And maybe this is really quandary number two. The thing is, I get paid to do this thing called pastoring. Moreover, I’m not paid by some distant organization or some benevolent set of “supporters.” I am actually paid by the 15 people who sit in my dinning room on Thursday nights. This is very weird to me. Me, the one with the husband who works for Microsoft and the six bedroom house and (this year anyway) a trip to Hawaii, gets paid by the crew in my living room. (‘Course, this arrangement is why we are actually able to meet in the living room….mortgages, utility bills, etc. Do you have any idea what the waste-and-heating bill is on a six bedroom house?)

My friend Kevin is in this same situation. He has a ten bedroom house that a bunch of people live in with him and his wife Tracy and the kids. But see, they don’t pay him, the house church that meets in his home. He runs an auto body shop. But if I did something else who would take care of the kids? (Face it Rachelle, you need help.)

Next year I won’t have to be paid. Next year both kids are in school and I won’t need a babysitter (thought I hope our lovely Sharon will still consider living with us.) But this year, I need the help. We just can’t come up with the extra funds to pay the sitter 10 hours a week so I can process/study/meet with multi congregational/ folks/cook/shop/clean/ prepare/network/breathe. Some people, some personalities manage to do this without set-aside, non-kid interrupted, before midnight time. (NB: Jen Lemen) I however, cannot. I break down. (Have I mentioned the migraines? I shutter to think what those would be like if I just squeezed all that stuff into time-with-the-kids.)

So I feel like, I’m getting paid, I have to produce something. first of all, I’m not really a pastor, I’m a Cultivator. Which means I don’t really produce anything….no programs or services, not even any “pastoral counseling” appointments. I just try to sort of hang around a lot so I can be on hand to watch people’s lives, so I can try to turn over the soil a little. Second, only part of ThPM wants me to produce anything. The rest are happy just having the door open. And then there’s the folks I don’t see on Thursdays, but who I love. And the time I spend (albeit it’s only a very little time) with the ThPM folks outside of ThPM. Those kinds of things require babysitting; require that some space get freed up for me somewhere else. So the money helps me do that.

But still, my friends are paying me. Doesn’t that freak you out?

And isn’t it weird to invite people with other “flavors” to your house and then ask them to give you money? I mean, at least Christians are kind of used to the whole tithing thing, even if it doesn’t really make sense to them. But come on, what is my neighbor going to do if I say, “Hey come over for dinner….and this is our altar with the tithing bowl. Howza bout putting some money in it?” Sometimes I think Christians have a lot in common with the Stepford wives. There’s just something “off” about the way we do things.

Anyway, I talked to ThPM last week about money. There’s this budget that I’ve committed to that I don’t think we are going to meet. I mean, we met it last year. But last year we were just coming out of traditional church…and well…we still had the tithing tradition. We were giving money to a big, staffed organization. And we weren’t really thinking about the things tithing is supposed to be about (gratitude, generosity, etc.). We were just, you know, going through the motions. At any rate, this budget is for about $20,000 a year. About $8,000 of that is my salary. There’s another $2,000 or so that we are supposed to contribute to the Seattle Vineyard’s central fund, and there’s the lease on my computer, and our website fees, and a couple hundred for the Association of Vineyard Churches. Then there’s another $2,000 or so that covers our food-and-stuff for Thursday nights. This is about $12-15,000 a year just to do the basics. This doesn’t include throwing parties or building 40 foot bugs, or bailing any one out on rent, or paying for doctor bills, or stuffing Easter baskets for the kids at the shelter. This is just basic life.

Now, ideally, I should also include other things in this basic life budget. Like $600 bucks or so in shared office expenses. And $2,000 (ten percent) dedicated to “missions and benevolence.” (At ThPM, we see everything we do as missional, because of our strong emphasis on incarnation reality – so this seem arbitrary to us. But in order to have consistent budgetary guidelines between the three congregations, we are trying to accommodate that). And there’s like $500 in travel money, and all our outreach things like Solstice and such to pay for.

But, I have no real hope that we are going to bring in enough money to pay for all those things. Our giving is trending down. It’s just too weird to expect that when you are a group of friends in a living room. I’m sorry. It just is.

So I told the group last week: Look, can we at least try to come up with the $12,000-$15,000 (which is about $3-400 a week.) Then the rest of the time, when something is coming up; like we are going to paint a shelter or go to Burning Man or whatever, we’ll just need to make a call for everyone to pitch in.

I also told them that I think giving is a good spiritual discipline. It combats our tendency towards commercialism. It promotes that oldie but a goody—an attitude of gratitude. And it reminds us that all of this stuff is temporary and none of it really belongs to us anyway. Just giving ten percent didn’t really promote all of that stuff in us, so a couple of years ago Paul and I cooked up a different way of doing this. We try to give away 12percent of our income each year. (Based on Ron Sider’s graduated tithe concept. We’d like to get up to 15 percent eventually.) Part of that goes to overseas missionary families that we’ve supported for a long time. Part of it goes to the church. The rest of it goes into a savings account that we access as things come up. Things like a really good bottle of wine for a neighbor, or a field trip scholarship for the kids at school, or a window that needs to be replaced after a friend was in a car crash. Stuff like that. And to be honest, that is my favorite kind of giving. But it takes intentionality, discipline. It means you have to practice a practice….to be able to do stuff like that.

So if ThPM does that kind of stuff, in whatever form that works for each of them and their financial realities, I’ll be happy. I’d love it if they’d talk to each other about that…) I’d really really like to keep my salary this one last year. But if it goes, it goes. I can’t control that. And I’m not going to kid ya, I’d really like to come up with the budgeted contribution to Seattle Vineyard. I’m concerned about that. And of course, the more we bring in to give away outside the Bubble, the happier I am. But what I can really breathe on and encourage and try to inspire is a sustainable pattern of giving…a practice that allows us to practice generosity…

The whole money thing is weird. Very weird.