Posted: Feb 22
Cassoulet
By Annual Giving, Congregational Leadership
Cooking up a campaign – a year’s worth of blogs on Campaign basics and spirituality
My favorite recipe is for a quick Cassoulet. I know that cooking and especially Cassoulet enthusiasts will raise eyebrows and twist their face into that sour-puss judgmentalism we usually associate with unhappy liturgists, sufferers of hemorrhoids and rigid church know-it-all patriarchs, but never mind. I like my Cassoulet. It was my mother’s recipe (a rigid church matriarch who converted in old age to “gentle church lady” with a twinkle in her eye and a mischievous, secret smile.)
A Cassoulet is an old, French recipe indicated by its, well, French name. But the truth is that where there was meat, starch and veg cooked together in a pot over a low flame for a very long time – days and days sometimes - there was Cassoulet - even if by another name. In Asia they call it Conge, America we call it Navy Bean Stew and in England they call it … dinner. The point is that though in today’s high-end restaurants, a bowl of Cassoulet is said to have been sweated over for hours in meticulous layering of flavors and sold at $40 per bowl…it still only costs $2.00 per bowl to make and is the food of the financially poor. It has been, for about 10,000 years, little more than a pot over some coals with a starch in it, into which meat scraps and leftovers are placed to slow-cook until “leftover night.” It may sound low-brow but it is heavenly comfort-food as the fats and meat juices drift between the grains and beans and the veggies disolve to form a buttery gravy of yumminess. I saw a Martha Stewart version which required flying things in from all over Europe and using a staff of 20 to build a dish for four people over as many days. And it is just that kind of thing that gives Cassoulet a bad rap. People look at that – all those culinary bells and whistles and freak out. They recoil and get scared and the fear immobilizes them.
In my experience as a fund raiser, master potter, monk, parish priest and Diocesan Canon (I know…I am tired and old!) stewardship campaigns have many of the same qualities as the good ol’ Cassoulet. Fund-raising, spirituality-deepening and soul-converting (the combination of which is what we often call “stewardship work” in church-speak) is just as old, just as simple, just as wholesome and just as terrifying when it is made into something terrifying by those whose over-functioning infects the process. A Cassoulet is basic ingredients: beans, herbs, vegetables, meat and broth. It goes into the pot in stages so that the flavor builds. It takes time to work in the pot over a long, slow ember-bed; and if made too fast, tastes a salty-burnt grayish-tan.
Managing a pledge campaign is much the same thing. Waiting until mid-summer, having a freak-out and rushing a shallow plan simply to check the “we did a campaign” box on the clergy “to do list” may indeed raise money and may even raise enough to fund the budget; but “keeping the lights on is” a flaccid vision for being church and not in keeping with the passion of Holy Week’s self-offering nor the pleasure of Easter’s vision of a new heaven and a new earth.
A stewardship campaign, pledge campaign, intended-gift campaign, cornucopia campaign – call it what you will – the work to raise money for God’s mission on earth and for the converting of souls around money, ownership, materialism, self-offering and social narcissism is holy work and takes time and planning. Like the Cassoulet, it is a loving layering of flavors and a series of interacting dynamics which produce something much greater than the sum of its parts.
I travel around the church as well as working hard in my own Diocese and I laugh every time I hear someone passionately and earnestly respond to a stewardship campaign plan with the words “Oh, that sounds very thorough Charles, but (and here they lean in close and whisper rather conspiratorially) what you need to realize is ….(pause, look around to be sure no one is listening…lower voice even more) …our church is…well…different.” As I muster all my energy to stifle a snicker, they go on to explain that only a few of the steps I have outlined (after raising 60 million dollars over 20 years) are really needed by THEIR church seeing as how “special” and “committed” and “welcoming” they are.
