February 2025

A Shift in Perspective

"The congregation I long served held a “Greening of the Church” in the middle of Advent—the tree, wreaths, and lights all went up. It looked beautiful to me—but not to Angel.

Angel honed his decorating skills while preparing the big windows of a downtown department store. He brought those skills to the Greening of the Church.

Before Angel, we had placed our poinsettias around the sanctuary. But then Angel taught us to display them at a 45-degree angle. Even a scrawny plant could look abundant.

The plant didn’t change. Our perspective on it did.

Angel’s lesson comes back to me as I think about resources in church. Could a change in perspective shift us from seeing scarcity to appreciating abundance?

Stewardship and financial budgeting once caused me anxiety. Would there be enough? My church seemed to always need to cut and scrape its way toward a balanced budget.

A mentor saw my distress. She said, “If your church has enough money, then you’re not dreaming big enough.” Like shifting the poinsettia, I came to see the same financial numbers in a new way. We didn’t have a deficit. God just called us to do more than we could imagine. Our budget didn’t strain under expresses; it stretched to love God and our neighbors.

Looking at the same numbers from a different perspective caused me to ask a new question. No longer was it “How can we balance our budget?” Now, it's “How can we do all God calls us to do in our community?”

Changing our perspective about money mattered in our congregation. Turns out, few people in my church found balancing the budget inspiring. But when asked to think about all that God called us to do, they gave more.

What might you see in a new way by changing your perspective?"

Shared by Andrew Warner, Associate Conference Minister, WI Conference UCC