December 25 - We Are Stewards Of The Gift Of Community. "One of the things I notice that is really different within churches is a true sense of community.
Outside of churches, you really notice the lack of community. I sat talking to
my manicurist the other day. She is a single mom with a 3 1/2-year-old-autistic child.
She really has no one but herself to count on."
December 4 - Buy Gifts For Those Who Need Them. "May I suggest then that instead you try shopping for the persons who
have nothing. It can be so much less frustrating and more rewarding.
it is easy to figure out what to give the person who has noting.
Check out the Heifer Project of the fair trade offerings of the ELCA.
My guess is that other denominations have similar connections to those
who have little."
Nov. 28 - What Really Keeps Churches Viable? "I was asked to preach for a Stewardship Sunday last week. Afterward
there was a luncheon at which I spoke. People have gotten the
strange idea that I know something about stewardship. But I am still
trying to decide if I like preaching at these events. No matter what
I say in my sermon, invariably the discussion after gets down to how to
balance the books and keep the church doors open."
Nov. 20 - Thanksgiving in Good Times and Bad"Stewardship really is all about giving thanks. We give thanks all the
time. On Sunday we celebrate the Great Thanksgiving and every morning
when we wake up and remember our baptism we give thanks. So why
celebrate a holiday in November dedicated to giving thanks?"
Nov. 13 - Demonstrate a little warmth for the poor. "When I worked as a nurse, a young
mother brought in her baby sick and filthy. It was March. She said she
hadn't bathed the baby since fall because it was too cold. I haven't
demonstrated for years. But this is not worldly politics. It is the
politics of God. In my ordination and in our churches constitution I am
called to stand with the poor and the powerless.
Nov. 6 - Most saints leave an unseen legacy. "But individually I don't think it is something we think about our even
should, perhaps. Scripture doesn't talk much about how we will be
remembered here on earth. In fact, if anything Scripture reminds us that we
are dust, or that our days are fleeting."
Oct. 30 - God promises us riches, but not wealth. "Jesus tells parables about a man who wastes his life accumulating
wealth and then dies. And the message is that what he accumulated
will perish with him, but that there are greater riches in the kingdom.
And Jesus also tells us that it is easier for a camel to go through
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. So if God
wants us rich maybe it is because God doesn't want us in heaven?"
Oct. 23 - Break
free of 'climate-controlled' faith. "We
still can get to the place where we are rich enough and prosperous enough
and don't really need God. We are a prosperous nation. Revelations
3:15-17 warns of lukewarm faith. It is about the lukewarm faith of a
self-satisfied people."
Oct. 16 - Tithing is a matter of priorities. "I have never regretted tithing. It changed my life and my
perspective. It opened my heart to be more generous and to see where I can
give instead of acquire. I pray that owning a house again does not change
that, but I know it will not ever make me an ex tither."
Oct. 9 - God Never Becomes Complacent. Should We? "When
we give, we give to God. And as stewards we are also charged with managing
the money and caring for God's property, but it never belongs to us. So that
day never dawns when we get to give less or get to relax or retire."
Oct. 2 - Breathe --
and be thankful for breath. nurse long before I was a pastor and I know how intricate is the body and
how many things can go wrong. Given this, I am always amazed that we are
healthy so much of the time. How many times does our heart
beat? A reasonable estimate for the number of heartbeats in a lifetime is
about three billion."
Sept. 25 - We surrender our heart, soul -- then wallet. "Luther said that the hardest conversion is the pocketbook. How does that occur?
Does it happen all at once? Can anyone name the hour or the day that
she first gave her pocketbook to God, the way she can name the day she gave
her heart?
Sept. 11 - Fall is a great time to clean out your schedule "What is it in your life that really gives life to you and to others, and
what merely takes your time? And even if some of the things you are
doing are important to others, maybe you no longer need to be the one to do
them."
Aug. 21 - Help for church budget woes, but no quick fix. "It takes a long time and a lot of relearning for people to fight a
debilitating disease like anorexia. A whole different image of who
they are and they are worth what is life giving have to be mastered.
It is true for churches with poor stewardship."
