Saturday 4 July 2009

Cold, hard statistics tell it all


I think it was Oscar Wilde who said "He knew the price of everything, but the value of nothing".

Recently I did a Wedding for an 'out of town' couple. It required the usual amount of 'work' - a bit of face-to-face stuff and the typical sort of 'desk' work. It also required some lifting, polishing, hoovering, etc as we don't have a church cleaner. Then there was the Big Day itself with all its stresses and strains.

Before the actual Wedding I was asked the fee for the Church as well as my own fee. I replied that the suggested donation for the Church was £150, and I was waiving my fee, but if the family wished to give me something then I'd prefer it if they put something into our Building Fund. The Wedding Co-ordinator I was dealing with told me to expect quite a generous envelope.

Come the actual Wedding I was handed an envelope with a cheque enclosed for £150.

Now, what have I to complain about, you might ask? 'Surely you got what you were suggesting was an appropriate amount!'

Well yes, that's true. But let's put it into a little context. From what I heard the entire Wedding (and this was a BIG Wedding) cost somewhere in the region of £250, 000. Now that's a lot of money. The donation to the Church (which remember was to include my fee) amounted to £150. That works out at 0.06% of the total expenditure.

Did the Church Service constitute 0.06% of the total day? Did it account for 0.06% of the work to make the Wedding what it was?

What the donation reveals is the extent to which the 'Church' part of the couple's day played a meaningful role. Everything else was a 'no expense spared' affair. When it came to the Church, the bare minimum sufficed.

Now I realise that this sounds very much like sour grapes. But it's not! I just felt used and abused. I wasn't to gain financially from any sort of generous donation, but I did feel that the £150 reflected the seriousness with which the Church part of the Big Day was seen.

In my little Church it is precisely those who do not have so much who are the ones that provide so generously, both of their time and their money. I hope I have a newer and richer view of those who sit in the pews wekk in and week out.

Today I discovered that while money can get you plenty of things, it doesn't buy you respect.