Nicole’s e-Pistle
November 19, 2025
Greetings, Friends!
This Sunday, November 16th, is Commitment Sunday. We will be remembering our baptisms and pledging our tithes, our time, and our talents to God’s service. As we envision the ways in which we can be light in the world around us, I confess I am overwhelmed by the great needs of so many in our society. I cannot help but feel that the larger church is at a crossroads in which we must discern and possibly redefine what it is to “give.” It seems fitting, then, that our stewardship theme this year has been “Going Beyond.”
Yesterday, a woman called the office asking for money to stay in a hotel for the night, as she is living in her vehicle and the previous night had been extremely cold. This is not a new request, and there were times last winter, especially on cold nights, that I used my pastor’s fund to get individuals or families rooms, either at a hotel for a night or at the Stay Lodge for a week. It always bothered me that this was not a sustainable solution to their problem of being unhoused. After discussing the issue with the Missions Team, we determined that hotel stays are not a good use of our resources. Our church donates substantially to local organizations that are equipped to provide food, shelter, and even transitional housing to people who have fallen on hard times. I suggested several local shelters and organizations to the woman and said I could help her with a gas card if she could give me some time to go to the store. She became angry and said that churches and other places around town claim to want to help the homeless, but we’re all “just lying.”
This afternoon, I have been reading through a few of my books trying to find answers to an incredibly complicated and controversial topic. How might we, as the church, best help those who are hungry and without shelter? Is the charity that we offer helpful or hurtful? (I’ve been reading Toxic Charity by Robert Lupton.) Should we focus more on giving or on changing the systems that prevent people from escaping poverty? I’m sure you are familiar with the quote, “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.” Many people think this saying is in the Bible. It isn’t. It is actually a Chinese proverb, though I still consider it a wise thought. I wonder, however, if Jesus would have said these words. It doesn’t seem to fit in line with “sell everything you own and give the money to the poor,” or “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink…”
Still, Jesus often required something of the people he helped. Nearly every time he performed a miracle, he asked the person to do something first. At the wedding at Cana, he told the servants to fill the six huge (30-gallon) jars with water before he turned it to wine. If he could change the chemical makeup of the water, couldn’t he also make the water appear out of thin air? Before he healed a blind man on the road to Jericho, he asked the man what he wanted Jesus to do for him. This is Jesus! He already knew what the man needed, but he asked the man to say it out loud. When a multitude of Jesus’ followers were hungry, he first required a boy to bring his own lunch of bread and fish. From that meager, yet generous offering, Jesus fed the 5,000.
I cannot solve poverty and homelessness in one e-Pistle, but these are questions with which I continue to wrestle. For now, especially with the hard times people are facing leading up to the holidays, I think we must continue as we have been. This is a generous congregation, and I am proud of the work we do… and… I think the time is near for us to expand our way of thinking. How can we feed the hungry AND create policies that will help end food insecurity? How can we provide shelter to the unhoused AND work toward more affordable and sustainable housing for all? How can we welcome the stranger AND advocate for those who are mistreated and denied due process of the law? How can we heal the sick AND work to ensure that everyone has access to affordable healthcare? How can we visit the prisoner AND work to end systems of injustice and oppression?
There are no simple answers. If anything, these questions only raise more questions. I hope, in the coming year, we may wrestle with these thoughts together. In the meantime, be well, my friends!
Blessings and Peace,
