Stewardship

This morning, at the glorious hour of 3:30, the good Lord saw fit to stir me from my sleep (that, and I had to go the restroom), and my mind was awhirl with ideas for worship. Taking a moment to jot those down, and a further moment to partake of some strawberry shortcake and a quick round of Solitaire, I laid back down (it's now about 4:15). It was at this moment, for reasons I still can't be sure of, that the Lord impressed upon me thoughts of giving, for some reason.

Maybe it was the shortcake talking, but I wonder, too, if it had something to do with my previous study of Scripture. I had been looking at the opening chapters of Acts in preparation for Prayer Meeting (which was a delight, by the way; thank you all!), and I casually observed Acts 2:42-47, which speaks of the believers holding everything in common. We don't often look at this passage in the light of giving of our tithes and offerings, but it obviously held some serious import (see Acts 5 regarding Ananias and Sapphira).

Now, I know this seems an awkward exhortation coming from one who receives his income through a portion of those gifts, but, let's be honest here; I'm not in it for the money. My true concern, truly, is the ministry of our church, which is to make disciples. Nothing more, certainly nothing less. As we sat on the lawn last night as a praying body of believers, I was overcome with the visibility of that witness, and I was excited to imagine what visible ministry we might have in our community as it is enabled by our faithful giving.

The Old Testament adage is to give 10%; the New, to give 'til it hurts (as Christ did). I'm under the personal conviction that we should tithe on our gross, because my Lord is Christ, not Uncle Sam, and I want Him to get the first fruits. Nevertheless, just imagine if our body of 130-odd folk were to give faithfully even just 10%. In our affluent community of doctors and techies and such, would that not more than meet our budget, and exceed it, unto His glory?

Barna's research shows that, as best we can tell, there are 101 million born-again Christians among a U.S. population of 301 million. Imagine if your witness, and that enabled by our corporate body at large, were able to bridge that gap. In the Midwest, 45% of the population claims to be born-again. If that is true, and we as a mere 130 folk were to be faithful to give to the ministry our all (our tithes and offerings, our time, our witness), then we would reach the estimated 96,975 persons in our city with the Gospel very easily. In fact, if we each did our part to share the Gospel in some capacity with just one person each week, we will have spoken to every person in Rochester! And, certainly we can do better than that to compensate for the population growth!

May we learn from the admonition of Acts 4, to hold all things loosely, sharing all we have, whether it be our financial resources, our various areas of ministry, etc. This church is not ours; this ministry is not ours. He has graciously gifted us with this task. May we be faithful to hold all things in common, and pool our resources for the only thing that matters: sharing and living the Gospel. All else will fade away, save His glory alone! May we invest in that!