Today is my last day as editor of Episcopal Cafe, and I hope to have a few thoughts about the church and my experience as editor later on. But let’s start with this story about LaSalle Street Church in Chicago that distributed 10% of the money it received for a real estate deal to parishioners ($500 a piece) and asked them to give it away.
Sharon Cohen of the Associated Press writes:
Not surprisingly, many donations from the congregation will reach far-flung places, including a school in the Himalayas, a health clinic in Uganda and an irrigation project in Tanzania. Closer to home, some checks are going to families and friends in financial trouble.
Church members, [Pastor Laura] Truax says, are doing just what she’d envisioned when she distributed the checks that first Sunday in September.
“I hoped that they would recognize the power they had to bless others and change somebody’s life,” she says. “I hoped that they would see their connection between their little piece and the bigger thing the church was called to do, that they would feel like they actually had some skin in the game, some prayers in the game. And that has largely happened.”
If you were given $500 by your parish, what would you do with it?