Creating Legacies

Creating Legacies

Presented October 14, 2004, at the 20th Annual PEER Network Conference
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
By the Reverend Dr. Robert Bohl

Twenty years back Tom Stewart, Loren Mead and a few others of us met for the first time as a group of pastors who served churches which had endowments. Tom Stewart, pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Buffalo, New York, was the prime mover of this new group of endowed Presbyterian churches. Tom was a wonderful leader and tragically suffered a heart attack while playing handball with his son – he was in his early to mid-fifties. So in the best sense of appreciation we honor Tom’s memory, and even though most of you never met him or even knew him, PEER is the legacy that Tom left for all of us. This group has continued the legacy Tom started, and we have made some significant progress in very difficult and rapidly changing times. But we have a long way to go before we even scratch the surface of our potential. The fact is that all of us should be embarrassed by our results.

There is evidence to support the theory that the world is divided on the basis of two kinds of people and that all of us fall into one group or the other. The theory is that we are either optimists or pessimists. And if we are pessimists we tend to blame others for who we are. Recently the San Francisco Chronicle printed this story about Morris and Sadie, a husband and wife. Morris was dying and Sadie was by his side. “Sadie,” Morris said in a whisper, “Remember how we started that little grocery store in Kiev, and the Russian Cossacks drove us out and you were by my side?” “Yes,” said Sadie. “And remember how we had that little vegetable stand in Berlin and the Nazis drove us out, and you were by my side?” “Yes,” said Sadie. “And remember how we had the meat market in the Bronx and the muggers took over the neighborhood and our store was firebombed and you were by my side?” “Yes,” said Sadie. “And remember how we came to Miami and I had my heart attack and you were by my side?” “Oh, yes, Morris,” said Sadie. “Well, Sadie, there’s something I’ve wanted to tell you, and now that I’m dying, I can finally say it.” “What is it, Morris?” “Well, Sadie,” Morris said, “I think you’re a jinx.”

The longer I have studied the giving habits of people and the more I have read on the subject the We can easily find the jinx that has haunted the church from its inception. Millions of words about money and stewardship have been printed in books and articles, millions of sermons and speeches have been delivered on the subject of money and stewardship, but basically for the last three hundred years in America our giving patterns have not kept pace with inflation. We do not seem to be able to break the logjam of negatives that plague the issue of money in the church. Frankly, it is embarrassing when you take a serious look at what most people give – so embarrassing that of all the subjects discussed in the church the one that gets the poorest attention is stewardship. Money. more convinced I have become that though much that has been written and spoken on the subject is excellent, we have to keep searching for new ways to help people’s hearts and minds to grow better and more generous habits in the use of their life and possessions.

For four decades I have criticized all of our seminaries for failing to teach ministers and educators anything about the theology of stewardship. Some of us have given up on that ever happening, so it leaves us with the challenge of teaching ourselves and teaching each other. That is what this conference is about and what PEER has been trying to do for twenty years.

We have to deal directly with the jinxes that plague us. And for me the place to begin is with our theology – our understanding of both God and life. Victor Frankl learned in the Nazi camps this great lesson:

The last and the most significant of all human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude toward life. A crucial part of reality…is the belief about the meaning of existence. Every person has to shield himself somehow from the unendurable realization that this individual life is a very fleeting and insignificant event in an indifferent universe. We do this by embracing an ideology or religion that links our life to some larger, more enduring purpose.

For me, at least, and I make no apology for saying it, that larger, more enduring purpose is God as I have come to know God through Jesus Christ. Last week I received a letter from a minister, who, after I had spent several hours with the stewardship committee of his church, asked me to give him one good reason why he should ask his congregation to increase the amount they already gave to the church. I am not critical of him because he represents the majority of ministers in our Presbyterian churches today. So I said to him, “Tell them the good news of the Gospel. Tell them what Isaac Watts told all of us: Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small; Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all.” That is the best reason I know why people should keep on giving more and more to the church of Jesus Christ. We keep wanting someone to do our work for us. We keep wanting it to be easy. We keep thinking people should not have to be taught good stewardship habits. We keep wishing Jesus would not have said so much about money and how we should use it.

