Pastor's Pen - February 2006

Dear Friends in Christ,

For many congregations and their members, stewardship is a topic for discussion and consideration in the fall. That is the time for budget planning and the request for pledges to fund the next year’s projects. Once the season has passed, stewardship is put back up on the shelf until the next fall when the process begins once again. It is the way things are done and that is the end of it.

It must be said, however, that just because something has been done in a certain way for a long period of time does not make it the best or most effective way to do it. This is certainly the case with stewardship.

To begin with stewardship is not ultimately about budgets and raising money. Stewardship is first and foremost a matter of faith. As such it is something that is a part of the decisions and actions that we take as God’s people each and everyday of our lives. Stewardship has to do with all that we have and are as children of God. There are those who have suggested that tithing, the giving of ten percent, is all that interests God. Somehow suggesting that God has no interest in the other 90% that we would call our own and the decisions that we make about those dollars. This could not be further from the truth. God has a vested interest in everything that has been intrusted to us as stewards. This includes time, talents, and financial resources as well as our very beings. As people who have been saved by grace and gifted by God with a variety of talents and abilities, we are called to wisely and creatively use all that God has entrusted to us for the sake of the proclamation of the kingdom. What do our check book registers m and daily actions say about our relationship to God and to the world in which we live? These are issues of stewardship for daily life.

Stewardship then is not a fall campaign for pledges to fund a budget or to get a special project off the ground. Stewardship is the faith response to the realization that all that we are and have is

God’s gracious gift, entrusted to us only for a short time. A gift that is to be used as a witness to the love that God would share with all of the world.

Financial giving, though important and necessary to the realities and practicalities of life lived in this world, is but a barometer of stewardship as a whole and of the faith relationship to which have been called by God’s Spirit at work in our lives. Stewardship is not sometimes or seasonal for the people of God. Stewardship is today and everyday as we give thanks for all that God has done for us and for all that God has shared with us for use in kingdom.

Being good stewards is a way of life and a witness to faith to which all of God’s children including you and me, have been called. By the power of God’s Spirit at work in our midst may we live the life to which we have been called.