Three weeks. $75,000. Give EGR the resources for a life-changing 2009!

It's crunch-time, folks -- and we need your help.

This week, we are setting a goal of $75,000 raised for EGR by midnight, December 31. We believe in setting big goals when the stakes are high, and they certainly are.

Make your gift to this goal online by clicking here.

Click here to track how we're doing on the way to $75K for EGR

What is at stake? Here's what we're looking at accomplishing in 2009:

*Articulating a clear, prophetic, faithful response for the church in a time of global financial crisis. As always for EGR, this will focus on the practical transformative question of What One Can Do.

*The MDG Mapping Project - an interactive virtual map of all the MDG ministry going on in the Church today.

*The beginnings of a Millennial generation movement for global reconciliation in the Church (a planning team of people between age 16-26 is already meeting online).

*Growing the of the EGR Rule of Life in breadth and depth as a community of spiritual transformation.

We aim to dream dreams worthy of the mission God has given us, and we believe we're doing that here. We're going to need your help in lots of ways to make all these things happen, but right now we need your help raising the money.

Here's what we need you to do:

1. Pray. - This whole movement is fueled by prayer. There is no anxiety about raising this money. If what we do is of God, God will provide for it (though we'll also have to work our tails off, too!). Pray for EGR. Pray for the Church. Pray for God to let you know What One Person (YOU!) Can Do.

2. Make a gift. - If you haven't given to EGR yet in 2008, please do so. Of course we'd like your gift to be as big as possible, but more than that we want as MANY donors as possible. This is a movement and one of the ways people show ownership in a movement is through giving. So whatever the size, make a gift.

If you've already given, THANK YOU. Please say your prayers and consider another, year-end gift.

Give online by clicking here.

Give through our Facebook cause by clicking here.

Give by check by making it out to EGR and sending it to
EGR, c/o Mike Fitzgerald, EGR accountant
115 Pinewood Avenue
Brandon, FL 33510

3. See who hasn't given - and invite them! - EGR's 2008 donors are now online at http://www.e4gr.org/donors.html sorted by individuals, congregations and dioceses. Check it out and see who is on it ... and who isn't. Is your diocese or congregation on the list? If so, write them a note of appreciation. If not, it's your job to make the invitation (and I'll give you all the help you need). Know people who might give to EGR but aren't on the list ... let 'em know and give them a chance to join the movement!

Remember, you're not "asking," you're INVITING. This is about offering people the chance to do something WONDERFUL with their money -- to be a part of God transforming the Church and through the Church transforming the world. You can't get better bang for your buck than that. I write lots of checks every year, but there is no check I write with more joy than my check to EGR ... because I know my wealth is going toward something great, the mission God gives us and the mission we share.

Thanks so much for all you do. Please let me know how I can help you in this process.

Oh, and if you think $75,000 is an ambitious goal for 3 weeks, consider this:

Last year at this time, we set a goal of raising $40,000 by the end of the year. We raised close to $110,000.

Dream big. God is cheering us on!

"Trickle-down relief" -- by Elaine Thomas

With all of the attention focused on Sarah (will-she-or-won’t-she-make-a-fool-of-herself) Palin during the Vice-Presidential debate this past week, one small little line of Joe Biden’s slipped by with nary so much as a comment as far as I’ve been able to find. Gwen Ifill asked if, in the aftermath of the $700 billion bailout, any of the plans on the Democratic platform might have to change. Here was Biden’s response:

Well, the one thing we might have to slow down is a commitment we made to double foreign assistance. We'll probably have to slow that down.

And that was it. He vowed not to move forward with the current administration’s proposed tax cuts and then said that they wouldn’t back down from creating new jobs through an energy policy or education or health care. There was only one explicitly stated plan that would be deferred or delayed – foreign assistance.

