JUNE

Week 2. Spiritual Practice Material and Tradition Elements for this Block.

ECONOMY

Isaiah 55:2 Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. Money Inventory from the Practicing Our Faith website study guide for On Our Way attached below and online at: http://practicingourfaith.org/sites/practicingourfaith.org/files/On%20Our%20Way%20S tudy%20Guide.pdf Video: Doug Hicks, Making a Good Living http://practicingourfaith.org/videoclip_hicks

God's love comes trickling down in the form of bread. They say, "Manhue?" -Hebrew for "What is it?" -- and the word "manna" is born. They had never before received bread as a free gift that they couldn't control, predict, plan for or own. The meaning of this strange narrative is that the gifts of life are indeed given by a generous God. It's a wonder, it's a miracle, it's an embarrassment, it's irrational, but God's abundance transcends the market economy. - Walter Brueggemann, in an article in the Christian Century (see below for full reference) Objectives.
To invite participants into serious thinking about the practices of stewardship. To encourage participants to entertain and try out creative economic practices.

Background for Facilitator.

This session is intended to focus on the spiritual practice of stewardship and participation in economic systems. Long-term volunteers living simply and in community together will already have encountered these ideas, and will probably have reflections on the practices that theyve been embodying during this year. Hopefully, this session can take that reflection to a bit more personal and spiritual level, asking questions about what God would have us do with our resources, and how we might spend our money on truly life-giving things. As the year winds down, this session also begins to ask questions about how volunteers might continue living out the new and faithful practices of stewardship that theyve encountered during this year as they move out into different living experiences. They may be about to make more money, or they may be facing an uncertain period of even fewer resources than they have now. The focus of this session is the abundance of God and what it really might mean to make a good living.

For this session, please plan to spend 80-90 minutes together.

Materials You Will Need.

Bibles Handouts of the Money Inventory (see below) Video: Douglas Hicks, Making a Good Living

Presentation of The Material. 5 min.

Explain that todays session is about stewardship and economic practices, and that well be examining the ways that we treat and share our own resources. Show the video Making a Good Living with Douglas Hicks.

Gut Response. 10 min.

Give participants ten minutes to journal their initial responses to the video. A good starting question might be, Do you treat money as an ends or as a mean?

Engagement of the Material: Group Activity. 15 min.

Pass out handouts of the Money Inventory worksheet (see below), and invite the volunteers to spend several minutes thinking about and answering the questions about their own lives.

Group Reflection. 25 min.

Begin a discussion about money and economics in the volunteers own lives. After watching the video and working through the Money Inventory, volunteers may have plenty of comments and questions to fuel a discussion. Here are some possible discussion questions to move the conversation along: Douglas Hicks says ,You can work for Gods justice in the world through whatever calling you have. Do you think this is true? Are there some jobs that might be counter to Gods justice? Is it possible to be a data entry technician and work for Gods justice? A politician? A teacher? A corporate executive? What makes the difference? Douglas Hicks begins the video with an either/or situation: as Christians, we either opt out of the capitalist economy entirely or baptize it wholeheartedly. Which one of these options sounds more palatable to you? Do you think theres another option? What does it look like? What ARE the economic behaviors that make you proud? How are your economic practices during this volunteer year different than theyve been before? How will they change when your year ends? What DOES it mean to make a good living?

Pillar Signature: Journaling 5-10 min.

Each Spiritual Practice block will include a time for journaling. Some of these practices lend themselves naturally to journaling, and others are more active or focused on other sorts of activities. For each block of spiritual practice, invite volunteers to bring their journals and spend some time in the beginning of the session free-writing about how God has been at work in their lives recently, paying attention to where theyve seen God in their work, in their community life, in the world around them. For this month, start out with a free-write time for people to journal

their initial thoughts about how the concepts of stewardship or economics might be shifting during their year of volunteering and living simply.

The Tradition. 5 min.

Invite someone to read aloud Isaiah 55:1-3. Invite someone else to read the same passage, from another translation.

Synthesis. 10 min.
Take a few minutes to think and talk together about the question: What are the things today that qualify as bread? What are the life-giving things that we can spend our money on? Are there things we could be doing together right now? (An example of this may be the volunteer house that found that when they pooled their money together to buy communal food, they ended up with excess each week. Instead of splurging on more expensive cereal, as they first wanted to do, the group decided to start their own slush fund, and donated their excess food money each month to a local food pantry, or the after school program at their sponsoring congregation, or one of the volunteers workplaces. What other creative practices might make sense for us, here and now?)

Prayer. 5 min.
Invite one of the volunteers to offer a prayer, remembering especially to ask for guidance in our economic practices, that we might be spending our money on the things that are truly lifegiving.

MONEY INVENTORY handout from Study Guide to On Our Way: Christian Practices for Living a Whole Life, prepared by
Susan R. Briehl, Enuma Okoro, and Don C. Richter Provide a handout with the following questions. After time for personal inventory discuss in small groups or as large group. Growing up, how was money treated and perceived in your household? What images or stories come to mind? List one or two rules regarding money learned by observing family members. Of what economic behaviors are you most proud? What economic behaviors do you wish to change? If someone were to shadow you for two weeks observing all your economic habits, what would that person surmise about your economic values? In what ways have your moral and faith-based convictions played a role in how you think about money? How will you know when you are making a good living? What will determine that for you?

** additional resource materials/web links**

Study Guide to On Our Way: Christian Practices for Living a Whole Life, prepared by Susan R. Briehl, Enuma Okoro, and Don C. Richter (http://practicingourfaith.org/sites/practicingourfaith.org/files/On%20Our%20Way%20 Study%20Guide.pdf) (Money Inventory taken from this resource) Bass, Dorothy and Briehl, Susan. On Our Way: Christian Practices for Living a Whole Life (Upper Room, 2010). There is a longer study guide for the Hicks video available at the Practicing Our Faith website: http://practicingourfaith.org/sites/practicingourfaith.org/files/making_a_good_living.pd f Hicks, Douglas. Money Enough: Everyday Practices for Living Faithfully in the Global Economy. (Josey-Bass, 2010). Wilson-Hartgrove, Jonathan. Gods Economy: Redefining the Health and Wealth Gospel. (Zondervan, 2009). Brueggemann, Walter. The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity, in The Christian Century, March 24-31, 1999. Online at http://www.religiononline.org/showarticle.asp?title=533.