Church Council has been considering a proposal that we increase our support for benevolence as a witness to the mercy and forgiveness of God we receive continuously. The Service and Care Commission has recommended that the congregation be given regular opportunities to share with those who are in need. Church Council has approved the addition of a second offering to the Saturday and Sunday liturgies. The offering will be called the Mission Offering, and it will provide support for designated service and care ministries over and above the support currently provided by our congregation. Council will designate the beneficiaries of this offering, with the assistance of the Service and Care Commission, on a regular basis.
Examples of designated causes include
The decision gives an opportunity for the congregation to strengthen the liturgy so that it more nearly reflects the earliest church’s form of worship. The offering following the Liturgy of the Word and preceding the Liturgy of the Eucharist will still go directly to the work of Christ the King Church. The Mission Offering belongs to that part of the liturgy often referred to as the Sending. Having assembled for Word and Sacrament, we send the Lay Eucharist Ministers to the home-bound and hospitalized members. The congregation is dismissed to go back into the world to bring peace and serve the Lord in thanksgiving, and we receive an offering for those in need.
This pattern is clearly reflected in some of the earliest manuscripts describing Christian worship. For example, Justin Martyr (born about 100 A.D. and died about 165 A.D.) writes in the Second Century:
Those who have the means help all those who are in want, and we continually meet together. . . Then the records of the apostles or the writing of the prophets are read for as long as there is time. When the reader has concluded, the presider, in a discourse, admonishes and invites us into the pattern of these good things. Then we all stand together and offer prayer. . . Bread is set out to eat, together with wine and water. The presider likewise offers up prayer and thanksgiving, as much as he can, and the people sing out their assent saying the amen. There is a distribution of the things over which thanks have been said and each person participates, and these things are sent by the deacons to those who are not present. Those who are prosperous and who desire to do so, give what they wish, according to each one’s own choice, and the collection is deposited with the presider. He aids orphans and widows, those who are in want through disease or through another cause, those who are in prison, and foreigners who are sojourning here. In short, the presider is a guardian to all those who are in need. (First Apology 67, translation by Gordon Lathrop)
The final sentences from Justin reveal the extent to which the act of Christian worship was directed toward caring for others. The centripetal force of the liturgy (assembling together) is matched by its centrifugal force, distributing the holy things of the Eucharist to members not present and necessary things for life to the poor and the alien. The mission of Christ’s church is to proclaim the Lord’s will and grace and to embody that proclamation through word and deed. Thus, we fulfill the prayer of the church.
Help us to treasure in our hearts all that our Lord has done for us, and enable us to show our thankfulness by lives that are wholly given to your service. (LBW p. 52)