[Propertalk] Fw: A stewardship sermon (off lectionary) - Part 2

[Joe Parrish]

Part 2:

Here’s a Stewardship sermon, as ifyou are in search of one(!), from one of the nominees for Bishop of the Dioceseof New York:
Andy’s illustrations for the book byJerry Keucher, Remember the Future: Finiancial Leadership and Asset Management,2006, Church Publishing Company, are here:
 
http://www.episcopalmarlboro.org/Uploads/Remember%20the%20Future.pdf
 


Peace and blessings,
Joe


Giving is complicated in a culture of ownership. And we do live in a culture of ownership. Of
material accumulation. Such a culture reduces everything to a zero-sum game. There is only so much. If
I have, but give some away to you, then I have less and you have more. We’ve just traded ownership of
the asset. And that is so counter-intuitive that in order to become givers at all we need to heap up
strategies for ourselves to get us over all those psychological barriers. Every charity and non-profit, and
even the church, spends a lot of time developing just such strategies. So that when we ask, What is
required of me? How much is the right amount? When will I know that I have done all I need to do? How
much can I keep?, there will be ready answers to those questions. Formulas, percentages, equations that
define an obligation satisfied.
All of that serves goals, but it does not serve the transformation of the human heart. The conversion
of the human soul. So I would suggest that we will begin to understand the really creative possibilities of
Christian stewardship when we stop talking about giving. The word giving belongs to the culture of
ownership -- I give of what I own. I would suggest that we shift our emphasis to sharing. Because that
word comes from the culture of giftedness. If all that we have is a gift, then we can be freed from talking
of what is mine and what is yours and what is his and what is hers, and see instead that each of us, and all
of us together, are just managers of different pieces of what is God’s. And if all is God’s, then all is ours.
And ours is a better word than mine.
A culture of sharing comes from the belief that what it means to be a community is that everyone is
in this together, all being one. Sharing describes how we participate in every way, including materially, in
a body of which we are already a part. The challenges of the whole community are our challenges. The
blessings of the whole community are our blessings. The community comes to us in our need, and we
rise up to help when there is hurt elsewhere in the body. Sharing says that all we are, and all we have, are
at the service of this -- our own family. Sharing is driven by character and thanksgiving and courage and
fidelity and mutual accountability and a whole lot of trust and joy and more than anything else, love.
Sharing is the offering of our whole selves without condition. And for that, there can be no law.
We are going to take a moment of reflection before you are asked to come forward, as in years past,
to offer your pledge for the coming year to this church -- to your brothers and sisters. While you are
thinking about that pledge, I will offer you two things to think about.
If it is helpful to you to be given a guideline for how to do this -- something concrete -- fair enough.
May I humbly suggest that you increase your existing pledge by no less than ten percent. For almost
everyone that is easily doable. Two years ago Christ Church increased its giving by five percent. Last
year by thirteen. God knows that the parish has not run out of challenges, so we need to keep that
forward movement going.
But if you would like to take a step out into a different kind of stewardship, then I would ask you in
these moments to think about what a culture of sharing would look like, feel like. Don’t worry about
what you think I expect you to do, or Father Blake expects you to do, or your vestry expects you to do.
Pray instead about what God sees when he looks upon you, the kind of person you want to be, and what
God wants for you, not just from you. Pray instead about the heights to which God is calling you, and the
blessing that he has placed you in this community: all together, all being one. Pray instead about what it
means to really and truly count on one another, carrying one another’s burdens, no one being alone. Take
at least some of the time to pray for the people sitting around you who love you and will be praying for
you at the same time. And when you come forward, offer a pledge that signifies, even if to no one else
but you and your God, the kind of person you want to be, the kind of life you want to live, and
demonstrates that the people who love you can really, truly count on you. Now, and all the way to the end
of the road. Amen.



 
 
http://www.episcopalmarlboro.org/Uploads/Stewardship.pdf



 

 
 
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