Grow One Percent

It must have been about 1996 or so. We were in our mid-20s, living in our first house, Kirk worked at the local elevator and I was a stay-at-home mom with a toddler.

We were somewhat active participants at Zion. We were fairly regular worshippers, Kirk sometimes volunteered as an usher, and I was starting to get involved with Harvest of Hands. Most weeks we threw a small check in the offering plate.

The stewardship campaign that year included a simple chart with the title ‘Grow One Percent‘. The idea was to find your household income in the first column, follow across to the amount of your financial contribution, and then look up to the top of the chart to find the percentage of your current giving. The next step was to move across one column, and go back down to the line of your household income to find the contribution amount that would represent a one percent increase in giving.

I don’t remember what our ‘current percentage’ was. I do remember acknowledging we weren’t really doing our part to support Zion’s ministry. I also remember that even a one percent increase seemed like a huge leap.

Eventually, we decided that although we still couldn’t comprehend increasing our giving to Zion by one whole percent, maybe we could try one-half percent.

You know what, it wasn’t as tough as we thought it would be. We got through the next year and met our one-half percent higher estimate without a problem. OK, so maybe we can do that again.

We did. For several years we repeated the process, stepping up our giving one-half or sometimes even one whole percent. We kept stepping up until we reached a level that felt right for us.

I know that a lot of members look at what the Bible asks us to give, and they look at what they are currently doing, and the two seem to be so far apart that it is impossible to comprehend making a real change. For us the key was baby steps.

Slowly but surely, we reached a place where we truly feel we doing our part to support Zion’s ministry financially. We are giving back to God. Won’t you join us?

Angela & Kirk Bengtson