Pastor’s Corner: Vote

October 21, 2020

When I moved to Hilo four years ago, it was an election year. I remember telling one of our members that I had to look up the location of the polling place, and he responded with an odd look.

“You haven’t voted yet?” he asked. “I mailed my ballot days ago.”

In other states, “absentee” ballots were deliberately difficult to get. The ease of obtaining a mail-in ballot in Hawai’i never occurred to me. Until this year, I continued to go to the polls on Election Day because I rather enjoy it and didn’t have a good reason to change.

This year we all vote by mail for Mayor and Congress and President. We also will all vote by mail on our church budget.

It’s not ideal. As closely as I follow the budget process, sitting with the boards and the budget committee as they do the work, I know that no organization as complex as ours produces an entirely transparent budget plan. There will be and must be questions. Our budget meetings give space for those conversations and, while they may not often change the budget for the coming year, frequently inform the thinking about the budget for the year following.

I hope you will make time to ask leadership – me, or Bob Smith, or any of the Board leaders – what is on your mind about the budget. Even more, I ask you to send in your vote. We need it for formal reasons – we must receive forty ballots to satisfy our bylaws – and we need it for reasons of the spirit. Joined together (in agreement or no), we are the body of Christ. Disconnected or apathetic, we are not.

Please vote on our budget – and on all those secular leadership questions, too.

With aloha,

Pastor Eric

Photo by Eric Anderson