So there’s a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street (and no, I’m not naïve enough to think that had nothing been done, Main Street would not have felt a serious, if not Depression-era, impact). And then there’s the $130 billion tax-cut on folks making over $250,000 that a Democratic administration would not permit and an additional $350 billion corporate tax cut that would be axed and, if the Republican candidate is to be believed, Obama is proposing an additional $1 trillion in new spending (which he is not, but that’s another matter). With all these billions and billions of dollars, the first thing the VP candidate thinks of that they won’t do is an additional $25 billion (to get to $50 billion) in foreign assistance?

For a moment, let’s forget that this amounts to just over two months of Iraq war spending or that even $50 billion doesn’t get us anywhere near the 0.7% to which all UN nations have committed. What we should not forget, not even for a moment, is that without the assistance of the wealthiest nation on the planet, children will continue to die every 3 seconds from preventable diseases and half-a-million women a year will die childbirth-related deaths. Yes, the US economy is in trouble and it will impact the worldwide economy. And the basic economics of that don’t required a Columbia degree to understand – those that can least afford it will be hit the hardest. It’s as simple as that.

So I want to issue a challenge to all people of good will who might read these words. The challenge is this – dig deeper. God never set a maximum tithe requirement, you know. God gives us everything and then says we can keep 90%, but he doesn’t say we have to keep that much. Can you give another 1% above what you’re already giving? Can you give another 0.7%? If you’re making $25,000 per year, 1% is $250; 0.7% is $175. If you’re earning $100,000, those numbers are $1,000 and $700. I’m willing to bet that we as individuals can do what our government cannot – make sure that the aid doesn’t dry up when times get tough at home.

I’m sure that many of you are affected by the current economic crisis. A mortgage you can’t pay, credit you can’t get, caught in the spiraling unemployment statistics. My heart goes out to each and every one of you. But the challenge is for you, too. Even your worst money-day is better than living on less than $1 per day as a billion of your fellow humans do every day. So I say to you, too – dig deeper.

There’s a great spiritual principle involved in this – if we trust in God to provide for everything that we need, we’ll never lack for anything. Seek first God’s kingdom. Or in the great words of the prophet Malachi:

Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing. (3:10)

"How Much is Enough" -- by Meredith Bowen

This past weekend I hosted a fundraising event in my home town - in order to raise awareness and funds for the orphanange in Tanzania where I have volunteered. At the beginning of the evening a gentleman approached me and asked "How much?" "Excuse me?" I replied. He wanted to know how much was "enough" - he had a check in his pocket, he had come prepared to donate - I appreciated that. However, I was thrown. I had never been asked how much before. And I have been fundraising for years now. I didn't have an answer for him. I suggested that maybe he come back to me later in the evening, give me some time to think it over.

Why was this such a difficult question? More important, why did it upset me that this man had asked? As the evening began to come to a close - having been bothered by this encounter all night - it came to me.

There is no answer. At least not one that I will ever give. The answer is personal. If I give an amount I have basically let that person "off the hook" of having to decide themselves.

At the end of the evening I spoke briefly about my love for the orphans that I had been so fortunate to love over these last four years. I was frank with the crowd, encouraging them to write checks to support this endeavor. And I said, "If you are wondering how much is enough, "enough" would be the amount that you hope the person sitting next to you will make their check out for, especially if these children were your children. Because they are all of ours."

Meredith Bowen is at law school at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, spending the fall semester in Arusha, Tanzania doing an internship at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Has volunteered in Tanzania with the Rift Valley Childrens Village (an orphanage) as well as with the Anglican Diocese of Mount Kilimanjaro and the Diocese of Tanga. Started the African Orphan Education Fund to award scholarships for secondary school and university.

"No Such Thing As Coincidences" -- by Carl Hooker

A couple of months ago I had coffee in St Louis with a man named Mike who is now a prayer partner and is also a fellow diocesan coordinator for EGR. We were discussing a spiritual path journey I wished to take and had been searching out for some time. In the process I discovered he and I shared our EGR involvement as well as he being a member in the order I was contemplating discerning. In that context, and obviously with much detail I am leaving out here, he said to me, "there are no such things as coincidences".