Aug. 14 - What
Makes a Volunteer Tick? "I deal with so many people who give so much time for which they do not
get paid, helping others and meeting human need. And if there are any
thank you's or kudos, they are few and far between and so removed from
the initial impulse to help that I doubt that they would be
a motivating factor."
Aug. 7 - Stewardship advice is just a prayer away. "Corporately
we might pray that we be good stewards, but we don't often pray about money individually. Okay, so
maybe we do when it comes to needing some, or to give thanks when God has been generous. Do you ever pray, "Lord I just got a big raise, how should it change
my life?" or, "What should I do with my income tax return this year?"
July 31 - The real miracle at the feeding of 5000. "There are all kinds of miracles going on in the story. Often people
want to focus on just one. They want to point to the miracle of being able
to feed so many people with so little. That is what a real miracle is
about isn't it? Doing what is impossible?"
July 24 - The
measure of a steward. "We
are the Body of Christ in this world. Not
just when we gather in church. Sure, church
is where the bread is broken and we are constituted into the Body of
Christ, but it is in the world where we work and play that we are
sent to be Christ to a hurting world."
July 17 - What is your stewardship credo? "The creeds express a world view which sees the primary work of God as bringing about
salvation and reconciliation between God and God's people and among all
God's people. It is a sureness that God's Spirit is at work in this
world, working through God's Word to bring people to faith and to the new
life that God offers."
July 10 - Faithful discipleship is risky business. "A church that is
willing to risk for the sake of the Gospel is young at heart and will grow and
spread God's Word. Churches that incur debt to grow are usually thriving.
Churches that hang on to their money as if there is not going to be an offering
next week begin to be in trouble."
July 3 - Assumptions about giving are hard to
shake. "For
all of you who still operate out of a Depression Era sense of scarcity, let
me remind you that giving was much more generous in the Depression than it
is now. If giving increase even at the rate of inflation and increased
wealth since then our churches would all be doing well."
June 26 - Relish, Embrace, Use Silence. The silence between activity gives meaning to all of it. Think about it for a minute. Every new and creative thought comes out of the silence and not out of the constant stream of commentary in your brain. God breaks into the silence to talk to us."
June 19 - God is always creating and re-creating. "If we conceive of creation as something that happened in the past when
God created the heavens and the earth, then getting back to the original
state would be good. But when we understand creation as the ongoing
work of the Trinity, then we look forward to something new and
better."
June 5 - Mom was right: We must clean up after ourselves. "We think that we can continue to pollute until we run out of fossil
fuels or until a cleaner source of energy comes along, and then we can
clean it all up and everything will be fine. Christians do not have a great track record when it comes to taking care
of the environment."
May 29 - Managing God's bounty. There
is no better bargain to be had in this world than fact that God lets you
keep 90 percent of what is really God's. Even if we rightly turn over our
life to God and let God run it. if we see God as our manager, then it
is still a bargain, because any other manager would want 15 percent."
May 22 - Personal fulfillment versus fulfilling God's purposes "I
have been thinking a lot about what it means to be stewards of the mysteries
of God. We talk a lot in stewardship circles about using our gifts. And each
of us has great gifts that can be used for the glory of God. But the Gospel
is a greater gift and all the others are in service to it."
May 15 - Jesus' subversive message. "One week the Sunday school lesson was on Jesus saying, "If someone asks for your coat, give
him your cloak also." The teacher clearly understood the
subversive message of Jesus but it made her uncomfortable. She said, "Jesus didn't really mean for you to do that." Really?
Then just what did Jesus mean?"
May 8 - Developing a vision
for God's Kingdom. "Every community need can be seen as an
opportunity to share God's
love. We should be getting up every morning and wondering how we
can share God's love and spending our days looking for resources and
opportunities to further the kingdom."
May 1 - A lifetime of
servanthood is built day by day.
"Our
church secretary retired this week. It will be a loss for us, but I pray
that it will be a blessing to her. I believe she has retired a few times
before. She used her gifts in the corporate world for many years and then
worked in another church before here."
April 24 - Unwrap and use your God-given talents. "If
watching American Idol inspires you to find out what you are made of
and what you are capable of, then God bless it. If it just keeps you from
exploring who you are and what gifts God has given you to use in this world,
then turn it off and get out there. Who are you and who is this God who has made you?
