Legacy Giving: Is It For You?

Legacy Bible Verses

 

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.

Matthew 11:29

Legacy giving or planned giving usually means gifts that are made in the later stages of life. They often are larger gifts and are associated with a project or legacy objective. What are some reasons you would consider a Legacy Gift to the church?

If you believe in the Anglican life, and believe that its preservation and nurture into the future are important, then you might make a legacy gift.

If you value the heritage of biblical faith, reason, liturgy, tradition, bishops and synods, and the rich variety of our life in community, then you might make a legacy gift.

If you believe that God calls each of us to greater diversity of members, wider participation in ministry and leadership, better stewardship in God’s creation or the need to challenge attitudes and structures that cause injustice, then you might make a legacy gift.

If you want to respond in love and service and more fully live the life of Christ, then you might make a legacy gift.

When you prepare your will, consider one of these ideas as you plan your legacy gift to the church.

· Adopt the church as an extra child to receive a portion of your inheritance. If you have three children, add the church as a fourth.

· Consider tithing your estate. This means giving 10% of your estate to the faith community.

· Endow your annual gift. Give enough to create equivalent investment income to your annual gift.

· Leave the residual. After you have made all your bequests to family and friends, leave the remainder to the church.

Legacy gifts are a form of stewardship for your lifetime assets; they create a legacy of who you are and they are a way for you to make a permanent difference in the world. Your generosity may also inspire others to give this way.

In caring for future generations, your faithful gift will preserve the traditions you strongly support; your hopeful gift will show that sharing is a core value of Anglicanism; those who benefit from your loving gift will rejoice at your action; your compassionate gift will help to heal the hurts of the world; your gift to the community will help it to continue to thrive; your gift of celebration declares the Grace of God in your life.

Legacy Giving: Is it for you?

Cultivating Compassion

Legacy Bible Verses

Her filthiness clung to her skirts; she did not consider her future. Her fall was astounding; there was none to comfort her. Look, O Lord, on my affliction for the enemy has triumphed.

Lamentations 1:9

By Glen Mitchell

One of the joys of summer 2011 has been the discovery of  the NIV Stewardship Study Bible¹. It is filled with interpretive articles on stewardship that are tied to scripture and the challenges all Christians face living in this consumer culture.

In addition to having a extensive concordance and topical index, it includes a section called “God’s Design for Effective Living” which includes calling, character, compassion, commitment, celebration, commission and conformity. These seven are linked, week by week, with readings and articles.

As I write this, it is August 13 and week 33 so the scripture is Lamentations 1:9 (quoted above) and the topic is compassion. Written in response to the destruction of Jerusalem, this scripture proves to be challenging reading.

Because God’s people were unfaithful their entire world is turned upside down. Not only did they not repent for their behaviour, their prophets were spinning a false story of peace and prosperity. Their deep suffering, spiritually and economically is cause for cultivating compassion.

A key stewardship concern in the Book of Lamentations is human suffering. One doesn’t have to look far to see that this concern is very relevant today. For example, many are dying every day in Somalia from lack of basic things like shelter, water, food and medicine. United Nations data reported in 2010 shows that 81 per cent of the people live in “multi-dimensional poverty. That means that in addition to having poor incomes, they also suffer from poor health and nutrition, low education and skills, inadequate livelihoods, bad housing conditions, social exclusion and lack of participation. There are many more countries throughout Africa and Asia where human suffering is on a scale most Canadians cannot imagine. Closer to home, for example, in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, we can see human suffering. Many of these people suffer the same type of “multi-dimensional poverty” found in developing countries.

Whether it is in the third world or our inner city,  how is a Christian to respond? The NIV article tied to the reading above suggests that the Book of  Lamentations informs our emotion. It makes us more sensitive to human suffering. It poses three questions that provide a framework for considering action: (1) Why do your emotions need stewarding?; (2) In what ways is compassion an especially important emotion to steward?; and (3) How might compassion move you to meet the needs of someone who is hurting?

One possible answer to the first question is that we need to understand the problem and develop our sense of compassion rather than stopping at being angry or upset by what we see. In the second question, we aim to be Christ-like and that means being compassionate. We need to work on our compassion “index”.

The third question has many possible answers. Some are moved to contribute financially. Others volunteer themselves or take work that focuses on creating solutions.

As Good Stewards, they move from emotion to compassion to action. They get involved in their community; they contribute time and money in the hope of reducing human suffering. Somalia needs your support now.

The Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund (www.PWRDF.org) is the international development arm of the Anglican Church of Canada. It reports that “the worst drought to hit the Horn of Africa in six decades is currently affecting up to 10 million people.  The United Nations describes the situation in the region as the most severe food security emergency in the world today, with the Famine Early Warning Systems Network warning that the response is “inadequate to prevent a further deterioration”. Levels of severe, acute malnutrition in this area, particularly among children, are also of great concern.  The mix of drought, skyrocketing food prices, food shortages, and deaths of livestock in large numbers has combined to make this situation a devastating one for millions of people in the region.”

In the Horn of Africa, you can make a difference to the human suffering. PWRDF has launched a fundraising effort to help people in Somalia and the refugees fleeing to Kenya. Some funds have already been sent but much more is needed.

Individual contributions will be matched by the Federal Government until September 16, 2011.  Matched funds are put in the East Africa Drought Relief Fund administered by the Canada International Development Agency which will disburse them to agencies like PWRDF that are able to make a difference in the lives of the people affected by the drought. Mail your donations marked “Horn of Africa Drought” to PWRDF, Anglican Church of Canada, 80 Hayden Street, Toronto, ON. M4Y 3G2. To make a credit card donation, call Jennifer Brown toll free at 1-866-308-7973 or donate on-line at www.CanadaHelps.org.

