St. James, Marshall, makes good use of its “Spare Change”

by the Rev. Kate Hennessy

Whoever it was that coined the phrase “good things come in small packages” may well have been thinking of St. James Church in Marshall. This small Total Ministry congregation surely fits the bill. As part of their participation in the MDG pilot project, the St. James “Spare Change” Team (the team’s motto is “Spare your time, talent, and treasure to change the world”) decided to hold four Soup and Story meetings at the church after Sunday services during Lent.  During these meetings, team members would tell their personal stories of being called to work for the end of global poverty, and the Gospel of the day would be explored in through Gospel-Based Discipleship Bible study to help those attending determine how they also might be called to this work.

Whether it was the combination of the story and the Word, or the great open-hearted generosity of this congregation, the goal of the project, to have 50% of the weekly attending congregation pledge 0.7% of income to the MDGs was met in the first week of the project! Despite achievement of the goal, the meetings continued, and the total pledges stood at 75% in mid-March 2008.  

This comes as no surprise to the members of the Spare Change Team or to those who know St. James. This is “MDG Round Two” for this congregation. The fund-raising for their first project, Rwanda Reads, came in ahead of schedule after a congregant took it upon herself to solicit a large donation from Wal-Mart.  Their efforts to collect books and supplies for this project continue, as do their donations to the local food shelf and their weekly contributions to the “penny jar” (that receives dollar bills weekly) which funds a priest’s discretionary fund   for local needs. A recent visitor to St. James attended one of the Soup and Story meetings. After deciding to make a pledge to the project himself, he said,  “This is a church with real heart; what a wonderful thing to discover!”