The following statement was read by Sending to Serve members in worship on September 21st, 2022.

Good morning St. Paul’s friends,

We are taking a moment this morning to celebrate the amazing work that you have done as God’s generous vessels through our quarterly offerings during this past year.

As you may recall, a little over a year ago, Sending to Serve decided, based on feedback from many of you, to change how we do special offerings. We heard your concerns that there were too many special offerings, that they felt diluted and sometimes overwhelming. Some of you even said you were worn out from special offerings.

So, Sending to Serve got to thinking. How could we bring the joy of giving back into our special offerings? How could we focus, renew our enthusiasm and perhaps have an even bigger impact with a few things?

We decided three things were important:

1. One, we should take special offerings in church just four times per year. We could offer other opportunities on our website or through the Outlook, but when we bring something to you during worship we want it to truly feel special.
2. Two, if offerings are going to have an impact, we need to focus on issues you all have shown you care about through your actions. As often as possible, we want to have our offerings be for places where you’ve put your faith in action through hands-on support. After a lot of conversation, we decided special offerings will focus on food, housing, immigration and education. We feel like these are all issues St. Paul’s will get behind.
3. Third, we want to challenge the congregation to set audacious goals and then let you know right away how we’re doing.

So, how have we done? You all have been amazing! You have reached or exceeded every single goal Sending to Serve has put in front of you. I want you to listen closely as I share some of the impact numbers. During our 2021-2022 quarterly offerings, you:

• Gave $10,700 to Education through backpacks, personal dignity kits and ELC scholarships. You helped lots of kids.
• At Christmas, you raised $26,500 to support the homeless and those living in substandard housing. Some of those funds were used to help fix a young woman’s house just a couple of blocks from St. Paul’s.
• At Easter, you raised more than $18,000 to support immigrants through United We March Forward, the Migrant Movement for Justice and our African Nationals ministry.
• And finally, this summer, through the food offering, you donated nearly 1,000 pounds of food and over $5,500 to feed the hungry.

Over the last year, you all have raised more than $60,000 to support the most vulnerable in our community. You have truly been God’s hands and feet and shown the grace of Christ to others. You are a generous people. Take a moment to give thanks to God and one another for this faithful work. Amen.

I’ve had a few people asking some good questions about Peace Camp. I’ll try to address these briefly, but I am available to talk about any of this, or other inquiries you may have, with you in person.

Peace Camp developed out of a serendipitous interaction I had with Donna Barnes, an 80-something  year old friend who told me of her dream to offer a camp that gives children the tools to recognize and address prejudice and racism when they encounter it. After hearing Donna’s story and her passion, I realized our Summer Camp may be a perfect partner to develop this dream of hers, as well as support the Iowa Annual Conference’s desire to be a fully antiracist Conference. On a personal note, these are skills I desire my son to have as well, so he will be attending Peace Camp next week. After talking to Becca and Julie about this possibility, we realized Peace Camp could be a good fit for one of the weeks of our Summer Camp programming.

Since then, we have developed a broad team of community leaders, including pastors (active and retired), interested citizens, one school board member, educators, as well as support from Advocates for Social Justice.

To build the program, a small group of leaders, including Becca Nims, received training from an educational non-profit in Durham, North Carolina called WE ARE. This training and their curriculum for a week-long summer camp became the basis for Peace Camp. The curriculum is a literacy-based program, using children’s books to teach the antiracist content and themes in an age-appropriate manner. Each family will receive a copy of the books read each day at Peace Camp, meaning the children will add quality books to their personal collections. Funding has come from various individuals, churches, and organizations, and this has allowed us to offer Peace Camp free of charge for all the children, while still paying our staff and supply costs.

This is an opportunity for us to work with young learners in a fun environment to prepare them to be good neighbors for the rest of their lives. If you’d like to read more about Peace Camp, you can do so here: https://www.thegazette.com/k/area-children-to-learn-anti-racism-skills-at-nationally-recognized-peace-camp-program/

One of the helpful concepts about working with other people as well as teaching our children is to put the emphasis on what they are doing right and not on what they are doing wrong. I realized when my daughter was younger that I am not very good at it. She had a whiney spell after we got home each afternoon. When I thought about it. I realized that if she was good and went off to play on her own, I ignored her in the business of fixing supper, household jobs, and getting ready for tomorrow. If she whined I paid attention to her. I was teaching her to whine.

I was reminded of that concept when I began volunteering with Miracles in Motion, a horse riding program for people with disabilities. I am constantly amazed at the creative ways the instructors find to compliment the people rather than criticize them. Many have physical disabilities but many have mental disabilities as well. Finding something they are doing better today takes some thought. “I like the way you are holding the reins off the saddle.” “I can hear you clearly tell your horse to “Walk on” are a couple that I have heard recently.

One day I was criticizing my child who is adopted and she responded to me by reminding me, “You have to be nice to me because I cost you a lot of money!”  Well she was right, but there are so many better reasons to use praise over criticism. Being told what we are doing wrong doesn’t always give us any clues as to what we should do that would be better. Also the negative feelings generated in response does not always motivate us to improve. Positive encouragement gives us feelings of being included, appreciated, and a desire to learn.