Bingo and rummage sales

American churches, especially small and middle sized churches,
have for many decades had fund-raisers such as bingo and rummage
sales to attempt to balance their budgets. Some people, including
some church members, assume that denominations fund local churches.
In all but a few cases, the opposite is true. The local
congregations fund themselves and generally send some of their
funds to the denomination to support various national and
international ministries. Most clergy, including myself when I was
in charge of a local church, have mixed, if not completely negative
feelings about the fact that they must depend on fund-raisers like
bingo and rummage sales to generate income over and above the
pledges and tithes of members in order to meet a budget which
includes, often as the single largest line item, their own salary.
I discovered early on that it was a good idea to keep any negative
feelings I might have had about bingo and rummage sales to myself.
Volunteers who come down to the parish hall to set up chairs and
tables for the Friday night bingo game, or spend hours sorting and
pricing donations for the rummage sale, do not like it if the guy
whose salary they are raising money to pay seems to disapprove of
what they are doing. Nevertheless, I was pleased when the
congregation I served got to the point where it could meet all of
its basic expenses, including my salary, through pledges and
tithes, and designate the income from fund-raisers to special
projects in the church and community.
For years the state of California has had its own version of
bingo — the lottery — and recently the state had what amounts to a
rummage sale. On a recent Saturday at a warehouse in Sacramento,
the state had a big sale of everything from old Highway Patrol
vehicles, to retired computers, to office furniture. There was a
time not so long ago when California citizens, legislators and the
Governor assumed that we could provide the funds for the operation
of our Golden State through a system of taxation without having to
make up a short fall by means of the state-equivalent of bingo and
rummage sales. I can’t help wondering if perhaps the Governor and
the members of the Legislature feel the same way I felt when my
church budget depended on bingo and rummage sales. I kind of hope
they do. 
My formal education and my continuing interest and study are in
the area of English literature and Christian theology, not
economics or political science. However, on a day-by-day,
year-by-year basis, I served for almost 40 years in a pay-as-you-go
system. When the local church I served, or a group of local
churches working together, started a new ministry for youth, or
elders, or the homeless and hungry, the question would be asked,
“What are we going to do if we run out of money?” The only answer
that could be given was, “Well, we’ll have to try to raise more
money, or we’ll have to stop.”
It seems evident that we — citizens, legislators, and Governor
—are in the same situation. We’ve got to raise more money or,
painful as it may be, we will have to stop spending on what many of
us consider essential services. In any case, especially when it
comes to essential services, I just don’t think that California
should have to depend on what amounts to bingo and rummage sales. A
prayer in the Book of Common Prayer “For the Right Use of God’s
Gifts” includes the petition that we “remembering the account which
we must one day give, may be faithful stewards of thy bounty.” I
pray that for myself, for our legislators and for the Governor.
Canon Marvin Bowers is a retired clergyman and may be reached at
[email protected].