Fund Raising

Of all the things I have to do in ministry, fundraising is my least favorite. I am a firm believer in tithing time, talent and treasure. If a church or a parish can not afford a ministry from its Sunday collection and can not afford to fund it at reasonable level within its means, the ministry head should not be expected to raise the funds to do everything else that needs to be done. 

My peer ministry and I are working on a Mystery Dinner Theater in order to raise money for  our Youth Ministry. Currently my Parish gives me no money (aside from my salary) for youth ministry. Now, I am not sure how familiar any of you are with ministry with youth, but it is not cheap. A decent retreat center for a weekend costs around $100 per person for night. Obviously we can not ask families to pay for everything that comes along that is that costly, and families can not expect this expense to be 100% funded by the parish. There has to be some compromise.

In most cases, this means fundraising. For me, as a ministry head that spends about 1/5 of my annual income on ministry expenses, this sucks. I am horrible at fundraising. I just feel like we are begging whenever we ask for things. This year we have the mystery dinner theater to bring the community together a little bit. Unfortunately that means that all other ministry has ceased since we can not expect much more out of the teenagers helping us time wise. They are already giving 1-2 nights a week to the ministry.

This means that all our retreat planning, and issue night planning has ceased while we put on the fundraiser. This is neither healthy for the teenagers who come to pray and share their faith with each other, or for the ministry which is there for their benefit. The focus becomes the money we are making, not our relationships with Christ. I think, for what I have read anyway, that this would be of concern to Him whom we love. 

Christ operated out of Faith. He knew His Father would take care of him no matter what. My theory is that is still true. God, no matter how dark the day, is always there. Is this hard to grasp? That God loves you, and is always there should not be a shock to any of us. I just believe that the Catholic Church needs to return to what made it so great... Christ. In a lot of ways the laity (non-ordained) need to take the Church rather than use it as an excuse for losing their faith. 

Anyway, as I am sitting here typing this I am slowly typing with my eyes shut. I REALLY need to get to sleep.

Prayers,

Pisio