We live under the illusion that we are actually doing better than we actually are doing, and it is this attitude that needs to be challenged. I have been spending much of my time in retirement working with churches which are interested in developing or growing an endowment. The stories I hear make me want to weep. One fairly large church contacted me recently and said they knew that they should have been more serious about creating an endowment but they were afraid it would have a negative impact on their annual stewardship program But they have discovered that for years some of their wealthy members have left millions to the SPCA, the zoo, the symphony, and all sorts of other groups, but not to the church. They told me that they have over eighty deaths a year, but never in the history of the church have they received a bequest or gift through a will. I offered to come and help them create a program that will help build an endowment. Their response was that they needed to think about it for a year or so and they would get back in touch with me. Gently I pointed out that in the meantime eighty more people would die and the church would again receive no bequests, but some of those eighty people would certainly leave a bequest to some non-profit organization in their city, but not to their church.

There is never a good time to do something we don’t want to do. More often than not, this means a radical shift in our thinking because we suffer from a condition I have named psychosclerosis. If arteriosclerosis is the hardening of the arteries, then psychosclerosis is the hardening of the thoughts and attitudes, and nowhere is this more dangerous than in our understanding and use of money.

One way to see where we are in our attitude about money is to ask ourselves some questions. (Some of the following questions are taken from Presbyterians Today, October 1998.)

• How does money make you feel? Powerful? Anxious? Guilty?
• What experiences in your life have influenced your attitudes toward money?
• What do you spend your money on as a first priority?
• Do you have enough money? What would you do if you had more money?
• How do you define poverty? How do you define wealth? Do you consider yourself poor, wealthy, or somewhere in between?
• How do you make decisions about spending and giving?
• How does your faith in God influence your spending and giving?
• Is tithing realistic? Is ten percent too much or too little to give to God?

According to statistics produced by the Internal Revenue Service, only four percent of all wills probated in the United States in 2003 gave a bequest to any non-profit organization. Some of you have heard me say it before, but I will keep saying it until things change. Every morning when I wake up and discover that I am still alive I say my prayers. I thank God that I am alive. I thank God for my family and friends. I thank God for the Presbyterian Church which has taught me so much and loved me. And then I always thank God for the United States Internal Revenue Service. That is the truth – the IRS has made it possible for us to avoid lots and lots of taxes. In fact, it is still true that the only voluntary tax any American ever has to pay is an estate tax. Through charitable gift annuities, charitable lead trusts, charitable remainder trusts and a host of other things, we can give much of what we have to our family and at the same time give to the church, all the while avoiding paying estate taxes.

The one haunting reality in why people give to other non-profits but not to the church is that in almost every case no one from the church ever asked them to consider an over-and-above gift to the church, over what they give annually. Should we ever be ashamed to ask people to give to the mission and ministry of the church of Jesus Christ?

For the last twentyplus years of my ministry as a pastor one of my greatest joys was to help people consider making a bequest to the church. The greatest success was in getting people to endow their pledge. The easiest way was to convince them to use appreciated assets to buy a charitable gift annuity, which ranged in size from very small to very large. Just a couple of examples:

One lady had a large holding in a particular stock which was selling for $39 per share. Her cost per share was fifteen cents. She gave 222,222 shares to the church. Her original cost was $33,333.30, and she sold the stock for $8,666,658. She paid no capital gains tax and since she did not need the money from the annuity she also gave that to the church. She has since died, so the church has the assets of the annuity in its endowment. The bulk of the income goes for mission causes outside the local church.

Most of us do not have people in our churches with that kind of wealth, but some of us do. How do you identify these people? You do it by getting to know your people, spending time with them and having conversations, asking questions like what is the most important thing in your life, and what would you like most to support with what God has permitted you to have during your life?