Here is where a church fundraiser must shift from prophet and campaign designer to pastor and lover-of-souls. Like the alcoholic who is sure they are “different” and can have the occasional bender without returning to alcoholism, the church leader who is convinced their church is “different” from all other non-profits in Christendom and beyond is bound to shirk their responsibility. But the job is not just to raise the minimum amount of money to keep things afloat. The job is to lovingly, firmly, mischievously, prophetically and courageously help people in the richest and most greedy society every to have existed, to allow the Holy Spirit to change their hearts regarding what they think they own and what they think God has provided and what they think they need to spend and give away. The work of stewardship campaigns is year-long and slow because our work is not to raise money but to change hearts (and raise money as a side benefit.) We are not greedy people, we are scared people and our greed is just our way of emitting a scream. (When I die – please write this on my tombstone! Along with “He was handsome, thin and smelled nice”)
So being educated in the winter about the best practices and then planning the campaign year (Spring to Spring) in the spring and recruiting and writing and printing and sermon drafting and designing bold adult forums on money & greed and event planning in the summer and running all the basics with joyful creativity (and lots of good food!) throughout the fall and managing collections and thank-you’s and program evaluation in the early winter –that is a Pledge Campaign!
Like the Cassoulet, it can be intimidating if you let it, but the long, simple recipe is always the best!
Over the next few months my blog will cover the ingredients of a simple pledge campaign based on our New Hampshire Stewardship Pledge Campaign Manual on our website at www.nhepiscopal.org under “Congregational Life” and “Stewardship” but for now, relax, pour a glass of something luscious, take a sip, and plan to make this recipe! Bon-appetite!
Anne LaFond’s Simple Cassoulet
Serves 6-8 with bread and salad (Ps. increase beans and sausage a bit for more. Pps. This dish is best the longer it rests, so cooking it in advance and reheating it is just fine – so if freezing it in portions!)
Ingredients:
2 lbs polish sausage sliced
1 lb sweet Italian sausage
10 ½ oz can beef broth
clove garlic minced
½ cup chopped green pepper
1 cup chopped celery
tsp dried leaf thyme
bay leaf
4 cans of white beans rinsed & drained or 2 cups of dried beans left to soak overnight and boiled till firm-soft
Instructions:
1. Place cut sausage (1 inch) in large casserol
2. add ¼ cup of broth and place in 450 oven for 10 min
3. add remaining beef broth and all other ingredients except beans and bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 30 minutes
4. stir in beans
5. bake 30 minutes – covered
6. if it is not the constancy of stew, then add some broth
7. add salt at last minute and garnish with chopped parsley
The Rev. Canon Charles LaFond is the Canon for Congregational Life in the Diocese of New Hampshire in the Ordinary Staff of the Bishop. Charles began his vocation in the corporate no-profit sector as a Senior Vice President for Financial Development and Communications/Marketing for an urban corporation of 14 YMCAs. More recently Charles has eight years experience as a parish priest and lived for the three years as a novice and monk at the monastery of the Society of St. John the Evangelist where he did spiritual direction, dishes and retreats and where he was, for a time, monastery cook. His current ministry combines a decade as a fund raiser and non-profit management executive and a second decade as a priest and monk. Charles comes at stewardship, congregational development and spiritual conversion of life not so much as logistical issues, but rather as a pastoral, spiritual and theological issues in a country weighed down by wealth and power, in a world weighed down by poverty and illness and in a church which seems unable to have a bold conversation around money and spirituality. We live in a society over-burdened by words, over-caffeinated by stimulants and over burdened by schedules. Charles’ interest is in calling the Church to a deeper awareness of how much we are loved by God and to a simpler and more aware life in that context. A master potter of 25 years, preacher, Chaplain to the New Hampshire State Senate, teacher, stewardship and management consultant, speaker and seminary instructor; Charles lives on a farm with a pottery studio, apiary, chicken house and goats in the woods of New Hampshire with his black lab named “Kai.”
The Rev. Canon Charles LaFond, Canon for Congregational Life, The Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire
www.charleslafond.com , www.nhepiscopal.org (Congregational Life)