A Closing Prayer: Lord, it is difficult in the face of so much need to steward my emotions properly. Help me to have compassion on the hurting so that I will take your Word to the world to feed hungry bodies and souls.

¹NIV Stewardship Study Bible, Zondervan, 2009, Grand Rapids Michigan.

Gratitude for Abundant Life

By Glen Mitchell

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.

Colossians 3:16

I call to witness the gratitude of the people that is to come, whose children rejoice with gladness; though they do not see me with bodily eyes, yet with the spirit they will believe the things I have said.

2 Esdras  1:37

GRATITUDE, which dictionaries describe as a feeling of thankfulness or appreciation, is much more for Christians. Gratitude is an act of thankfulness for the abundant life that God provides.  We dwell in the word of Christ and we sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to God. We believe so strongly in the Grace of God, that, like the prophets of old, we are grateful for what we know to be a bright future with God.

The interesting thing about being grateful is that it opens the possibility of even more awareness of God’s generous nature. When we are grateful, we realize, even more, that everything we have comes from God. We recognize that the glass isn’t half empty or half full; it isn’t even completely full. Our cup is running over with God’s grace and abundance.

Gratitude is a theological perspective that many have trouble with when life doesn’t  go how we want. Every time the stock market drops, or we realize that all we can afford this year is a “stay-cation”, we are inclined to be ungrateful for the many blessings we continue to enjoy.

Perhaps the idea of journaling that The Rev. Donald Schell, founder of St. Gregory of Nyssa church in San Francisco, wrote about recently at www.episcopalcafe.com is the answer. For him it is a new practice and his experience is worthy of note. “For the past two weeks each night after I set the alarm and just before putting my bedside light out, I’ve journaled a short litany of specific “thank you’s.” Literally I begin each night’s journal page - “thank you God for…” and then simply make a new list, thank you’s for eight or ten specific things I’ve experienced or done or seen that day. I’m looking to remember that my life is blest, that all life is blest.”

Schell reports on the research of Robert Emmons, a professor at University of California, Davis, on gratitude. According to the university website, his primary interests are in the psychology of gratitude and the psychology of personal goals, and how each is related to positive psychological processes, including happiness, well-being, and personality integration.”

Robert Emmons’ research on gratitude described an experiment in which he introduced a group to a simple practice that significantly changed participants’ experience of themselves and others’ experience of them. Actually he had three study groups undertake distinct ten-week disciplines of journaling, none of the groups knowing what they other group had been asked to do. 

- One group’s daily task was to write a single sentence giving thanks for five things that had happened to them or that they’d been able to do.
- Another group’s task was to write a one-sentence summary of five things that they’d experienced as hassles, things that they were displeased or troubled at.
- And the third group was simply asked to list five recent events that had some impact on them or had made some difference to them.

The group assigned to journal their gratitude reported that they were noticeably happier, more productive, and were sleeping better at night. Their measurable stress indicators (like blood pressure) went down. And they reported family and friends repeatedly asking them what had happened to them that they’d changed so much. Those recording hassles did not show the positive changes, and those in the neutral group showed some changes, but not nearly such big changes as the gratitude group.

Rev. Schell says that he enjoyed his first week of this new practice of journaling. He looks forward to the few minutes’ writing before sleep. He thinks he may feel the small beginning of a valuable shift in his spirit. He writes: “All good. I was planning to reflect more on the practice, what it felt like, and what kinds of things I give thanks for, and then connect it to St. Paul’s repeated exhortation to us to “give thanks in all things.”

My plan is to begin a Journal of Gratitude and I invite you to do the same. Much like the study participants, lets write down at least five things each day that we are thankful for and that we have been able to do. Lets frame the journal in the context of a “Good Steward” which recognizes the joy of believing in God, worshipping, praying, serving others, being generous with our gifts, and giving thanks to God for our abundant life. If you would like to share your experiences, please do so at my blog at www.talentsforgod.blogspot.com.

Thanks be to God.

Taxpayers Give You Help

By Glen Mitchell

In Canada, all charities are fortunate in that government policy encourages everyone to donate. The federal and provincial governments use a tax credit system to reduce payable taxes when you make a charitable gift.

The first $200 of donations claimed in BC results in a federal tax credit of 15% and a provincial tax credit of 5.06%. This totals 20.06% and results in a $40.12 tax credit on a $200 gift. In other words, your gift actually costs you $159.88.

Assuming you have made a $200 gift, every other gift in a tax year results in a 43.7% tax credit here in British Columbia (29% federal and 14.7% provincial). For example, if your annual pledge to your parish church is $3,000, then the tax credit would be $1,311 and the real cost of your gift is $1,689. The government subsidizes your donation by the tax credit amount. So what this means is that you are not really giving $3,000, but are giving $1,689.  The taxpayers of Canada are contributing the rest through your reduced payable tax.

If you wanted to actually give $3,000, what you would do is give $5,328 (the amount the church actually gets) and receive a tax credit of $2,328, resulting in an actual gift of $3,000. This has the advantage of maximizing your donation to the church and maximizing the benefit of the tax credit system.

Tax credits can only be used against payable tax so before they are helpful, you must owe the government money. Sometimes, depending on the size of a gift made, the tax credit may exceed the payable taxes. In this case you can carry forward your tax credits for up to five tax years in the future to use them up.

For example, if your church were conducting a capital campaign and you agreed to give a donation of $10,000. You would qualify for a tax credit of $4,370 and your actual cost is $5,630. If you owed the government $2250 in taxes that year, you could carry forward the balance of ($4,370-2,250) $2,120 to the next year.

If you are a person who pays tax by installments every quarter, then you could calculate the tax credit when you made the gift and reduce your tax payments by the amount of the credit. That way you would benefit immediately from your donation rather than wait until tax rebate time the next year.