Sell the silo

Rev. Will Campbell

The Rev. Will Campbell was in his sixties when he stood at the pulpit at a Presbyterian Peacemaking Conference in the Anderson Auditorium in Montreat, NC in the mid-1980s and started his sermon on nuclear disarmament:

Anderson Auditorium

In the 50s I was invited to come speak about the civil rights movement and I said, “If you truly care about the civil rights movement you will sell this ecclesiastical silo and give the money to the civil rights movement.”  In the 60s I was invited to come speak about the war on poverty and I said, “If you truly care about the war on poverty, you will sell this ecclesiastical silo and give the money to the poor.”  In the 70s, I was asked to talk about the Vietnam War, and again I said, “If you care about the peace movement you will sell this ecclesiastical silo and give the money to the peace movement.”  And here I am again invited to talk to you, this time about the anti-nuclear movement… and I say again, if you truly care about having a world without nuclear bombs then you will sell this ecclesiastical silo and give the money to the anti-nuclear movement.

As far as I know, today that “ecclesiastical silo” still stands.

It is tricky to put your money where your mouth is.  The idea of tithing, giving one tenth of your earnings… gross, by the way, not net… is crazy, impossible, and not important.  Why give away your hard-earned money?

Will Campbell told us why… because if we TRULY care, then we sell and give away.  We put our money where our mouths are.  If we don't, then we've proven that we really don’t care that much at all.

The reality is that money is power, which is why we want to keep it.  With money we have choices, we have options, we have influence, we have our needs and wants met… without money, we have only bad or worse choices, few options, no influence, and our needs - let alone our wants - are not met… which is how almost half of the world’s population lives (3 billion people live on $2.50/day or less).
More than how we vote, what we think we believe, or what we say… how we spend “our” money and “our” time tells more about what we truly care about than all the rest of it put together.

If we care about the poor, peace, justice, racial equality, and all those great ideas, then it is time to put our money to good use and make a better world possible.

-Kathleen