were times when they wanted to give up, but they didn’t. They found their strength in knowing that they were responsible for bringing others, both in their families and in the community, into a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Today, we face the same responsibility to spread the good news while facing some different challenges. The Short and Long Range Planning Committee tells us that our congregation is aging at a rate never before faced at this church. Seventy percent of us are fifty-five years old or older and almost the same number has been members for over fifteen years. Forty-five percent of us have been members for over thirty years. We have to face the reality that our congregation is dying off faster than we are growing. We have far more funerals these days than we have baptisms and weddings and that is just a fact, folks. It is not a criticism or anything; it is a fact that we need to face. When looking through my stewardship files, and I have a file about this thick—Sara will attest to it—about stewardship. I think about these things a lot. I came across notes from a meeting with Will Eisenhower back in 2002. Do you know what Will said then? He said, “Boy, we sure have a lot of people dying here.” If that was the case, you know he was right then, if that is the case, I wonder what he would say today.
So what does the future hold for us? Well that remains to be seen. Surely, you know, what we choose to do next will be very, very important. I believe we need to seriously recommit ourselves to sacrificial giving, the gospel spreading and to a future quite different than what we are used to. In all of this I am confident that God has a plan for he is faithful. He is extremely and entirely purposeful. He brought each and every one of us here today to hear this message and he has given each of us resources, not all of them are financial, but resources nonetheless to use for his kingdom’s purposes. To some he has given extraordinary creative gifts and I am going to show you some of those in a minute. To some he has given the ability to teach. There are others of us that are gifted in communicating a vision for the future. There are some of you that have been blessed more than enough financially. And all of us are given gifts for the needs that this church has today.
So what on earth are we here for? We are here to advance the kingdom of God with the gifts that he has entrusted us with.
So the third point is that we need to claim hope for the future. Christ’s message is extremely hopeful, if nothing else. It is loving; but it is hopeful, just hopeful beyond all measure. Let me show you what God is doing for us today because he is at work, the Holy Spirit is at work in this church; and if you haven’t seen it keep your eyes open because it is happening here. It is amazing. Let me show you a little bit about what’s been happening and give you some ideas about what could happen if we choose to fund this church the way it needs to be funded. In the last twelve months God has provided us with a new roof and Discovery. (Showing slides on screen) In case you can’t see that, that is the new roof. Yea, new roof! Yea! (applause) And I will talk more about Discovery in a few minutes; but it is an extraordinary outgrowth of this church. It is amazing. We have a new lighted sign on Excelsior Avenue and we can cheer that, too. (applause) We have new interior building signs. That didn’t get anybody excited. (applause) Alright. O.K. Alright, you are not too excited about that. That’s alright. He gave us CaringWorks this past year. God inspired twenty-five members to serve on the Short and Long Range Planning Committee. He has brought us Steve Zehr; Denny. He has brought Joanna, Jimmy and Kevin, (applause) and much, much more. Those are all blessings that God brought here and intended us to have. I also understand that we are halfway to funding a second screen and projector. Now that is a fisheye from inside that little booth most people don’t know is back there; but if you notice up in the front are two screens. The funding for that project is halfway there. If we had four thousand dollars more we could get that project done and have that. That also is a blessing, folks.
So what else could we do if we invested seriously as members in the future, like our forefathers and foremothers have done in the past? When I first spoke to the Session about stewardship I proposed that we ask for funds above and beyond the operating budget so we can do serious outreach to the community over the next three years and we can start to rebuild our membership. Not only is that practical, folks, but that is what Christ calls the Church to do. We are here to tell the world about Jesus Christ. I told the Session that we can no longer sit on the sidelines and expect people to simply find us. I suggested that we commit at least a hundred thousand, I think I actually said a hundred to two hundred thousand; but a few people choked on that, to this effort believing that God will honor that seed of faithfulness. I want to be very clear with you. We are very limited in what we can do in light of our current giving patterns. We are at a crossroads in this church. To turn around this dying church we will need to be creative and recommit ourselves in new resources over the next few years. So here are some concrete ideas on what we can do and I am going to give credit to the people that helped me envision these.