I am something of a news junkie. My Firefox browser 'home page' opens tabs for CNN, the New York Times, Reuters, Episcopal Life and of course the EGR Blog. I read these sites after I finish my morning ritual for the online economics classes I teach. I also read while eating my breakfast and lunch in my office, 5 days a week and a bit less but also on Saturday. I tend to ignore the Internet world on Sunday. I print the ones that fascinate me to pdf format and then file them away in my documents database on my Mac (DevonThink is the name, sorry no Windows version). Why do I save these things? It is not like I am ever going to read them all again. I do write an occasional paper, and now a regular blog piece, so maybe they will survive; it is not like digital space is as precious as the shelves for my books, and surely I am not killing trees to print them, this must be a good thing.

I imagine sometimes that in 10 or 12 years when one of my grandchildren has an assignment for school and I get hit up for some insight I will readily be able to pull Obama's speech on race from a week or so ago, or better yet link them up with the video. So when I come across a piece like this one from Reuters, I also pdf print it, file it and then think about it. Go ahead and read it, I will wait.....

So what am I to do with this new-found knowledge? 4% of Americans donate to political races apparently, to the tune of $1 billion so far for the presidential cycle. Several African countries have a lower GDP than $1 billion and maybe a portion of the political money could have been spent on a more noteworthy and humanitarian endeavor. Wow, that is a lot of guilt to carry around. I tell you what I am going to do about it, I am going to somehow rant about it, point out the injustice and get a little worked up.

So I do all that, formulate what I want to say, commit it to the screen in my Google Documents pages, save and close. Open it up later to proofread and realize..... I have not made any contributions to any of the candidates at this point, but neither have I sent any money to help work the MDG's this year. I feel a lot more guilt about the latter than the former, but I am taken down a few pegs. It has to be one of these common reasons I keep telling myself as I make a list:

• I just have not had time to write the check.

• Maybe I can blame it on the wide number of potential locations for the donation, I mean hello, there are tons of places I could send a check to that will put it to good use, so many to choose from, which one(s)?

• Maybe I can blame the economy, we are after all in a recession (I am an economist - trust me; if it walks like a recession and quacks like a recession, then it probably is a recession) =;>)

• I just do not have the resources right now.

So I spend all this time thinking first about the huge waste of money for one thing and not enough for the other, my head spins several times before I finally get quiet enough to hear God. You see I am putting my socks on the other morning and since that is such an automatic thing at my age my mind is clear and I hear in my mind, "rebate check". It takes me about 2 seconds to figure out the "voice" means I should do something with my upcoming rebate check. No more reason to put it off, no more excuses, done deal. And to think I started off by evaluating the article based on the abuses of politics and ended up seeing the proverbial three fingers that were pointing back at me. Don't you just hate it when that happens? You climb up on a great old soapbox, ready to preach the vileness and corruption of sin you see all around you and humility creeps in while you are putting on your socks. So I delete key what used to be on the screen and write this.

Afterthought.
My current understanding is that about $167 billion will be sent out in rebate checks, 0.7% is $1.2 billion, probably roughly equal to the amount that will have been spent on the campaigns by the time the rebate checks have all been dispersed. Mike was right, "there are no such things as coincidences".

Editor's Note: -- EGR is right there with you, Carl. Look this week for the launching of our Give It For Good Campaign ... a movement to take your economic stimulus check and choose compassion over consumption. There are different levels of commitment so everyone can participate -- even if you really need the check to put food on your table. Give It For Good is still gearing up, but you can see the "work in progress" home page and even take the Give It For Good pledge before the official launch date of April 2.

Choose compassion over consumption. Take your stimulus check and Give It For Good.

Carl Hooker is an economist employed in an academic healthcare system. He is an EGR diocese coordinator in the Diocese of Missouri and currently studies in the diocesan school for ministry.