CHICAGO — Christmas came early for people in the pews of LaSalle Street Church the first Sunday in September. That morning their pastor handed them $500 checks.
The Rev. Laura Truax, pastor of the evangelical church in Chicago’s Near North neighborhood, told worshippers that the money came with no strings attached, only encouragement to do good works and an early December deadline to either spend, cash or deposit the checks.
The money, totaling $160,000, came from a windfall of more than $1.6 million — proceeds from the sale of Atrium Village, a racially integrated housing development that was the collaboration of four neighborhood churches, including LaSalle.
While each church has managed the income differently, LaSalle began by setting aside the traditional tithe — 10 percent of its share — for about 320 of its worshippers.
Since handing out the checks, Truax has witnessed the sort of extraordinary generosity that the Christmas season is all about.
“The birth of Jesus was the most generous act of humankind,” Truax said. “The fact that God generously offers his son to the world, being willing to let Christ’s life unfold as it was meant to unfold, being willing to trust that Joseph is going to be a father to Jesus, that Mary is going to be a fit mother, that Jesus, the human Jesus, is going to choose God, seems to be the most gracious, open-handed gift of generosity we could ever conceive of.”
When Truax doled out the money, she preached on the parable of the talents in the Gospel of Matthew — a biblical story often used to urge Christians to give their time and talent and take risks to serve God.
But since then, the checks have been dubbed the “Loaves and Fishes checks,” named after another parable, in which Jesus fed a crowd of thousands with what started out as a small amount of bread and fish.
Truax hopes members’ decisions will advance the legacy of LaSalle, a socially progressive church with a history of turning its members’ altruistic ideas into full-scale ministries, such as a legal aid clinic for the poor and a soup kitchen.
Members have put their $500 gifts toward a skate park in Amman, Jordan, a scholarship fund for engineering students, an eyeglass ministry, a no-kill animal shelter, food pantries, homeless shelters and struggling family members. A few endorsed their checks right back to the church. Truax shared her check with her son, a college student in Minnesota, so he could buy winter coats for disadvantaged students he tutors there.
Truax hopes the variety of causes will help shape the congregation’s discussion about where the rest of the $1.6 million should go. Many congregants have joined one of about 15 prayer schools in people’s homes and via conference calls to discern the answer. Multicolored ink on a dry erase board in the church’s basement spells out dozens of ideas.
Truax said her No. 1 concern is the tension that could emerge in the congregation as it begins to winnow down the possibilities for the remainder of the treasure. After all, the New Testament says money is the root of “all sorts of sin.”
“It can change institutions and how you view the other person and understand motivations,” she said. “That’s why I felt this tithe was so important and giving it to people and letting them do whatever they wanted with it and letting them hear all these amazing ways other people are being led. It might open space in each one of us to recognize there are many wonderful ideas, not one of them is any better than the other idea.”
“There will hopefully be a blessed blend of advocacy and open-handedness with each other,” she said. “We’ll be able to be generous both in our spirit and the way we talk about these things with each other.”
