As you have heard from the pulpit and in this newsletter, the Finance Committee and I have decided to go back to a fall pledge campaign schedule with a calendar year fiscal year. For a time, you had decided to operate on a fiscal year that ran July through June, which worked for a while, but has proven to make life complicated when it comes to personal record-keeping and when it comes to operating in sync with the Oklahoma Annual Conference calendar, budget, and fiscal reporting. So, we will start our next fiscal year on January 1, 2012, which means we get the opportunity now to have one more pledge campaign!

We’ve heard lots of reports in recent weeks about people “occupying Wall Street” and taking to other streets in peaceful protest against what many see as unfair or sinful economic systems in the West. This movement has made me reflect on our attitude toward money as people of faith, an attitude that differs from the attitude of the majority in our nation. We learn from Christ that we are to give our cloaks when asked and to give our cardigan sweaters as well (my paraphrase of Matthew 5:40), and to store intangible treasure for ourselves instead of tangible ones (Matthew 6:19). But going with the flow in our society means that our focus should be on earning more, saving more, spending less, and giving only in carefully-thought out ways that will reflect well on our tax profiles come April 15th.

Jesus’ message to us was to be countercultural as pertains money, giving it away again and again and again. He called us to go against the rapids and to stand up to the imperial structures that encourage us to hoard and to be greedy for ever more capital.

As we ready ourselves spiritually for another year of giving, let me encourage you to join with me in this massive protest we can enact as the people of St. Stephen’s: Let us band together and revolt against the systems of greed! Let us unite and give to a future whose reality we cannot yet touch! Let us march up and down OUR street and spend in ways that nurture, that heal, that stimulate, and that provide life where there was previously none.

Will you join the revolution with me? Will you line up to protest with me? Will you make a choice that makes your friends scratch their heads and wonder about your new choices? Will you “occupy McGee Street” and Sustain the Flame, doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with your God?