Why I Give to Old First
Barry Clagett says -
Upon joining Old First in 1996, I found initially that it offered me an opportunity to renew my relationship with God. Subsequently, I found myself becoming more and more interested in Old First as an organization where there are myriad supportive relationships among the membership and where people help each other in times of distress. As time went by I took advantage of the opportunities to work with and socialize with other people. I also noticed that Old First helps people outside of the church and saw this as an opportunity for me to serve.
Service as a concept became clearer to me as I read the Gospel and Jesus' teachings about helping other people. It was then that I realized how important it is to support Old First, a place where it is easy and natural to worship God, develop good friendships, and help distressed people, inside and outside of the church.
I've come to know something about how Old First works and it is fascinating. It works on the basis of many people giving time, talents and money to the mutual enterprise. It's a great example of teamwork. We each do what we can with the gifts given us by God and the result is a great organization that provides strong social and spiritual rewards for us all.
Helping Old First to work well is interesting indeed. I participate in several aspects of our work and help to interconnect them. There are many opportunities for productive coordination between the various Old First organizational elements and helping to connect and make them more effective overall is rewarding work. I see the results every day as Old First folks benefit from the relationships and support that they enjoy at this great church.
Sara Barrios says -
I have never given a lot of thought to why I give to my church. However, when I think about it I know it is because I believe in what we are doing: I want to have a strong worship service with good preaching and good music. I give because I need to be with others in a caring faith community.
I give because I want to see that we teach our children and that we support adult learning programs. I want to support Old First in its outreach because that is where my faith leads me. And sometimes my faith is stretched by all we do. I need to be stretched.
About 30 years ago on the church's 125th anniversary, Al and I committed to giving Old First 10% of our estate. That commitment has not changed. I want to see Old First move into the future strong and serving all it can on the corner of Van Ness and Sacramento .
Rod MacDonald says:
I thought this would be an easy piece to write. It wasn’t; because I have had to reflect on my personality, my beliefs and my journey with Old First.
For the most part, why I give to this church involves two concepts. The first is that I have a responsibility as a member of this church to this church community. The second concept has to do with the kind of person I want to become.
When I joined Old First, no one said anything about giving expectations. But as I grew more acquainted with Old First’s programs, it seemed to me that as a member I had a responsibility to help the church accomplish God’s work, as the church defined it. In a way, I self-imposed a duty that meant I needed to contribute to the accomplishments and budgets of this community of believers. I feel good about fulfilling duties.
The other concept, the kind of person I want to become, relates to joy, and the rewards of giving. Volunteering time and money to the Seniors gives us much joy and satisfaction as we watch how grateful they are for our participation. It improves their quality of life and ours. Time given to Session, Deacons, and various committees, returns in the form of a deepening relationship with this community. Our tithe creates a commitment to God’s work in a larger context of the organized church. The reward is a wonderful feeling of receiving God’s love and blessing.
Could it be that my journey with Old First is similar to the journey in the kind of person I want to become? From the discipline of a community responsibility, to the joy of giving, and on to the kind of giving that creates an inspirational relationship with God? I think so and I pray so!
Rosemary Bledsoe says:
It was a dark and stormy night. Honest. I was working on the Easter issue of Shared Life, but my heart wasn’t in it. I was deeply worried about some of my relatives back in Tennessee ; their various problems had suddenly added up to a staggering total of anguish. I felt terrible that I wasn’t there to help, and even worse knowing that nothing I could do would really change anything
This was way back before I had a computer. I was working at my kitchen table, cutting and pasting (real cutting, real pasting, with real pieces of paper) drawings of spring flowers onto the newsletter pages. I kept cutting, kept pasting, and with every tulip and daffodil added to the layout -- oddly enough, I felt a little better. Friends, there were one heck of a lot of flowers on those pages when the issue finally was printed, I got a lot of comments about how happy and festive it looked.
Those pages were a lifeline to me. In creating a little springtime for Old First I was somehow able to run ahead into the good news of Easter.
For the September issue this year, I wanted to use a quote from the late Brother Roger of Taize. The one I found explains the strange joy of pasting pictures of flowers on paper and on everything else we do when we offer our various gifts to the church. Brother Roger said: “Do not worry if you have very little to share -- such weak faith, so few belongings. In the sharing of that little, God fills you to overflowing, inexhaustibly.”
