Here’s a question some folks will be considering carefully in the weeks to come: Just how generous are Presbyterians willing to be?
The year started off with stunning news, as the world struggled to comprehend the catastrophic impact of the December 26 tsunami, which killed more than 150,000 and left survivors strafed with grief and hunger and homelessness. Presbyterians responded with prayer, compassion and cash, contributing $1.5 million so far through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance for the relief effort.
But just on the horizon is One Great Hour of Sharing, the annual giving effort for Presbyterian congregations. Donations are collected on Palm Sunday, which this year falls on March 20, and dedicated on Easter Sunday. In the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), roughly one-third of this annual special offering goes for disaster relief, one third to the Presbyterian Hunger Program and one third for the Self Development of People program, which provides seed money for development projects both in the United States and abroad.
The question is, what impact will the outpouring of assistance for the tsunami victims have on giving to One Great Hour of Sharing? Will Presbyterians feel tapped out, slowed down by a sense of “compassion fatigue?” Or will they be on a giving roll, their hearts and wallets open wide in response to the needs of others?
Already, Susan Ryan, who heads Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, said she’s seen “a lot of incredibly generous churches” responding to the tsunami, with some congregations giving $30,000 to $50,000 apiece. “They’re giving. They’re praying. Thank God for Presbyterians,” Ryan said. The final numbers aren’t in yet for 2004, but in 2002 Presbyterians gave $9.9 million to one Great Hour of Sharing and $9.4 million in 2003. Those numbers reflect a decline from the years immediately before that — a decline that tracks with the downturn in the national economy, said Alan Krome, the PC(USA)’s associate for special offerings.
So the pattern in recent years has been down a little — what’s likely to happen this time around?
“I don’t think the great interest in the tsunami will do anything but help,” said Karl Travis, a pastor from Grosse Ile, Mich., who recently headed a task force that examined the PC(USA)’s four special offerings. “I don’t think that having fished in the tsunami pond will hurt One Great Hour. I think it will give people a deep sense of satisfaction at having shared,” and create in them a willingness to continue to help. Dave Hackett of Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship, which works to evangelize to people around the world, said “I’m kind of expecting the tsunami situation will enhance people’s awareness of disaster response” and lead to greater giving. Hackett says he also knows that some folks are upset by the new five percent fee that the PC(USA) is now collecting from donations to cover administrative expenses. “I’m hoping the fee doesn’t impact it negatively, I don’t want it to,” he said.
Krome said he’s optimistic that giving for One Great Hour will be strong — but both he and Ryan do have some concern that people might, in their enthusiasm to help, designate how the money should be spent. Ryan points out that the money from One Great Hour is available to be used for disasters all over the world — the first $150,000 the PC(USA) gave for tsunami relief, for example, came from last year’s One Great Hour funds.
“When people gave last year they had no idea there would be four major hurricanes in Florida, flooding and landslides on the West Coast” and then the tsunami, Krome said. “People didn’t know that would happen, yet they gave their gifts in faith that it would be used when it was needed, where it was needed … If we have been faithful and generous in our giving then we will be able to respond immediately” wherever a disaster hits.
As devastating as the tsunami has been, Ryan does not want people to be so swayed by the media attention there that they target their One Great Hour gifts specifically for tsunami relief or forget the needs in other parts of the world.
“My experience is that the disasters that collect the most money almost all are earthquakes,” with the exception of Hurricane Mitch, Ryan said. “There is a sense with earthquakes, and this tsunami was earthquake-related, that there’s absolutely nothing humans have done to bring this onto themselves.”
With floods, people sometimes think, “you built in the wrong place.” With civil wars, it’s “you could be solving this.” But earthquakes are fast, devastating, undiscriminating and the impact very visual. At the same time, however, the bulletin insert that Presbyterian Disaster Assistance will use for this year’s One Great Hour campaign will focus on the Darfur region in Sudan, not the tsunami.
