As with any family or business, churches have expenses and depend upon their parishioners for support of their mission. Hard costs such as utilities, personnel, mortgages, and maintenance are similar to those of other organizations, but churches have a higher calling. While the offertory graciously given by parishioners funds these necessary costs, including paying off our mortgages over the past several years, St. Francis of Assisi Parish strives to use these generously provided funds to “give back” by ‘tithing.’ Tithing is a biblical practice of giving 10% of one’s income or resources to support the church’s work.
While many parishioners follow the call of biblical tithe to the Church or in toto to their charitable causes, St. Francis also tithes to support its ministries. The parish tithes are for the schools and the Justice and Peace ministries. The schools use the funds to provide tuition assistance to families in need who wish to take advantage of a Catholic education at St. Francis. The Justice and Peace tithe supports all outreach ministries because, as our parish website states, “We are a parish that seeks to live the gospel of charity, life, justice, and peace in our wider world. Outreach Ministries provides opportunities that help us live out the corporal works of mercy, go on missions in solidarity and service, and be an advocate for the most vulnerable.”
The Director of Justice and Peace Ministries, JaVon Hansknecht, discusses how these funds impact the parish’s mission. “At St. Francis, Justice and Peace has been given a tithe from the offertory since at least 2001,” he says, and “it provides hope and dignity for those less fortunate than us.” JaVon explains, “We are called to serve and build a better community and to give resources to those in need.” Part of the funds help ministries directly in support of their charitable mission, but are also for advocacy and supporting “issues teams.” We have nine teams concerned with supporting a specific social justice issue. “They educate themselves and others on the issue, research the issue and solutions, especially those sorts of ‘signs of the times’ concerns, such as LGBTQ issues or environmental issues, and support them through advocacy.” This support could be in the form of volunteering to participate in advocacy efforts, such as making signs to hold in attendance at significant budget hearings, providing busses to events, or postcard writing campaigns, or it could be a collaboration with other organizations.
According to JaVon, the tithe funds fall into three buckets. “Some of the funds are used for the salary of the Director and the Coordinator of Justice and Peace to keep the effort organized; that’s one bucket. Another, as discussed above, is used to support ministries and teams or their expenses. The third is organizational support; this last bucket helps local projects and groups aligned with the Parish mission. Through it, we provide funding to 30-50 organizations each year. Some organizations we supported in the 2023-24 fiscal year can be found here.
The organizations supported vary each year, but there is some consistency. One Wake,’ a non-partisan, multi-racial, multi-issue group of religious congregations and other non-profits, has been supported since the outset. JaVon says, “We support staffing and outreach and keep their website current. Funds are used to help set up larger events and to bring in speakers. We have also supported the Hispanic Family Center with Catholic Charities through the Diocese of Raleigh,” adding, “We fund them continuously and partner with them throughout the year; we even do Mission Mercy Camp and Vacation Bible School for their families over the summertime.”
However, he stresses that many organizations are on a changing list; we want to support some current or past ministries and add new ones. JaVon says, “We didn’t want to fall into the ‘easy trap’ of always supporting the same groups yearly. There is so much need, and new issues arise.” He stresses that their volunteers have even come up with a theme and found types of organizations working on a particular issue and do a lot of research on those. For instance, this past year, they derived a list focusing on organizations helping the aging community, especially those seeking or needing additional funding. They felt that this community was in need and were interested in supporting organizations advocating to address those needs. JaVon highlights that smaller organizations, like Passage Home initially, have felt a real impact from significant donations from our parish at their startup. “Passage Home,” he emphasizes, “did start small but is now a beautiful, very large, and effective effort due in part to the donations made over the years from St. Francis!”
JaVon also points out they are making changes to further the desire to diversify their support efforts. The Justice and Peace process is moving to a grant format after discussing their efforts with Monsignor Clay, and the ‘Justice and Peace Tithe Committee’ is now the ‘Justice and Peace Grant Committee’ starting this fiscal year. “To start well and ensure we get it right, the Grant Committee is sending invites out to those we have supported in the past,” says JaVon, “While publicizing the new application process and time frame. We have general standards, such as funding projects in line with Catholic Social Teachings, and will review and evaluate grant requests through a voting process.” The last stage will be for the Grant Committee to provide their recommendations to the pastor. Then the pastor decides, and he may also suggest organizations himself. For instance, Monsignor Clay wanted to support Birth Choice, and we have supported their gala for the past three years. The pastor always gets the final say in how funds are spent from St. Francis.
With all that said, JaVon adds that one of the other big things in focus now is trying to aim for the Justice and Peace office to continue to not just be about money. “Our office is trying to build relationships and collaborations by inviting the organizations to let us know how to get involved. Many parishioners are involved in ministries associated with some of the outside organizations we support, and we try to include these groups on our campus as well. We want to include the ‘time and talent,’ as well as the treasure aspect, as part of the support received from the parishioners.
