Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Sacrificial Giving.

A couple weeks ago (wow, seriously over 2 weeks ago. This post is a long time coming) LCC's board had their spring meetings. Lot of issues were discussed, but because this blog is not about those issues, I won't bore you with the details. Mainly what drives a lot of conversations lately is money and economic crisis, if you must know. Anyway, at one of the meetings they passed a hat around among board members, and they were to pledge how much money they would raise/give to LCC. LCC needs to raise a certain amount of money by July. They only passed it among themselves. People felt good about it, because the members of the board are generally wealthy, and have jobs that pay them. Someone even recognized that most of the people sitting on the sidelines were those who were giving of their time and lives, and didn't have any money to give outside the support they were raising. I was not at this meeting, but this is what I heard happened. No big deal.
Then there was a big faculty/staff dinner with the board. It was nice to be treated to some good food (free meal). There were some inspirational speeches and funny (albeit weird) songs/entertainment provided by the board. I felt good about my time here, and honored to be a part of it. Then they brought up raising money again, and passed the hat around to each person. We had slips of paper that we could write on to indicate how much money we could give to LCC, or how much we could ask our friends and family to donate.
I for one felt shocked and a little let down. How dare they? How on earth can we donate money that was already donated on our behalf? Nothing that we have here is really our own. How can we ask for more money for the school from the friends and family that we are relying on to support us? How much more can I give? We're already giving of ourselves for one more year.
Those are some of the thoughts that ran through my head. And then I felt guilty for feeling that way. And then I felt mad for feeling guilty.

Sorry for all the drama just to set up a point.

After much thought, and some discussion among like-minded people, I came to some conclusions.
1. There were some people at the dinner that evening that are not externally funded (a nice way to say that they don't have to raise support). Perhaps the board was talking mostly to them.
2. Someone suggested that we are to give sacrificially.

And that's how I came about to posting about sacrificial giving.

Finally.

Sorry it took me so long to get to the point. So what does the Bible say about sacrificial giving, if anything? I googled it, and got sent to this page. And then you have to scroll down to point 8, I think. This answer gives two verse:
2 Samuel 24:24, about giving to God a sacrifice that costs you something.
and
1 John 3:16, about Christ giving up his life for us, so we in turn should give up our lives for our brothers and sisters. (If you're so inclined, you could even read the verse after it. It's pretty good, but don't take my word for it).

Sacrificial giving is so hard. And I'm sorry, but I have few answers. Only questions. What do you think?

1 comment:

Laura said...

I would just like to make it clear that while I originally had thoughts of frustration, I am not currently harboring any feelings of resentment toward the board.

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