Back to endowing pledges and another example. We had a couple, a retired dentist whose pledge was $5,000 a year. They had some greatly appreciated stock on which he told me one day that it would cost his estate lots of taxes. Gently I approached the subject of endowing their pledge. “Why would I want to do that?” he asked. “How is it,” I replied, “that we can give to something like the church all our life and not even consider giving a gift that would continue after we are no longer here?” “Good point,” he replied, “but we want to leave something for our daughter and son.” So they created a charitable gift annuity. They sold $150,000 of stock, avoided capital gains, and with the income from the annuity bought a two-life insurance policy with a combined face value of $300,000. In the end the two children will each receive $150,000, and the church will also receive $150,000, the amount of the annuity. Upon their deaths the church will invest the $150,000, and at a 6% investment return it will earn $9,000. This will endow the pledge of $5,000 and leave $4,000 to be invested to cover inflation. Again in this case everybody wins, except the Internal Revenue Service. But actually they also win because the more mission dollars given by the church, the less has to be expected from the US government.

All of this seems a bit overwhelming to most of us, and especially to our ministers who have little or no knowledge of annuities or trusts, but that is where we have lots of help available. The national Presbyterian Foundation has a very competent staff that is more than willing to offer help. In the churches I have served I was always able to locate estate planning attorneys who, with a little encouragement, were willing to offer probono service to church members who were interested in leaving a bequest to the church. There is plenty of help available, but you have to ask for it.

I have been retired for a little more than two years now, but am away half the time working with churches to build endowments. What I am discovering is that churches now want to be serious about endowments, and the first thing they have to get over is the terrible myth that the fastest way to kill a church or institution is to endow it. I guess that is why Harvard is so near death, or Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, or Fifth Avenue Presbyterian in New York, or First Presbyterian in Ft. Worth, or hundreds of other churches.

What we discover over time is that happiness is the result of being, not the result of having, and what makes us who we are is what we do with life. This is why those who love life are always those who get the most out of life, because they are the ones who give the most to life.

Life belongs to those who choose it. When Mr. Truman was President, reflecting on the challenges of World War II, he said, “People make history and not the other way around. In periods when there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful people seize the opportunity to change things for the better.”

That is a simple yet very profound truth. People make history. The world is full of people who have the brains and the ability to accomplish great things, but they lack the motivation or the enthusiasm. They have the IQ but not the will. And what is so ironic about all of this is that it seems that God has made us so that we are happiest when we are helping solve human problems instead of creating them. My memory tells me this is exactly what Jesus said would be the case – we are happier when we are giving than when we are receiving.

So let me offer a few things I learned after I graduated from seminary.

• I have learned that people never give according to their ability; they give according to their understanding of the need.
• I have learned that people do not give as generously to a church that has allowed mission to become unimportant.
• I have learned that when church leaders are confident of the mission needs, they become confident in asking to make those mission needs funded.
• I have learned that in asking for specific needs the person doing the asking is the most decisive factor in another person’s giving. If the asker is convincing the need will take care of itself.
• I have learned that people move through distinctive stages in learning how to give generously. There are few instant tithers.
• I have learned that stewardship at its best is gratitude giving, not fund raising.
• I have learned that the primary purpose of stewardship is to help people learn how to express their faith.
• I have learned that stewardship is teaching people that the art of living is to live each moment with a sense of fullness, realizing that we get only so much time and when it is used up we don’t get any more.

Perhaps we can help people to understand this whole matter of life and living, of loving and giving, if we can get people to deal with the reality that one day we won’t be here, and what we leave is the legacy of what we have done with life and with what God has permitted us to have and use during our lifetime.

My doctor told me recently that I am in the last chapter of my life. He is thirty-eight years old. I am almost sixty-seven. So I told him he may be right, but it is my intention to make this the longest chapter of my life. All the while I was thinking, what does a thirty-eight-year-old know?

I am trying to live now with these poetic lines as my guide:
I expect to pass through this world but once.
Any good therefore that I can do,
or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature,
let me do it now.
Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

My hope and prayer is that you will find new ways of using your gifts creatively, and that you will continue to encourage others to use wisely what God has given them to use so long as they have life.

May God bless you in your stewardship of life and possessions.