So after my Session meeting, Carol Shanholtzer came and said, “What would you do with all that money if we got it for you?” Then I said, “Well, I would go out and I would find ways to make it easier for people to meet new members.” And she said, “What about the van?” I said, “What van?” She said, “What about the van we need to be able to go pickup senior citizens on snowy days like this or in the winter months when it is dark and they can’t drive to Feed My Starving Children?” Well, Carol, this is your van. (slide of van on screen) It is a beautiful van. I propose to you that we don’t need just one van we could probably use two vans to go and pick those people up. Not only would it show what we are about at Faith Church, but it would also show what we are about to helping people continue a relationship with Jesus Christ. So someone out there, God will put it on your heart that that van belongs in this church; and I ask you to think about what you can contribute or what you could help to do that. Now only after we fund the current budget, so there is your pledge; but these are ideas to think about what the future might look like and what we can do for the community.
Now you are going to think I am crazy but this morning I thought “Gee, why aren’t we recording the sermons? Why don’t we have videos of our church service that we can take to shut-ins?” That is another idea. These are unfunded obligations, unfunded visions. So if we had money we could do things like that. Why aren’t we taking a copy of it, a DVD or a VCR to our shut-ins so they can participate with the rest of us in the services?
Not only do we have the van but we have it parked in front of the church. So, don’t go look for it, it is not there yet; but I hope that soon we will be able to see it.
Next, I know this is hard to see and we have copies out. Mike Tenney and I will be out there at a table and we will have copies of these that you can examine. So if we have a new van or two and we can have enough money to maintain them, to insure them, and to do all the other things vans require, we also need people to drive them, and the drivers we need aren’t here already. We need to go out and find new young people that will help us drive those vans, quite frankly. Some years ago, because of budget constraints, we started un-funding advertising. This is an ad and I will tell you what this ad says, so you don’t have to squint so hard. This is an ad that says, as a person with an upraised arm says: “Music that inspires. Study that seeks truth. Service that changes lives.” And down in the bottom under the Faith Logo it says “Where you belong.” Folks, it doesn’t take a lot of money to advertise. It will have a huge impact. Advertising is not a one shot thing but if we make a commitment at least we can use this kind of an advertisement to take out some flyers and insert in people’s doors. We could do all kinds of things with it. We need to make a commitment to the future and that says we need to find people that need to know the Lord.
Thank you to Lisa Wandrei. Lisa you did a wonderful job on these. When I saw this ad I literally choked. I mean my tears came and I cried because it was so beautiful. It is just this very wonderful representation of what we offer here to the world.
We have another opportunity and that is when we conceived, almost a year ago, CaringWorks, which came out of Men’s Ministry, it was a way to be able to go out and engage people in the community. We talked about not just doing Main Street Days and the Raspberry Festival and meeting people there in our tent; but we wanted to continue to meet people here in the church. We wanted to draw people to Faith Church so they could look at the stuff on the bulletin boards and see what we were doing. That they could look at the signs about Feed My Starving Children that would say we have packed, you know, 200,000 meals for needy children. So one way we can do this, an idea, this is an interesting and encouraging appealing way to engage the community. This one says, “The Faith Heritage Foundation (now I don’t know if that exists, but it is in my mind) this is a program, an early childhood education improving performance and reducing education costs. A public forum featuring former Governor Al Quie” who is extremely passionate about this. He is passionate about two things and that is all he works on and that is spreading the love of Jesus Christ and early childhood education. So I have a flyer here. This says on March 15 we are going to do this at 7 o’clock. Do not show up because this is not funded yet folks. This is not funded. I ask you, somebody, if you are touching a little bit of money could fund this kind of activity. We also need to integrate these kinds of activities in the life of the church, into the Session and things like that.
We are almost done, and then we have Mike Tenney. So everybody should be excited about that. So I talked to Denny Burda last week. I asked him, “Hey Denny, what’s on your wish list for Family Ministry?” The one item that popped out after I just really had to grill him a bit, was that he said “You know, people keep asking us for a senior high worship service.” I said, “What are you going to call it?” He said, “They haven’t even talked about it because they don’t have enough hours.” I said “Hours?” He said, “Yeah, we only have part time staff.” Most of the children and youth education staff members are part time. You know they work one or two other jobs for the privilege of serving us here at Faith Church, which is kind of an interesting deal. If they had more hours we could fund something like this. So Lisa came up with this great thing. It is called “Exalt” and “Exalt” would be a prototype for a service; but we need to fund that folks. It is really important. If we don’t reach out to young children in this community who is going to do that? We need to be there for them. When the video you saw last week, that Dean Halvorsen and I did, every single person we interviewed or we asked to be interviewed, you know what they said, “The youth programs here were fantastic. They helped my family.” And many people, you know what they told me? Well. We never would have come to this church unless our kids dragged us here. Folks, we need to think about that. That is a really important thing. If you engage the children of this community you get the adults too. And, we would have a new future here.
