Stewardship

There is a parable told by Jesus about a man who kept accumulating possessions. At some point, he had so much stuff, he had to build barns to contain it all.  Apparently once the barns were built and the stuff stored, he said to his soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.”  “Fool!” booms God’s voice disrupting this man’s satisfaction with the future he had secured. “This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” It was God’s way of saying, “You can’t take it with you.”

But the parable implies more than that about our relationship to possessions and to financial security. In a word and contrary to our aquisitive culture, none of it belongs to us in the end or, for that matter, in the beginning. From the beginning we were made to be the creatures who care for God’s good creation for the sake of all of creation. This means we are stewards and not possessors of what we accumulate. In Scripture God’s people expressed their vocation of stewards by regularly returning to the community of faith 10% off the top of what they had. It was a way of ordering their personal lives toward God and the needs of others before themselves. At that time, this came in the form of produce. In our times, pledging our financial resources to the work of the church is the usual means of tithing, of giving 10% of your household income to the church in gratitude for all that has been given to you by God.

Most of the members and friends of this congregation are growing toward a tithe.  To help you think about what that might mean in your life, we offer the following chart. If each household in the church grew their annual giving by 1% of the household income each year, we would be a church of tithers within the decade. This would enable us to cover the basic costs of being the church and to increase our outreach ministry exponentially.