Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill, NC

The Rev. Dr. Loren Mead, founder of the Alban Institute in Washington, DC, and former Episcopal priest at the Church of the Holy Family in Chapel Hill, spoke on the topic, "Endowments: Blessing or Curse". He noted that over the past two decades, the Consortium has learned some important things:

Coming out of the closet isn't easy. It's just not politically correct to talk about money. However, Mead suggested that we must stop being ashamed of what some great Christian has done for us. Rather, let's be open about it and tell our story. What it does for us cannot be a secret.
It costs money to manage money. It's important to learn from each other and struggle with what mission means. Most of us need to double or triple our financial resources and hire staff to help in the development of these resources.
Endowments are meant to mean mission, not maintenance. Everything a church does is outreach.
Endowments require leadership from clergy and laity. Without both it simply is not as good; it is in the congregation where the action is.

We have some unfinished challenges for endowed parishes:

Money in our culture has become an astonishingly powerful driving force ... we inhabit a "culture of consumption".This consumer culture affects religion.We want to turn everything into a commodity. (i.e. Benedictine Spirituality, we want "to get it" in one week when in fact it is not a commodity; it is a way of life that takes years of hard work.) The great theologian, John Wesley, is a help to us. He said, "make all you can, save all you can, and give all you can." Mead said that today time and money are our biggest spiritual problems. Even so, money is being given for church more than the increase of inflation; even though church membership is dropping, people are giving more though fewer people are giving. This is true in our own parish. Even though the number of our pledges are less, the amount pledged to date this year is greater than before. Living in a consumer culture challenges our values. We are a culture of consumption, yet in the church we are called to be unselfish; we are called to help, to be generous.
Money, God and Church. Money is a part of God's creation. We must struggle to be creative with both the rich and the poor. Money gets meaning and power by how it is used, by how we reach out to others.
Our endowment is a blessing. The challenge is how to best use it. Everything belongs to God. We must teach our children to turn our endowment into a blessing and a sacrament, while the whole world is telling us to be selfish.

(Loren Mead has published three bestselling books on the future of the church: The Once and Future Church, Transforming Congregations for the Future, and Five Challenges for the Once and Future Church. His most recent book is, Financial Meltdown in the Mainline?, a book about the financial and spiritual dilemma of church financing.)

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