We are almost done. Second to last, Discovery is an inspired worship service. It is unconventional and it is extremely effective. Clearly the Holy Spirit is at the core of Discovery. If you haven’t been there, just go once, just once. You know it is kind of like whatever those snacks are; go today, and like those snacks you can’t eat just one, you will go back again. Thank you very much to the team that was inspired in the direction of the Holy Spirit. There is, in my opinion, a whole audience for Discovery that will never find Faith Hall on their own. I have a radical idea. Discovery needs to be out in the public forum. This slide shows a flier for Discovery at the Main Street Bar and Grill. Now don’t gasp! But Bob Byer who owns that would be happy to have us do an early morning service at the Main Street Bar and Grill. Now, if you have a better idea for a place, we will go there. A tent in Central Park might be great, anyplace; but Discovery belongs there. It is a place to bring people in. It is a radical idea but Christ offers radical life. He didn’t ask us to be non-radical. He asked us to join him in being radical. Who else is going to offer hope to the world if we don’t?
If you don’t like that idea, so the next slide, and we have copies like I said we will be at a table back there, the next slide says but I don’t think I have it so I will have to imagine what it says. Oh here it is. “Food for your body and food for your soul. Sunday Brunch service at 11:15.” I don’t know what time it is going to be, I don’t even know if we would do it, but it is an idea. It says: “Faith Church. Enjoy a delicious sit down brunch while listening to God’s word. Public and families encouraged. Five dollars for adults and $3 for kids.” I don’t know if that would work, but it is a radical idea to engage the community and expose them to Jesus Christ. “First time attendees and kids under 5 eat free.” What a deal! Not only that they get grace and they get to rub shoulders with people like us, which is really what God intends us to do.
So my brothers and sisters of Faith there is much that we can do with sponsors willing to invest in a new and exciting vision for reaching the world. You know, that is not our vision, it is not my vision, it is not Chris’s vision, or Bucks, or anybody else’s; but it is Jesus Christ’s vision. Which of you is being called to help forage this future for the Church? Who is willing to accept Christ’s call in Matthew 28 which we have seen multiple times over the past few weeks? “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20).
Ladies and gentlemen we have assurance that Christ is with us in this journey and this adventure, so there is no need to be afraid. We can move forward. So what on earth are we here for? We are here to change lives and change the world in Jesus’ name. Now before, you know, we have done this vision, we are done with this vision stuff, but I want to ask Mike Tenney to come up here and you know Mike has been a member of this church for almost twenty years. He is a certified public accountant and he is a certified public accountant with a sense of humor, thank goodness. There are some practical, not only are there spiritual sides of giving, but there are practical sides of giving and Mike is going to share a few of those before we close in prayer.
Mike Tenney:
Well I have to get in character if I am going to establish any kind of credibility whatsoever. I want you to know that I am the flamboyant accountant, with the red garters. Rick Pavelka told me that the outgoing accountant is the guy who stares at the other guy’s shoes. I am not going to stare at anybodies shoes today; but I am hopefully going to give you some ideas and good practical temporal things that you can take back and look at when you consider your charitable giving to Faith.
Charitable giving is a signature expense. If you give a hundred dollars, due to the tax deductibility you can get back through tax savings up to forty-three bucks. That is a 43% return on your charitable investment. I don’t know of anything that does that well these days, especially with the way the market is going. The tax rates are going to probably go up so you are probably going to get a better opportunity for a bigger deduction in the future. Charitable giving of appreciated assets magnifies the return by giving an appreciated asset you don’t pay tax on the gain and you also may deduct the full amount of the value of the asset that you give. That is 43% on a return and no tax involved. Income producing assets like annuities can produce charitable income for life and still preserve an asset for families after your death. Taxable assets like IRAs and Retirement Plans can be gifted to the Church by an estate. This achieves a double, a double tax saving in that there is no estate tax for that gift and there is no further income tax that would be paid by the recipients, by the church. There are trusts and financial products that can provide the donor with income for life and a charitable deduction for a portion of the assets either when they give it or at their death.
John and I will be glad to answer your questions, any that you have, after the service and we would be glad to provide you or your advisors with any information you need to meet your needs. You know, in closing though, a tax deduction is only a return to you of a small portion of what you give. What you get when you give is an explosion of that gift to the community to create God’s mission for us—to go into the world, preach the gospel and to tell others about his saving grace. I have this old machine here that my dad would have been proud to have. It is a reliable piece of equipment but there is nothing more reliable for us going forward than to know that we will be giving to the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Thank you. (applause)