Text Box: Regarding Online Giving: by Matt Cerame Every month, our families share one thing in common: paying bills. It’s one of the less glamorous household chores. Paying bills at our house involves opening a sea of mail and sorting advertisements from the important notices. Then there is the process of writing checks, making a record in the checkbook, and stuffing and stamping envelopes. Eventually, companies started offering automated payment methods. At first I was skeptical and worried about losing control. However, we have come to appreciate the ease of automated bill payments. While discussing the Every Member Commitment (EMC) during a church meeting, I asked if there was a similar option available at Christian Temple. It turns out that it had been discussed. I’ve now learned that it is becoming a reality. I know our family is looking forward to it. Online giving will help us stay on track in keeping the promises that we make on Commitment Sunday. Beyond a convenience to individuals, it will prove quite useful to the church. Pastor Rick and church officers can now be more assured of the continuity of financial support that keeps Christian Temple running and programs funded. It may even come to ease the weekly burden of the counters who have to open and count contributions from any number of sources, which includes reading a number of handwriting styles! E-giving is now a reality and I encourage each of you to take advantage of this new service so that it may achieve its full potential. This year’s EMC campaign invokes the ideas of dream, imagine, and believe. Those ideas follow naturally from the recent activities of the Vision Team. In that spirit, consider the possible future of how we might contribute to the church’s financial needs. One can imagine having heard about a “special offering,” and then going online and being able to “point-and-click” a donation into a “virtual basket.” An online portal linked to Christian Temple’s website allows you to securely check and adjust your contributions to both the EMC and capital campaigns. Having moved from stone tablets, to the abacus, to pen and paper, to checks and calculators, it is now possible to step into the digital age. Christian Temple has now taken that step and is providing us with a new giving opportunity. Let’s all get behind it and see where it will take us. To view online e-giving, go to “christiantemple.org” and click on “e-giving.”