We at the Region are working on a plan for funding our
ministry for 2014. We often call this a
budget, but I prefer to think of it as printed outline of what we feel God is
calling us to do in the coming year. If
you are not personally working on a plan for funding your church’s ministry for
the coming year, you can be sure that someone within your congregation is doing
so. Perhaps your worship is focusing on
stewardship these days.
The way we approach and handle money is usually a reflection
of how we were raised. It is one of the
“family values” we inherit. We choose
to follow the practices of our parents or, in some cases, react against what we
were taught. The family value I
inherited was frugality. Any waiter or
waitress that asked if we still “had room for desert” was wasting his or her
time. Such an unnecessary expenditure
would have been unthinkable. One always
tried to limit the damage and get out the door.
For much of my life I believed that generosity was the
luxury of those who lived with excess.
People with more money than they needed could afford to be
generous. People with spare time on
their hands were free to take advantage of opportunities for volunteering. This unfortunately limits the practice of
generosity to the very few. How many of
us feel we have too much money or time?
Not many of us I suspect.
I then read something in the Bible that broke something
loose in my heart.
We want you to know, brothers and sisters, about the grace of God that has been granted to the churches of Macedonia; for during a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For, as I can testify, they voluntarily gave according to their means, and even beyond their means, begging us earnestly for the privilege of sharing in this ministry to the saints—and this, not merely as we expected; they gave themselves first to the Lord and, by the will of God, to us, (2 Corinthians 8:1-5).
Paul was taking up a collection from the Gentile churches to
help out the church in Jerusalem that had fallen into poverty. Paul uses the example of the Macedonian
churches giving out of their poverty to move the Corinthian church, a church of
some wealth, to contribute to this offering.
Generosity is not just for the well off among us. It is to be practiced by all of us—the rich
and not-so-rich, the busy and not-so-busy.
I am trying to be a more generous person, more generous with
both my time and my money. God is
always challenging us to grow; this is one of my current growth areas. For me, it is a form of liberation from fear
and anxiety to faith and joy. This is a
good time of year, when the Region and churches are planning for ministry in
the coming year, for us all to be thinking about generosity. Generosity is a Christian family value, for
the whole family—both the well off and the not-so-well-off.
Blessings,
Jim Kelsey
Executive Minister of the American Baptist Churches of New
York State