“The Darfur conflict rages on, even when our attention is somewhere else,” Ryan said. People often want to give to places where they think their money can make a dent in the pain and suffering. With ongoing conflicts, with war and famine, “some of these things feel so large,” she acknowledged. “It’s that old dripping water on the stone, we have to really understand that consistency gets through, and it is so important to stay in it for the long haul.”
Some Presbyterian congregations have been creative in their approach to tsunami relief — for example, Trinity Church in Herndon, Va., where the children collected supplies such as soap and towels for “Gift of the Heart” health kits, and the church held a potluck supper on January 23 to put the kits together. “This gives them a tangible thing to do,” said Pastor Stephen Smith-Cobbs.
At another church, the children drew pictures of what they imagined the tsunami looked like, and those drawings were used to challenge the adults to dig deep.
At times of great suffering and need, there is a natural desire, Ryan understands, for people to want to become directly involved in helping.
Over the past several years, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance has made what she called a “fundamental shift” in the way it does business — not just funneling money to Church World Service in response to disasters, but becoming involved in the Action By Churches Together (ACT) alliance, a coordinating body for member churches around the world and their relief agencies. “We’ve been building programs on the ground directly that have captured the interest and passion and loyalty of the Presbyterians who wanted that … who wanted to see their denomination directly engaged,” Ryan said.
At the same time, however, she also understands that sometimes the most efficient form of involvement is to support the work of churches in the regions affected. With the tsunami, for example, the Christian hospitals in India had medical teams ready to dispatch and had warehouses with supplies already in place. Sri Lankan doctors returned from all over the world, highly skilled people who know the language and the politics.
That can be tough for Americans to understand — Ryan had Presbyterians volunteering to go to the hard-hit areas to help. But “unless we have wellhoned disaster skills that have been used in an international context, we’re just in the way,” Ryan said. “That’s a hard message for people to hear.”
Sometimes Americans have “this driving need for a personal connection” — to adopt, for example, a Muslim village or tsunami orphans. But the best thing for Presbyterians to give is not clothes or boxes of food or supplies that have to be shipped, she said — but money, cash that Presbyterian disaster experts, working with international partners, can use wherever it’s needed most.
The One Great Hour promotional materials that are distributed to churches are intended to be used throughout Lent, and to get people thinking not just of giving a certain number of dollars, but to relate the need of the world to American affluence. For example, a calendar might have a photograph of girls hauling water in Malawi and say: “In Malawi, girls have to spend up to three hours a day carrying water for their families,” Krome said. “Count the number of faucets in your home and give 25 cents for every one.”
Presbyterian children in Sunday school classes are given fish-shaped boxes to collect coins through donations, doing chores and giving of their savings.
And some congregations are challenging people to change their ways during Lent — to forego Friday night dinner out, for example, or skip that double mocha latte, or that new sweater they don’t really need, and set aside the money they save for One Great Hour.
Travis said the tsunami really drove that message home — the pictures of the aftermath “really draws for people a stark visual contrast of the haves and the have-nots.” Travis also said that to build support for special offerings, pastors need “to tell the story,” to explain the theological message beneath something like One Great Hour — caring for the poor, the homeless and the hungry — and to remind people concerned about denominational spending priorities that the special offerings have a track record of “giving the money where it’s supposed to go.”
And Ryan said she’s been thinking about the $1.5 million that’s been given so far for tsunami relief — money that’s above-and-beyond One Great Hour giving, $1,500 of which came from a school in Texas where the students’ families are low-income themselves.
“You have to sit back and think, ‘Where did all this money come from?'” Ryan asked. “Because this hit the day after Christmas, supposedly when everybody was exhausted from buying” — yet, even after spending a lot on themselves, Presbyterians still could find more to give.
That makes Ryan think many Americans can dig deeper — maybe even want to. “Why can’t we do this level of giving on a sustained way,” she asked, “and really impact our world?”
