Pam Hawkins, Associate Pastor

When I was a little girl, one of my favorite moments in worship was when the offering plate came to me. My grandmother would give me a dime or quarter to hold until the plates were passed, and then I would drop my coin in with all the other coins and dollar bills that were piled up on the soft green felt on the bottom of the shiny brass plate. It did not matter to me at the time that the money I gave was not really mine. It felt like mine. It felt like my grandmother was letting me do something important, something that all the adults and children around me were doing—putting money into the church offering plate so that God could use it. I was giving back to God, my grandmother told me.

It was a childhood theology of giving, I know; and yet it has stayed with me all these years. Everyone around me was giving some of their money “back to God.” A dime, a quarter, a penny, a twenty-dollar bill—it was fascinating to me to see all these people put money in a plain brass plate, passing it from hand to hand, family to family, stranger to friend. My earliest learning about giving to the church came from sitting by my grandmother and passing the plate during worship.

So I have begun to wonder how it is, in these wonderful days of electronic and automatic ease of giving and paying, that my grandchildren are learning about offering back to God something that they have been given. When offering plates pass from hand to hand, family to family, and nothing is put in the plate because so much of the generosity is invisible during worship, how are they learning about everyone giving? I wonder if I begin to put in a dollar or a quarter or a twenty every time I pass the offering plate along, even if I also let my other giving take place through cyberspace, would what I believe about the connection between God and gifts be more apparent to the children I love? I think it might. I think I may try it.