April 17 - The cross powers our teaching on stewardship.
"Often people will point to someone really
generous that they admire and say, 'I would like to be like that.'
They think if the feelings of generosity ever comes then they
will be able to give like that person and live like that person. But
in the meantime, they sit where they are and nothing changes"
April 10 - The physics of financial giving. "Often people will point to someone really
generous that they admire and say, 'I would like to be like that.'
They think if the feelings of generosity ever comes then they
will be able to give like that person and live like that person. But
in the meantime, they sit where they are and nothing changes"
April 3 - Wholly enjoy your holy abundance.. "When we really understand that it is a giving and generous God who has
created us and all that
exists and desire to give it all to us, then we can indeed enjoy every moment and savor every mouthful and recognize the
abundance of truly being given the Kingdom."
March 27 - Faith focuses us on the mission. "People who received or witnessed miracles came to believe that Jesus was the Son of God,
that God was truly at work in the world. That was the point of the miracles
then, and that is still the point of the miracles today."
March 20 - A miracle for 'Miracle Sunday.' "
Yearly deficit budgets can rob us of hope long before the money runs
out. That is what the miracle was about. We have hope. We see
that God has blessed us with all that we need to do the work that God has given
us."
March 13 - What is your personal mission statement? "Shouldn't
every Christian see what God intended in this world even when it is not yet
much in evidence and then work to make it happen? Begin by re-examining who
you are. Maybe look at your birth certificate, but more likely your
baptismal certificate."
March 6 - Where is your time and money going? Really. "Lent
is starting, and it is a good time to rethink so many things and to do
more deliberately what we would like to do with our time, ourselves and
our possessions -- or more appropriately, what God would like us to do
with them."
Feb. 27 - The money we spend wisely does good, too.
"There are so many small decision about our money and our stewardship
that we struggle with when perhaps we don't have to. Some of us spend more on
our houses or cars or vacations."
Feb. 20 - Good stewardship means letting go. "We profess that it all belongs to God and we are just the caretakers.
And yet instead of seeing what the best use is for what we have and
how it can benefit the most people, we hang on as if it really belongs
to us, as if only we could best utilize it, while in truth no one is
benefiting and none of it is being used for any good purpose."
Feb. 13 - Gospel,
not guilt, best motivates givers." Do what my seminary
Professor Tim Wengert told me every time I e-mailed from my first
parish with a problem. 'Preach the Gospel, Dana.' Or as it says on
his business card that I carry in my wallet and should look at more
often, 'Preach the damn Gospel.'
Feb. 6 - Yes, it's about money, too! "Often people will say to me that stewardship is not all about money.
Whenever someone gives me that line, I get a little suspicious that they are
looking for some kind of absolution for their guilty feelings of not giving
enough."
Jan. 30 - Do we
trust God with our souls, but not our wallets? "The reasons
that people give are pretty simple, but the reasons that
people withhold their giving are much more complicated. If you talk to someone who tithes they will say something like,
'God has
done so much for me,' or, 'It is all about gratitude,' or 'It all belongs to God
anyway.' They are all variations on a theme that puts God at the center of
their lives."
Jan. 23 - Expect a 'Miracle Sunday'. "To erase our congregation's $26,000 deficit, we need hope and faith in each other. We
start to think, 'I really could afford to give another $500 a year, or maybe
a $1,000, but if I give more and no one else does then there will still be a
$25,000 deficit and I might as well have bought a new couch with the money.'
Jan. 16 - Tithing and giving are family decisions. "So what happens in a more pluralistic society when we marry outside
our faith -- or more: someone who has no religious background? I have
had many parishioners who have struggled with their giving or pledge
because their spouse didn't have a similar commitment to
church. I know women who sneak onto the collection plate money
their husbands don't know about."
Jan. 9 - God's radical financial advice. "I can't help thinking about the foolishness of God being wiser than human
wisdom. God's wisdom about money is much more radical than anything that we
even want our kids to hear.
Jesus didn't tell us to share 10 percent. He said, 'Sell all your
possessions and give alms.' " |
