Thanks for feedback on my stewardship post last week. I want to share some of comment left by Mike from Things of Infinite Importance.
He writes:
We also push 50/50 giving in our community. That's taking your tithe (or whatever percentage you give) and giving 50% of it to the church community and 50% of it to works of love and mercy outside the church community. Then we as a church strive to do the same ... take 50% of our money and use it for ourselves and give 50% away. It puts the focus where it needs to be (IMO), which is on being Christ in the world among the poor, weak, sick and lonely. It also makes it all seem a lot less self-serving.
I really like the strategy he suggests - especially how his idea turns the focus from raising money for our own church to giving in Christ's spirit.
I also picked up a book by Dan Hotchkiss, Ministry and Money, A Guide for Clergy and Their Friends. Still a ways to go yet, but here's some quotes that jumped out at me so far.
"We avoid confronting our unease about economic inequality by distancing ourselves from people who are different, and by trying not to notice the differences. One of the most frequent reasons clergy give for avoiding the financial aspects of congregational life is that they don't want to know how much members give." (pg. 8)
and some statistics: 36% of labor force and 24% of weekly churchgoers say, "it annoys me when churches ask me to give money." (pg. 16-17) Ah.
Sermon 2/18/18 Mark 1:1-4, 9-15 Jesus in the Wilderness You’ve heard me say before that the gospel of Mark is my favorite gospel. Part of the reason I love it is because of Mark’s brevity. I don’t love that he’s short on details, exactly. I love that he seems practically breathless in getting the good news of Jesus to us, and that he seems to believe that the news is so good it isn’t even going to take very many words to convince you of his message! His frantic style strikes me as showing both how important and how convincing he believes Jesus’s message to be. But, then we arrive at a Sunday like today, and I find myself a little frustrated perhaps, or at least a little challenged by Mark. In the lectionary, the series of the first Sunday in the season of Lent always focuses on the temptation of Jesus – his time in the wilderness, where he confronts Satan, and commits to God’s path rather than the flashy alternative Satan presents. This is the fo
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