May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight: O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis
The Beatles
ABBA
The Grateful Dead
Led Zepplin
Pink Floyd
“If you got it you don’t need it. If you need it you don’t got it,” begins Martin,
recognizing The money song
Then it’s worship…
All these popular songs, all these lyrics all about money...all the jokes about money and all the jokes about the Church and Money.
Did you know that there are whole websites just devoted to jokes about the church and money….
Why is it that there are so many jokes about the Church and money? Is it because people sometimes feel awkward and, perhaps, a bit embarrassed about the relationship between our church and money? Or, to be more specific, the relationship between our church and OUR money?
The theme for today in our Stewardship Programme is money – Rands and Cents - as we approach the time when we would like to formalize our giving.
One of the problems about talking on this subject is boredom. The immediate thought perhaps going through many of your minds could well be: ‘ I know exactly what he is going to say – I’ve heard it all before….’ if that is the case I must ask you to please press ‘delete’ and let’s start from scratch!
For many of us, Stewardship always seems to be mainly about money and planned giving… but, as we have seen so far in our programme, there is far more to stewardship in the church than just money….although today we are going to talk about money…it’s all about how, together, we can contribute in many different ways to the work of building this church which our Lord has entrusted to us – this is our church – we are jointly responsible for it – and we are not talking about just the building!
As we say in our vision statement in the pew leaflet..
We want… ‘to be a God-centered people living the Gospel of Christ to build God’s Kingdom in our community’. We should be using our gifts and talents to develop ourselves and our Parish in the wider community.
When we talk about Stewardship and our money we are really looking at two different aspects – looking after our own money in a responsible way – as good stewards - trying to learn to live below our means so as to leave a small comfort margin – not always easy - Financial freedom is not just freedom from excessive worry about financial things but also freedom from the constant pursuit to have more which may be unnecessary…
…and then we have how we use our money to work with the church…
When we talk about our money and our church there is one over-riding concept to keep in mind – what we do and what we give is a private agreement between each of us and God. We contribute what we feel we should contribute and we must feel no pressure from the Church – the Church will remind us and the Church will encourage us! But – what we do and what we give is our personal decision.
When we give to God, whether it be in the regular collection or a special offering, or just a gift to help someone who is in need, we can give hoping to see some kind of a return, some kind of blessing, a sort of quid pro quo, but, if that is our approach, then it’s possibly just a business proposition and, if we’re not careful, our motives might start and end on “me, myself and I.”
Or we can give because God has blessed us in our lives, giving out of thanks, recognizing that it came from the Lord in the first place…. NOT requiring or expecting some type of return benefit.
Psalms 24:1 declares, “The earth is the Lord”s, and all it contains,” and in 1 Corinthians 4:7, Paul asks, “And what do you have that you did not receive?”
When we give as a way of saying to God, thank you, recognizing how He has blessed us,
New York
$500
In 2 Corinthians , the apostle Paul talks about our stewardship and his emphasis is not on our giving by guilt—because we have to. Nor is his emphasis on giving with a grudge—because we ought to. But his emphasis is upon giving with grace —because we want to.
In Paul's eyes, the offering is neither a necessary evil nor an unnecessary evil - it is a necessary good, so important that it must be an integral part of the worship service.
If you look at the New Testament in the original Greek, you get an even better idea of how important offerings were to Paul. Paul used nine different Greek words to denote the offering. By contrast, he used only four words for love.
Giving should be central to our worship of God.
It’s through giving that we are participating in the work of God in the world. We are helping to build his church and to provide for so many people in need, both spiritually and financially.
It also helps to make our worship real because we are making an actual, positive, personal contribution to the Lords’ work.
"In the history of the world, no one has ever washed a hired car."
Because they have no ownership….
And…until we feel ownership in the kingdom of God and its work, we will not give as we should. But when we do give, we show that our faith is as real and as meaningful to us as the gift we are giving.
Collection Bag – consciously think about the contribution you are making..
John Templeton is one of the most famous investors in the world. He annually confers the largest monetary prize in the world for religion. The amount of the Templeton Prize ($1 000 000) is even larger than that of the Nobel Prize. Sir John is a Presbyterian. A while back, John Templeton spoke in Philadelphia. His speech was billed as, "Come hear John Templeton reveal the secret of his success!" It seemed as if every stockbroker in Philadelphia turned out for the event, held in the ballroom of a hotel. John Templeton stood before them and said, "The success of my life is due to tithing to the church." He continued, "The key to investing is putting your money in undervalued stocks...Today, a life of servant hood is undervalued, the lives of children are undervalued and the gospel of Jesus is undervalued. Put your money in things of eternal value."
Stewardship is voluntary but, Stewardship is also an actual privilege – as we said, to be able to join in the work of building the Lords’ kingdom.
As followers of Jesus Christ we give ourselves first to Him. In Christian stewardship we first give ourselves to the Lord and then we give of our resources – our treasure, our time and our talents.
If our priority is giving ourselves over to the Lord, then we should have no problem with giving from our resources.
‘Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly, or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver’
We should never feel irritated by fund raising requests – if we are giving what we believe God wants us to give, we need give no more unless it is a cause that touches us in some special way. If we ever do feel pressured and irritated – then perhaps we need to pray about our regular giving……..
If we all give, as we believe we should give, there will be an ample supply of hands and funds to achieve all the plans we share about building our Lord’s kingdom through our church.
Through the abundance of God’s grace, we are enriched, enabling us to be generous on every occasion through which praise and thanksgiving are given to God – and remember – less can be more – think of the widow’s mite!
We need to pray about our contributions – are we happy and cheerful that we are contributing as we believe God would have us do?
Is finance that important to our church?
Yes – it provides the means by which we can worship our Lord in these beautiful surroundings – the means by which we can spread the Word of our Lord – the means by which we help those less fortunate than ourselves – the means by which we can bring up our children with good values on life through the church – the means by which we assist the greater diocese in the work of building God’s Kingdom on earth – it is very important!
But also..
No – it is not all important – it doesn’t, by itself, provide a growing fulfillment in our own personal walk with the Lord – we have to give from ourselves in some way – make a small first step perhaps to using our time and talents towards greater involvement in the life of the church.
‘As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God’.
Amen
Roger Lee
