PeaceBang

The Living Tradition Fund

I remember when I graduated from Harvard Divinity School with $60K in debt and my first job in ministry. I was offered a package of around $42K by my first congregation and I thought I was rich, rich, rich!! That was until I realized that rents in the area were astronomical, that my debt was a stone around my neck, and that I’d be paying a huge amount of taxes paid quarterly with fear, trembling and a churning stomach full of worry. I lived very close to the bone during those years.

During those first years I received a few debt reduction grants from the UUA, made possible by the Living Tradition Fund. Receiving them was a true life line, and I got teary when I opened the first envelope with a check in it. Every year at General Assembly at the Service of the Living Tradition, the Rev. Ralph Mero would make an impassioned plea for all those gathered (usually between three and six thousand folks) to consider the amount they had planned to contribute, and then to double it. The first time I wrote a $100 check back to the LTA during General Assembly was the moment I most truly understood the joy of giving. “The Lord loves a cheerful giver” indeed.

Although my student debt is still in the high twenty-thousands of dollars, I expect it to be gone in 7-10 years, and well worth it. Meanwhile, my retirement account is healthy with Fidelity Investments and I have decided to change my beneficiaries. I am leaving 25% of my assets to the Living Tradition Fund, which, if I die before retirement age, will make a very nice gift. I have decided that should I live long enough to need my retirement assets (and there’s no reason to assume that I won’t — but no reason to assume that long life is a certainty, either), I vow to make a significant bequest to the Living Tradition Fund no matter how long I live.

Ministers have so many other stomach-churning realities to contend with. Finances should not so regularly be among them. Fair and generous compensation is something none of us should take for granted, as so many of our sisters and brothers of the cloth in all traditions are not fairly or generously compensated. Making gifts to the Living Tradition Fund while I am alive and after my death is my way of reaching out to clergy in my tradition in fellowship and collegial solidarity. I encourage other UU ministers and those who want to support our ministers to consider doing the same, if you haven’t done so already.

UUA Living Tradition Fund
PO Box 843154
Boston, MA 02284-3154